The Last of Us (Naughty Dog, 2014) Review

A constant déjà vu.

The influence of the 7th generation of video game consoles is so strong that it has changed the paradigm of the medium even to these days. The overabundance of shooters, whether first-person, heavily influenced by Call of Duty, or third-person, under the spell of the Gears of War formula, is perhaps its most significant hallmark, along with the emergence of indie titles, the inclusion of online multiplayer, the lack of quality JRPGs during this era (that could make for another post), and the birth of the Souls franchise.

Its influence has spurred beneficial trends within the industry, but it has also given rise to certain controversial aspects, most notably the infusion of more cinematic elements into the medium. As a result, we’ve seen numerous instances of video games attempting (and failing) to emulate Hollywood blockbusters, almost as if to distance themselves from their true identity as video games.

The Last of Us takes the form of a third-person movie-game shooter that often comes up in conversations about the best PlayStation 3 titles, and even in some others about the best video games of all time. However, I have a different perspective on these distinctions, as a more appropriate category would be “video games that could have been better as movies”. But even that label wouldn’t be accurate, considering that The Last of Us bears an uncanny resemblance to the film Children of Men, which even Neil Druckmann himself (co-writer) admits, albeit softened with the euphemism of “we drew a lot of inspiration”¹. Given the existence of Cuarón’s film, the definitive classification would be “video games that are a too inspired by existing movies”.

Oddly enough, Druckmann also stated that he was blown away by Half-Life’s ability to tell a cinematic story without cutscenes², which is rather ironic given how The Last of Us diverges from this approach. Instead of relying on implicit narrative to shape the story, the game is littered with cutscenes that reflect the writers’ inability to tell their story using the main attributes of this interactive medium. It takes the control away from the player at the most crucial moments to prevent the plot from drifting away from the fixed storyline.

Sure, the use of cinematics alone doesn’t necessarily make a video game a movie-game. It’s a narrative element that I’m not particularly fond of, but I can understand its use if it’s not employed excessively and if it’s paired with a satisfying playable experience. For example, the Hitman series follows the pattern of a short cinematic intro, a long playable section without cinematics, and then a final cinematic when we complete the level. It doesn’t break the pace of the gameplay and lets the player do the important things. In fact, these cinematics feel more like an excuse to provide context for killing people and making the game happen. It’s not detrimental, though, because the gameplay is so good that if you removed every line of dialogue, the titles would still hold up as solid games. However, The Last of Us relies too heavily on its narrative. The gameplay feels like a lackluster vehicle to move the player forward in the story, making the game suffer from an identity crisis, torn between being a video game and longing to be a film or a TV show.

To further understand the nature of The Last of Us, in addition to what has already been established, we need to bring into the table the fact that it is a production of Naughty Dog, the game development studio behind the Uncharted franchise. It was conceived as Sony’s response to Epic Games’ Xbox 360 exclusive Gears of War, which was considered “groundbreaking” at the time. In a similar vein, Uncharted adopted the Gears of War formula, incorporating its action-packed elements in the form of an enemy-filled third-person shooter with a Hollywood-style narrative structure. It also included a ridiculous platforming system, but that’s another story.

In essence, The Last of Us is just another iteration of the Uncharted series, set in a post-apocalyptic zombie environment with half-baked stealth gameplay mechanics and a more serious and somber tone to give the plot more credibility and drama. It also borrows the action scenes from Uncharted like the car chases and sniping moments, both with infinite ammo in a world of scarcity. By extension, it also falls into the category of cinematic Hollywood-style third-person action games with mindless quick-time event button prompts at the most anti-climactic points of the story.

The gameplay, as already mentioned, is a dull distraction to keep the player moving forward in the story. The progression of adding new mechanics resembles the long, straight line formed by the electrocardiogram of a stone, because over the course of the 14 hours it took me to beat the game on Survival difficulty, it adds nothing to its bare bones foundation. Most of it consists of walking around gorgeous but empty scenarios while listening to characters talk, while the rest involves shooting guns without silencers (very logical for a stealth game), or throwing bricks or bottles to attract the attention of the same 4 types of enemies so you can get behind them and press △ then ◻ to kill them. It follows the same pattern of cutscene => fight => walk while talking => cutscene => …, which gets tiring very quickly.

We also collect ammunition and materials to craft items like a nail bomb or a Molotov cocktail, which come in super handy for a stealth-oriented game. Regarding the latter, can anyone explain how in the world we need alcohol and a rag to make a Molotov cocktail, but not a bottle? We literally have bottles as items, so there is no room for such incoherence.

The way we gather said materials is a dawdling routine that takes up a significant amount of game time. It consists of pressing △ to slowly open drawers and cabinets, then pressing △ again to collect the supplies and wait for yet another animation. However, the use of the △ button goes beyond this mechanic, as we’ll also be using it to move ladders and pallets, lift Ellie to reach elevated places, start generators, open gates…

The playable areas of The Last of Us are unnatural and whimsical due to the placement of scenery items that artificially limit the player’s movement and force them to go the way the game wants them to. The relatively open spaces are just beautiful, atmospheric scenarios that serve as a smokescreen to hide how empty the world actually is. There is nothing of interest scattered throughout that would encourage the player to explore, as the collectibles add no value to the game, and the written notes always convey the same feeling of “I hope this letter finds you well, but we are doomed to die”. It doesn’t take a moment to invest in the world building, which makes me wish it took the Fallout approach and used the collectibles to add more valuable insight into the world and make it feel like another entity of the story.

Conversely, titles like Metal Gear Solid 3, despite their third-person linear shooter format (although it also has a first-person shooter part, but you get the point), feel very straightforward and don’t give you a false sense of freedom through their well-designed, reduced spaces.

It’s hard to talk about the story without reiterating how blatantly The Last of Us rips off ideas from the film Children of Men, which happens to be a cheap copy with a different ending and without the beautiful cinematography. This movie-game is more focused on setting the story in a harsh environment to tell a human story about Joel and Ellie that ends up feeling like a father-child relationship. I appreciate the approach and I can see what the story is trying to convey, although the overuse of Hollywood clichés such as people getting terribly hurt without dying, and manipulated moments to prevent the main characters from dying to create fake tension, along with the oversimplified gameplay and its rather long duration swollen by filler, detract from it and pull me out of it.

Also, the fragmented and episodic storytelling breaks the natural progression of the plot, which ends up feeling more appropriate for a TV show than a video game. On the other hand, it also skips superfluous exposition on irrelevant parts of the story, which I suspect would be a chore to play, so I think it’s an indicator that the pacing of the story could have been handled better.

The strongest aspect of the game lies in the development of the relationship between Ellie and Joel. However, it falls short of being as fully developed as I had hoped, occasionally coming across as somewhat shallow due to the lack of communication between both. The ending is also quite memorable, but the game as a whole doesn’t meet the same high standard.

Two other aspects also worth highlighting are the technical aspect, which makes me wonder what kind of witchcraft Naughty Dog has done to make a PlayStation 3 game look so stunning, and the soundtrack, composed and performed by Gustavo Santaolalla.

About the story

There will be spoilers in the following section.

I’m going to focus on the ending, since the rest of the game is a mere vehicle to carry the plot to that point.

Ellie’s surgery is a device to raise the moral dilemma of “did Joel do the right thing by killing a building full of people who were trying to kill him and Ellie as the result of the operation?“. The game succeeds in making us genuinely question this because of our attachment to both characters, but if we ponder rationally about this question and the given circumstances, the dilemma is presented in a plastic context.

The game presents Ellie as an extremely rare case of a human immune to the Cordyceps infection. Our mission as Joel is to cross the country to bring her to a Firefly hospital to produce a vaccine with her. When we get close to it, some soldiers come at us while Joel is trying to get Ellie conscious. Out of the blue, they strike Joel in the head. He suddenly wakes up in the Firefly hospital with Marlene.

In the few hours he was unconscious, the Fireflies managed to identify Ellie and prepare her for the operation, with all the activities that entails, such as figuring out that she was the girl who went missing on the other side of the country a few months ago, running some tests (if any), deciding the best thing to do under that premise, and concluding that the wisest decision would be to extract her brain to supposedly create the vaccine, with no guarantee of success at all. It’s disgustingly hasty and illogical, since she’s the only source of immunity they have and she was in good health, so it’s doubly irrational to kill a healthy patient.

The most reasonable thing to do under these circumstances would be to keep her in the lab as long as necessary to study her more thoroughly. It’s clear that Ellie’s immunity is caused by factors intrinsic to her, so analyzing her brain would only reveal the effects of the Cordyceps, not the root of her immunity. A blood test would provide much more biological material to gain more insight into her condition. The idea of a vaccine is just a deceptive premise to put us in a tough situation in order to emotionally manipulate us.

Furthermore, assuming the Fireflies indeed managed to create a vaccine by extracting Ellie’s brain, the question arises: how do they intend to mass-produce if it requires a host? Are they contemplating a system in which the vaccinated individuals are bred and treated like a resource, to be sacrificed periodically for the production of more vaccines?

As for the morality aspect, the Fireflies have completely disregarded any sense of it. Marlene doesn’t tell Joel the whole story, and she seems too sure that Ellie would willingly sacrifice herself if it meant finding a cure. However, neither she nor the Fireflies bother to ask her if she is okay with it.

Games and movies with infection plots involving a vaccine always fall into the same traps, which makes me wonder if I’ll ever read/play/watch anything about this subject that makes sense and doesn’t feel like a cheap vehicle for conflict.

Considering all the details disclosed above, it’s hardly surprising that Joel chooses to kill all the Fireflies ub the hospital and rescue Ellie. His account of the hospital incident, as told to Ellie, makes sense and aligns with his established character. It provides the most logical and gratifying conclusion to the game, and even to the franchise.

Impact on the industry

The Last of Us is a statement about how underdeveloped the standards of video games are compared to other art forms. It will take time for the medium to consistently produce interesting stories while actually exploiting its interactivity without trying to mimic cinema, as Pathologic 2, Disco Elysium, and Outer Wilds have successfully achieved.

If a bunch of cinematics and a Hollywood script, blatantly inspired by existing media, is all it takes for a video game to be regarded as a milestone in the interactive art form for its ”narrative richness”, overlooking all the gameplay flaws, then I think people should consider whether they want to play a video game or watch a movie/TV show.

Furthermore, The Last of Us’s influence served as a catalyst for Sony’s transition from the diverse catalog of exclusives that characterized PlayStation during the PlayStation 1 and PlayStation 2 eras to the movie-game format, which is good news for people looking for games that eschew complex mechanics in favor of a more focused narrative that’s accessible to everyone. Fortunately, the video game industry is broad enough to satisfy the tastes of every type of gamer.

P.S.: Do yourself a favor and watch the aforementioned film Children of Men if you want to enjoy a great post-apocalyptic story with no filler.

1. Dean Takashi (February 27, 2018). “Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckmann on the inspirations for The Last of Us”. venturebeat.com

2. Taken from the same article as the first footnote.