Tuesday, July 21, 2020

The Last of Us - Thoughts


There is a pervasive, gnawing, heavy misery to The Last of Us that I would've call "niche" had it not been one of the most successful video games released for the PS3. Thinking on it, I would have been skeptical if you told me a decade ago that "downer" media like The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones would become huge hits. Reveling in misery didn't seem like something large swathes of the population enjoyed—or at least, it certainly wasn't something people sought out more than once or twice a year. And while video games have always had an intimate relationship with violence, from the fatalities of Mortal Kombat to starving virtual friends to death in The Sims, few games have plunged into the murky depths of depravity. Those that did were usually seen as deviant; folks knew about Postal, Soldier of Fortune, and Manhunt, but adoration for those titles typically came from edgy teens, hungry for any kind of transgressive media. Plus there was always an element of farce to gaming's most violent offenders, making games like Carmageddon feel more stupid than sadistic.

So industry darling Naughty Dog taking a hard left turn into zombie-lane was surprising, especially coming off of the plucky Uncharted series. This post-apocalyptic world would be thematic inverse of Nathan Drake's universe: sick, sad, and dotted with blood trails that led to tragedy. Replaying it again in 2020 for Part II's release neither shocked nor sickened me, but I was mystified that so many people latched onto such a nihilistic experience. Perhaps they endeared themselves to Ellie and Joel, finding warmth in their rapport and struggle to survive. But if you pay attention to the game, love isn't the cornerstone that holds The Last of Us up—that privilege belongs to fear.


For the record, I think The Last of Us is best video game released in 2013. It's extremely polished, tells an enthralling tale, and is a hell of a lot of fun to play. That's why, despite being puzzled that so many people are captivated by it, I would never argue that they shouldn't be; The Last of Us is probably Naughty Dog's magnum opus. I don't think it's flawless—Pittsburgh goes on for too damn long—but it's an indisputable AAA masterpiece in my eyes, and a game I long for others to experience.

Yet it's obvious it won't be everyone's cup of tea. The Last of Us lands a gut-punch with its opening in order to submerge you in the terribleness of its world, conditioning you to see murder as numb, morally gray offense. As manslaughter soon becomes second nature, you'll pick up on game's prevailing ethos: you need to kill to survive. Coincidentally the theme is propped up by a ludonarrative harmony, as any time your character lacks the means to fight back—whether in gameplay or in a cutscene—bad things will inevitably transpire.

My dilemma with this, and my subsequent struggle to understand the love for it, is that it's a libertarian's wet dream. The Last of Us is anchored in the fear of the other and spends more time exploring and reinforcing this concept than it does trying to refute it. Every character lives in constant fear, from Marlene to Joel to Henry, and whatever characters don't die become jaded to the prospect of trusting others. This is an idea pervasive in the zombie genre ("what if the real monster was MAN??!!"), but the subtler, quieter moments of The Last of Us add this terrifying loneliness to everything. And by the game's close, it will echo the theme tenfold. I think narratively the game is brilliant—the ending is absolutely perfect—but it will leave you with a hollow feeling, one that blurs the difference between surviving and suffering. There are no champions or heroes in The Last of Us—there's just a pack of desperate scavengers and you... and you better learn to become more ruthless than they are.


I spent a long time on this melancholic preamble largely so I could gush about how superb the killing is in The Last of Us. I chose Survivor as my difficulty this time around and did not regret it—robbing the player of supplies and their ability to "see" through walls vastly changes the experience. Escaping a gang of infected may be tense on normal, but in Survivor you're deprived of all your toys and ammo, forced to do calculations like how to kill six enemies with four bullets spread across three different guns. The increased difficulty removes any leverage the game might provide the player, forcing them to rely on their patience, instinct, and a little bit of luck to make it to the end. You'll learn how to ration supplies and savor being handed a box of shotgun shells, and even when the odds may be stacked against you (like, say, having a flamethrower and two arrows going into the final fight), The Last of Us teaches you that there's always a way to survive.

I cannot undersell just how much playing on Survivor works thematically with The Last of Us, primarily because it helps turn the player into a monster. Animations for strangling and stabbing people are vicious because they need to be—you have to be sure the enemy you just subdued won't be getting back up. Likewise, it's disgusting to watch a nailbomb shred a man's legs into a rosy aerosol, but neutralizing a patrol that way can be immensely cathartic. The ammo famine turns headshots into small celebratory explosions, and there is an almost transcendent quality to stumbling across the multi-use, insta-kill ax. Throughout your playthrough, moments of barbarity will slowly transform into gleeful psychopathy, like lining up two people for a single shotgun blast, or throwing a molotov at a stubborn foe hunkered down behind cover.

The violent video games I mentioned before invoke the same mindset, but The Last of Us is ever-conscious of its own bloodlust, Ellie cursing after every murder. Similarly, deaths in cutscenes are shocking and instantaneous—unlike your own game overs, which linger for too long in order to show you the grisly reality of failing. Joel doesn't see manslaughter as entertainment even if the player might, which helps to keep you grounded so you'll treat your opponents as the dregs of humanity instead of bags of blood operated by code. For The Last of Us, the satisfaction of killing is counterbalanced by the misery of death, which is one of the reasons why I found it to be so hauntingly effective.

The last thing I'll mention is something that I didn't expect to stun me: the music. While the visuals and mocap still hold up today, I was awed by Santaolalla's discordant soundtrack. The Last of Us' prevailing sense of misery is magnified by tracks that are rarely melodic, instead oscillating between uncomfortable, primal and eerie. I hadn't really noticed the music on my first playthrough (outside of the main theme), but this time I was constantly aware of the unorthodox and yet perfectly fitting soundscape to this dead-end world. Beside the fungal-infected zombies, Santaolalla's unsettling strumming is probably the defining aesthetic of the game.


You will find no peace in playing The Last of Us—and if you somehow manage to, it'll be because you've forfeited your empathy. Playing on Survivor can be a grim, frustrating experience (my kingdom for one half of a scissor!) but like Dark Souls, the difficulty complements the narrative like butter on toast. The game isn't completely bereft of beauty and softness, but you'll only be granted fleeting glimpses of joy, usually after caving in a man's skull in with a brick. I love how brutal and miserable The Last of Us is, but—as paradoxical as it sounds—I don't want to love its brutality and misery. I want these characters to be hopeful and graceful and kind, but as humanity spirals downward, The Last of Us posits that fear will prevail.

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