The Last of Us Part 2 even includes a Hotline Miami reference, so the writers were clearly aware of what they were doing here. Remember 2013? That was the year after Hotline Miami came out, a game with themes that would also appear in its contemporaries - Spec Ops: The Line, BioShock Infinite, and The Last of Us. It’s an outdated way to criticize the violence of games, and the complicity of those who play them. That direction would force the creative team at Naughty Dog to rethink its own parameters, to go beyond the 2013 conceit of The Last of Us, which invited players to question Joel’s motives but nonetheless forced them to enact those murders along with him if they hoped to see the end of the game. That would present another interesting, challenging question for anyone: How do you live knowing that your life was bought by dooming the world? How do you have a healthy, mutually supportive relationship with the man who murdered innocent people just to save you? And is there a way to do so that doesn’t involve going on your very own murder spree? Finally, she has the chance to make decisions for herself, and will perhaps even learn the truth about what happened at that hospital. It’s a decision that robs the player and Ellie of agency, and the in-game world of a cure It’s a decision that robs the player and Ellie of agency, and the in-game world of a cure, and you better believe it has consequences that didn’t end with the credits on the first game. You have to go along with Joel on that one in order to get to the end of the game. Ellie didn’t have a choice in that decision, and neither did the player. Joel and the player are left with the unsettling knowledge that a lot of innocent people just died, and that more will fall victim to the fungus and the zombies it creates, all so that one very well-loved teen girl can live. But, he says, there are plenty of other immune people at the hospital (there aren’t), so maybe a vaccine could still happen someday (nope, not now).Įllie doesn’t seem to believe him, but the credits roll regardless. The doctor just ran some pointless tests, he tells her. When Ellie wakes up and asks what happened, Joel lies. Image: Naughty Dog/Sony Interactive EntertainmentĪnd so Joel murders everyone in the hospital, and saves the unconscious and unaware Ellie, with whom he’s formed an unshakable, paternal bond - a bond that leads him to doom the rest of the planet by saving her life. It’s a fascinating moral conundrum: What is the value of one young girl measured against the whole of humanity? After transporting a teenager named Ellie across the country, and learning along the way that she’s likely the only person immune to the fungus, Joel is told that doctors will use her brain tissue to create a vaccine that will keep all living humans safe, but that the process will kill her. Part 2 opens as Joel, the gruff protagonist from The Last of Us, tells his brother his darkest secret, the secret that may have doomed humanity. Although the game’s backdrop is a global pandemic, and although it reaches toward the idea of larger injustices by depicting two warring human factions - the cult of the Seraphites, and the militaristic Washington Liberation Front - it is really just a story about a teen girl, her damage, and her apparent belief that the only way to get over that trauma is murder.Ī lot of murder. It’s filled with characters dedicated to never seeing the bigger picture beyond themselves. Part 2 is a game about not rising above revenge or violent urges in general. I kept expecting her to grow and turn away from a life of constant violence, but she never picks up on the obvious didactic nature of the game she’s in, even as the designers beat you over the head with a very simple lesson about the value of human life. What’s worse is that the characterization of Ellie makes it seem like she should also understand this part of the journey. But the game’s larger problem is that the characters themselves don’t ever seem able to catch up with me. The Last of Us Part 2 must think I’ll struggle with it, though, since it doles out all sorts of reasons why I should feel regret about the murder spree its characters have embarked upon. I don’t have any problem empathizing with the people who I’m asked to kill in video games.
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