Spoiler-Free General Review:

Gaming as a medium is much less evolved than the other visual mediums. I’ve often likened gaming’s current state to the early days of film, when many of the most-respected pieces were simply pre-existing plays, recorded from a vantage point not far removed from the audience and presented as-is. This was before montage, close-ups, and many of the devices we now utilize as the primary tools of filmmaking.

The video game equivalent of this is the cutscene: the gameplay stops so that you can watch a short film that drives the story forward. The problem is, the game still has to be fun, and the player can’t be bored for long. This leads to very simple (or, alternatively, convoluted and poorly explained) stories, and characters whose motivations are one-dimensional, if they exist at all. Cinematic storytelling is often hindered by the necessity of constant gameplay, while the gameplay itself is interrupted by storytelling. It’s a difficult problem that has, at this point, been most successfully sidestepped by telling all story through gameplay, as in the Half-Life and Bioshock games.

Currently, Naughty Dog is considered one of the absolute best game developers working when it comes to stories, due to the Uncharted franchise. However, the purported strength of the Uncharted stories is a bit of a misappropriation of Naughty Dog’s talents. The reason that Uncharted feels so cinematic isn’t because of its story at all. In fact, these stories are pretty simplistic: Nathan Drake, the hero, goes after a specific historic treasure (read: Macguffin device) and tries to get to it before the bad guy can. Uncharted 3 attempted to flesh this out a bit (the villain has a history with sidekick-and-mentor character Sully, and Sully’s relationship with Drake is deepened a bit with a flashback sequence), but it’s still fairly minimal.

This DOES NOT mean that praise for the Uncharted series is undeserved. People are simply mistaking story with storytelling. The naturalistic dialogue and performance captured animations in the Uncharted series are miles ahead of most games on the market, and even when there’s not much narrative to back it up, it FEELS like there is. You become attached to these characters solely because you like them, and the propulsive nature of the game leaves little time to get bored. It’s very reminiscent of its obvious cinematic influence, Raiders of the Lost Ark: not a lot of time is spent on character background, but they make the character beats count and they don’t let any scene drag on too long.

While Naughty Dog could have gotten by just fine by repeating their previous formula, they took the road less traveled and created something far more compelling on a narrative level. The Last of Us is a major step forward for Naughty Dog as storytellers, and one of the best examples of gaming as a medium capable of telling worthwhile stories. The characters in this game (especially Joel) DO have backgrounds that shape who they are. They have arcs. There is a consistent theme present, and the game never simply falls into good guys vs. bad guys.

For those who are unfamiliar, The Last of Us is yet another post-apocalyptic zombie (or viral infection) game. You play as Joel, a man who’s suffered great losses in his past and is now simply trying to survive. Relatively early on in the game you are tasked with transporting a 14 year old girl named Ellie to a resistance group called the Fireflies. If you do so, you will supposedly be rewarded with guns and supplies. On its face, this is just a collection of cliches from similarly-themed books (The Road), movies (28 Weeks Later), and even other games (The Walking Dead). But The Last of Us ultimately subverts its cliches with one of the best endings in gaming.

The gameplay is also unique in that it does not encourage any one particular playstyle. Yes, stealth is often a viable approach, but you don’t want to sneak into a dangerous area, get discovered, and be positioned in a way that you cannot defend yourself. You can shoot enemies, but your ammo is very limited. You can only holster so many guns, and you need to hide and dig through your pack if you want to use anything else. You do not automatically heal like in many games, and the scarcity of useful weapons/medicine means that you need to craft supplies from the various scraps you can collect in order to stay alive.

Instead of approaching the game using one play method, you have to scope out each situation, decide on your approach, and be ready to fight back and defend yourself if the shit hits the fan (as it often does). Your approach will also change depending on what you’ve got on-hand. Sometimes you’ll find yourself with an abundance of ammo but no med kits, meaning you’ll want to hang back and take as many enemies out from a distance as possible. Other times you’ll have plenty of health and shanks in an area littered with bottles and bricks. Here, you’ll take a stealthier approach, distracting enemies where you can and shanking them from behind if need be.

Add to these scenarios the wide range of enemy behavior (humans, infected, and “clickers” all behave very differently, and need to be approached in a unique manner), and you’ve got a game that is all about adapting. It’s not a shooter, and not a stealth game. It’s a a game about survival at any cost, both in its mechanics AND in its story.

Once again, this story is the high-point of The Last of Us, which I cannot discuss any further without going into spoilers. I’d highly recommend giving The Last of Us a try if you’re a PS3 owner, as it’s going to be a big part of the “games as art” discussion in the next few years. If you’ve finished the game or don’t plan to, feel free to read on into the spoiler section.

In-Depth Deconstruction: Spoilers Abound!

If I were to break The Last of Us down into one theme, it would be survival of the family vs the “greater good.” There are several times throughout the game in which characters act in ways that benefit themselves and their own bands of survivors at the cost of somebody else’s well-being.

One late-game example occurs with David, an initially friendly and ultimately dangerous survivor that Ellie encounters while Joel is incapacitated. I do not believe that his kindness towards Ellie is a manipulation, beyond the fact that he does not want her to kill him. David sympathizes with Ellie, sees that she’s alone, and tries to protect her so that she can join David’s group of survivors and be taken care of. It’s not until Ellie denies his invitation, goes back to Joel, and starts killing David’s team (in self-defense) that she becomes the enemy and must be hunted down.

Of course, as we learn over time, David and his fellow survivors are far from saints. For one, they’re hunters and cannibals, willing to kill other survivors passing through and serve them up as food. But as sickening as this is, it’s not necessarily “evil,” per se. It’s a reflection of the game’s theme. The needs of the many DO NOT outweigh the needs of the few in this world. It’s all about immediate family and friends, to the detriment of all others.

Earlier on, Joel and Ellie encounter a couple of brothers named Henry and Sam. Henry is much older, and feels responsible for his younger brother’s well-being. They assist you in making it through a particularly dangerous town but, when Joel gets stranded and an oncoming horde of infected is closing in, they do not hesitate to leave him behind. Ellie, of course, stays with Joel, the closest thing she has to a family.

When Joel and Ellie survive and ultimately reunite with Henry and Sam, Joel is set on killing Henry for his abandonment. Henry, however, talks him out of it, explaining that Sam is the most important thing in his life and he simply wasn’t willing to put him at risk for a relative stranger. Joel backs off instead of killing Henry, because he would have done the same thing for Ellie.

The importance of family is further illustrated shortly after this point, when Henry is forced to shoot down an infected version of Sam. He breaks down, briefly blames Joel, and ultimately takes his own life. Sure, Henry could keep surviving, but he no longer has anything to live for. Joel states at one point that you can always find something new to live for, if you search for it, but Henry didn’t last long enough to find it.

So, we’ve established that familial bonds and the protection of personal relationships are frequently reinforced throughout The Last of Us. Good. Let’s get to the central plot.

The game opens on the night of the outbreak, with a young Joel receiving a birthday watch from his daughter Sarah. We then begin playing as Sarah and see the events of the outbreak from her perspective. Sarah is just as clueless about what is occurring on the night of the outbreak, if not more so, than the player, so there’s a sense of discovery as she makes her way through the house. There’s a newspaper in the bathroom that insinuates some kind of disease breaking out. A chaotic news report on TV leads into an explosion that can be seen out the window. Police cars can be seen flying by the house from the living room window. And ultimately, Joel comes back in through a patio door and is forced to kill their infected neighbor right in front of Sarah.

After a car ride through town, Sarah is injured and Joel (now the playable character) needs to carry her away from all the chaos. Unfortunately, after making it to the edge of town, they are shot at by military officer trying to keep the peace and stop the spread of the infection. They’re saved by Joel’s brother Tommy, but it’s too late for Sarah; she takes a bullet, dies, and after the game’s excellent title sequence we spend the rest of the narrative 20 years into the future.

(mild Man of Steel spoilers follow)

I played through this opening sequence within a day of seeing Man of Steel, and I was hit by how many similarities there are between the opening of The Last of Us and the opening of Man of Steel. Both are about an apocalyptic event. Both follow a tertiary character who is related to the main character. Both of these characters die in the sequence. Both scenes are in media res, and in neither scene is the ongoing action neatly explained to the audience.

But what really struck me was how much more effective the opening of The Last of Us was than the opening of Man of Steel. For one, the character that we are following does not understand the happenings around her either, so we do not feel alienated. Instead, we feel connected to her. Her curiosity is analogous to our own, and it helps connect with what is onscreen. Meanwhile, Man of Steel throws us into a situation with no explanation at all, but Jor-El’s familiarity with Krypton’s politics/environmental crisis keeps us from connecting to anything onscreen. We’re watching events happen, but we aren’t as curious about them because the characters themselves are not curious.

The Last of Us also does a better job at establishing a relationship between Sarah and Joel than Man of Steel does with Kal-El and Jor-El. Using the same techniques that made Uncharted such a pleasure, Naughty Dog throws in brief bits of dialogue and environmental details to sketch out the characters and define them in a short period of time. We see Joel tease Sarah about her gift-watch being broken (it’s not). Sarah jokes with Joel about how she could afford the watch (“Drugs. I sell hardcore drugs”). And when we start playing we’re free to explore the house, finding items like Sarah’s teasingly insulting but ultimately warmhearted birthday card for Joel.

To be fair, Kal-El is only a baby in the first scene of Man of Steel, but so much time is devoted to Jor-El’s adventure around Krypton and very little is spent establishing any kind of love for his son. He’s also very bland, with no defined character traits to make the audience care about him. When Sarah gets gunned down at the start of The Last of Us it feels like a real loss, even though we’ve only known her for 15 minutes. Just as much time is spent on Krypton with Jor-El, but nothing he does really informs his character. He’s a blank slate.

(end Man of Steel spoilers)

Even if you have no interest in actually playing The Last of Us, I highly recommend checking out a video of the first 15 minutes (you can find one here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ur9OJmA8GBE). This is a brilliant example of interactive storytelling at its best.

Beyond this opening sequence, I was seriously worried throughout much of the game’s runtime that I would come away disappointed. Sure, I was enjoying myself, and everything about the game’s production values was top-notch. But some of the plot-points were extremely predictable. Of course Ellie is immune to the virus and the last hope for mankind. And there was no way that Tess (Joel’s partner early in the game) WASN’T going to get bitten during their brief separation. Even a couple of the plot points I mentioned above (Sam and Henry abandoning us, David turning into an antagonist) could be seen coming quite a distance away.

This predictability seemingly continues into the later part of the game, in which Joel and Ellie begin talking incessantly about their future after this is all over. Joel is going to teach Ellie to swim (about time, given that you’ve been helping her across water for a year at this point). Ellie is going to make Joel sing for her. They plan to move to Jackson and live out their days from there. These characters, who started the game as strangers, are family now. And Joel, withdrawn throughout most of the game due to his fear of becoming attached and losing another loved one, has finally accepted Ellie as his surrogate daughter, the most important person in his life.

(major spoilers for The Road and The Walking Dead game follow)

All of these signs point rather obviously to one event: Joel (or possibly Ellie) is going to die. The future that they’re discussing will be impossible due to the loss, and one of them will have to learn to move on without the other. It’s essentially the same ending to The Road, where the son is brought along with a new group of survivors after the death of his father.

Even more worrisome, last year Telltale’s utterly fantastic game adaptation of The Walking Dead ended with a similar scene: protagonist Lee Everett imparting young Clementine with some last pieces of wisdom as he loses his humanity and ultimately (if you choose to) asks her to end his life. Given the already-numerous points of comparison between The Last of Us and The Walking Dead, this ending would have done a great disservice to The Last of Us. It also didn’t help that the final scene of The Walking Dead is an extremely hard moment to surpass emotionally.

(end spoilers for The Road and The Walking Dead game)

But despite all of the foreshadowing, The Last of Us ends very differently than its most obvious points of comparison. This ending, and what it means for the game, converts one kind of foreshadowing into another. What could have been a cliched disappointment instead elevates The Last of Us significantly, re-contextualizes previous moments, and proves to be one of the most interesting, gutsy narrative decisions I’ve seen in a game.

You see, you eventually do get Ellie to the Fireflies for testing. And they do determine that she holds the key to a cure/vaccine, allowing mankind to ultimately get past the epidemic. But in order to make this vaccine, they have to extract growth that has occurred around her brain in a procedure that WILL kill her.

Joel does not accept this. After the leader of the Fireflies leaves the room, Joel kills the guard watching over him and escapes. What follows is either a very difficult stealth sequence or an intense shootout, culminating in Joel entering the operating room, killing at least one of the surgeons, grabbing Ellie, and leaving. Marlene, the aforementioned leader of the Fireflies and Ellie’s initial friend/protector, asks Joel to stop on his way out, and he kills her too.

Ellie wakes up in the car ride out of town. Joel tells her that, as it happens, there are a whole bunch of people immune to the virus, but there’s no possible way to synthesize a cure or vaccine. After a short trek to Jackson, Ellie stops Joel. She brings up some of the lives lost in order to get her to the Fireflies, to bring an end to the infection, and she makes Joel swear that what he told her on the ride over was true. Joel swears. With a heavy expression of doubt on her face, Ellie pauses, then says “okay.”

And that’s it. The game ends.

Much has been said online about the “right” thing to do in this situation, and how sacrificing a girl for the continued existence of the human race is obviously the better of the two options. Some of these people wish that the game had given them the option to choose what they wanted to do. These people are either misinterpreting the arc and theme of the game, or missing the point entirely.

Others still have gone on to say how surprised they are, and that “all this time, I was playing as The Bad Guy.” Once again, this is missing the point, and calling Joel a villain is a horribly reductive thing to say about a game in which there are no heroes and villains, just survivors.

The fact is, the Joel at the beginning of the game WOULD NOT have saved Ellie. He would have left her to play her part in saving the world, taken his guns and supplies and been on his way. This would have been the “right” ending that so many people seemed to yearn for.

But we’ve spent the vast majority of the game watching Joel change and open up to Ellie. Not only have we passively observed Joel’s evolution of character, we’ve actually ROOTED for the character to grow in this way. The arc of the reserved, curmudgeonly character slowly opening his heart to somebody new is an extremely familiar one, and we’ve been conditioned through entertainment and culture to value openheartedness. We’ve grown up with stories of sacrifice in the name of loved ones, of overcoming great obstacles due to the power of love, so we’re predisposed to want Joel and Ellie to care about each other.

So The Last of Us is a story of a man who suffers a great loss. He finds somebody who looks up to him, and then tries very hard to shut her out behind his own emotional walls. However, after they care and look out for each other, his efforts are ultimately futile. He comes to love her, to take her in as family. And this love is ultimately what dooms the human race.

Now that is a fucking cool arc.

And again, the ending re-contextualizes so much of what came before. All of those people who told you that they’re just like you, that we’re all looking out for our own? Well, they’re right. You prove their point in the most grandiose manner imaginable. All those comments about Joel and Ellie’s future life together? They’re not foreshadowing the death of a character, they’re setting up the life that Joel chooses to live.

The thought of leaving the ending up to the player defeats so much of the point. For one, an ending in which you choose to let Ellie die would be completely dissatisfying on a dramatic level. Joel’s entire arc up to that point would essentially be abandoned for the greater good. It’s a wet fart of an ending.

And even if the player were to choose the *real* ending of the game, it would still mean that that decision was ultimately the player’s, and not the character’s. This kind of thing works in games like Mass Effect and The Walking Dead, because the playable character is set up as a player surrogate from the start. But if you have a character like Joel, who is so well-defined by the end of the game, then taking that decision away from him weakens the narrative. Naughty Dog had a specific story they wanted to tell, and they did not take the easy way out by having the player initiate Joel’s decision. Joel does what he does, and that’s the end of it.

Joel and Ellie’s story is one in which I have no interest in a sequel. As open-ended as it seems, the central arc is complete. Anything further just muddles that arc. Naughty Dog has said that they do not plan on continuing the story, but given the game’s enormous success, Sony is obviously going to push for a sequel. If that happens, I hope Joel and Ellie are nowhere to be found.

Naughty Dog took the criticism they received on Uncharted to heart. The Last of Us has real substance. There’s no disassociation between actions made in the game scenarios and the characterizations present in the cutscenes. The game is not afraid to embrace archetypal storytelling, nor is it afraid to subvert expectations when it needs to. This is confident storytelling and suberb game design, and it is not to be missed.