10 years in the past, The Last of Us’ surprising and morally divisive ending made historical past. Choosing to land in a spot of uncertainty, the conclusion bucked what many different video games selected to do, and infrequently nonetheless do: current an easy, neat, conventionally satisfying finish the place the nice guys are the nice guys and the unhealthy guys have been vanquished. Lines between protagonist and antagonist blur over the course of its 15-hour marketing campaign, and the ending refuses to provide us a neat takeaway, to sharpen the point of interest on a transparent assertion or consequence, however as an alternative has its essential character arguably doom the world after which lie about it. When I first reached that ending 10 years in the past, it left me pacing anxiously forwards and backwards, determined for somebody to speak to about its startling ambiguities and contradictions, and I used to be hardly the one one. To today, it stays maybe probably the most provocative, talked-about, hotly debated ending in sport historical past.
It ought to go with out saying, however this piece will dive into some spoilery territory, protecting the conclusion of the unique sport and the premise of its sequel.
The Last of Us first arrived on the PlayStation 3 in 2013 as a gritty trial of perseverance in a doomed world, albeit one the place maybe there’s a sliver of hope on the horizon: Maybe Ellie’s immunity can be utilized to create a treatment for a world-ending plague. The sport was notable for a lot of issues: the traumatic deaths of assorted characters; a sluggish grind of gameplay centered on stealth, determined crafting, and brutal violence; however maybe most of all for its strikingly ambiguous and difficult ending. Rather than doing the plain and wrapping every part up with a neat bow, the conclusion throws the participant headfirst right into a liminal area. The world isn’t restored, but the heroes reside; however at what value? Told that Ellie shall be killed in pursuit of the doable vaccine, Joel intervenes, stopping the surgical procedure and killing everybody who stands in his approach, leaving the world to persist in its state of break. He then lies to her about what he did with an unconvincing story. Ellie, clearly in a spot of uncertainty about what she’s listening to, presses him to guarantee her that every part he simply stated is true. “I swear,” Joel lies. Roll credit.
It’s not a clear decision. In the final 10 years, the selection to finish the sport with one character mendacity to a different has left many to reach at cynical conclusions about Joel as a personality or the sport’s narrative solely, with some critics feeling that The Last of Us is finally a vacuous show of gore or a story with out a lot of redeeming worth to say.
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A standard story unconventionally advised
For all that The Last of Us did in another way, nonetheless, observations on the time highlighted simply how a lot the sport shared in frequent with others. Reviewing the sport for Polygon on the time, Philip Kollar famous that it was constructed on “the same post-apocalyptic scenario as dozens of other games.” Kollar provides, nonetheless, that “its approach is starkly its own.” That’s probably why the conclusion hits so laborious. So a lot feels much like what we all know from different video games, and even works in different mediums. But TLoU took a unique method, one intimately centered on its central relationship, with a reasonably standard, linear narrative construction which may’ve given the impression that it will additionally resolve itself in a standard approach.
Narrative alternative in 2013 was one thing many got here to worth in video video games, however as Adam Sessler famous in his evaluate of the sport, TLoU has a selected story to inform, with out your enter save for a couple of moments of alternative over simply how brutal you might be within the sport’s ending. An absence of alternative was one thing Sessler characterised, on the time, as “old-fashioned.” (Indeed, a lot dialog on the time of launch was rooted in how uncomfortable some gamers had been with Joel killing sure characters he arguably didn’t must kill, the strain between the participant eager to do one factor and the character demanding to do one thing else. Whether it is a flaw or a part of the sport’s energy is only one extra fascinating factor to think about.) And maybe that “old-fashioned” method was what led many to anticipate a extra conventional conclusion. There’s lots that’s standard and old school in TLoU, however its method betrays a dependable belief you’ll ordinarily place in such a rigidly constructed narrative.
That “approach” Kollar highlighted is felt, maybe, most saliently on the sport’s conclusion, which is particularly the place it principally clearly pulls away from “the same post-apocalyptic scenario” as different video games. Examples of extra standard endings on this style would come with these in video games like Gears of War 3 or the Resistance sequence of shooters on PlayStation 3, each of which finish with close to deus-ex-machina options to the world’s issues.
In different video games with comparable excessive stakes and fallen world eventualities, there may be usually some reward of sci-fi mumbo jumbo utilized, usually proper on the finish, to set every part proper; and if not, like within the more moderen zombie drama Days Gone, there’s nearly zero ambiguity as to who did the correct factor. iIf the nice guys don’t get their approach, it’s an unlucky act of god, however you continue to have the nice man protagonist to nonetheless place your belief in.
The Last of Us wasn’t having any of that. And it additionally wasn’t involved with “several plot twists and the bending of all the laws of physics,” as Paul Tassi famous for Forbes compared to the conclusion of 2013’s BioShock Infinite. Tassi continues, “the ending of The Last of Us isn’t quite so mind-boggling.” It’s a tragic ending to a tragic sport, one which takes place at a decidedly human scale, not a grand cosmic one.
The ending of The Last of Us didn’t want to dazzle you with its spectacular world-building or wow you with intelligent fantasy epidemiology. You don’t get the “lore dive” that many video games try to do, and also you don’t get a transparent indication that the correct issues had been performed. Rather, the sport says the alternative. The world isn’t saved, and the nice guys had been stopped not by the antagonist, however by you, the “protagonist.”
As Tassi notes, that’s not essentially a shock revelation on the finish. It’s not a sudden plot twist. But, quite, it’s the tip level of a sport that’s slowly telling you that you just’re probably on the mistaken aspect, and that’s considerably surprising, even for video games that do flip the script on you on the finish by revealing the protagonist’s wishes to be suspect. To its miserable finish, TLoU’s grind challenges you to consider who you’ve been the entire time. “Just because you’re playing as someone in a game,” Tassi writes, “that doesn’t make you the good guy. In fact, the clues are scattered all over [The Last of Us] that you’re really not a good guy at all.”
Returning to Kollar’s evaluation of the sport, the sentiment that you just’re the unhealthy man all alongside was and nonetheless is a well-liked one; and the ending doesn’t change that, it simply reinforces it. “By the end,” Kollar writes, “I was pausing because I felt like a bad person doing bad things. It’s a seemingly intentional choice, but the game struggles to justify it with the same ease that Joel justifies murder […] I couldn’t find any deeper meaning in the horrible events in The Last of Us.”
But the place others have since criticized Joel, and even the sport, for the brutality on show, others have taken totally different stances. For Kotaku, author Tina Amini expressed as a lot in relation to placing your self within the footwear of an individual who stands to lose the closest factor you need to household in a world that’s already taken it from you:
“Had Ellie been my daughter, or someone who had grown to become my daughter figure, I would never sacrifice her life even to save the lives of millions of others. Sorry, guys. Nothing comes in the way of family.”
Many could be fast to treat that as egocentric. But as Amini mentioned, there are some important particulars within the conclusion that shouldn’t simply be swept apart as a result of Joel maybe acted too swiftly and abruptly. Amini writes:
Let’s recap. The Fireflies hit Joel over the top whereas he makes an attempt to save lots of Ellie’s life. Then, he wakes up in a hospital and is advised that no, you’ll be able to’t see Ellie and sorry, she’s going to die whether or not you want that or not. No discussions. No questions. Just shut up and take it. After you went above and past the deal you made with Marlene, after you virtually get your self killed spending a 12 months monitoring these bastards down, and after they nonetheless don’t provide the provide of weapons promised in trade for Ellie’s supply, the least they might have performed was provide the courtesy of a dialog. With Ellie current within the room, ready to make her personal resolution. That looks like the honest factor to do. But it’s nowhere close to what occurred.
With a scarcity of clear certainty as to what might occur with Ellie’s surgical procedure, and a speedy dissolution of conventional methods of wrapping up a story, like Amini, I too regarded on the finish of TLoU and requested, “what if this were my daughter?” Or in my case, “what if this were me?”
The sentiment of “no discussions. No questions. Just shut up and take it,” jogs my memory of my very own expertise having been hospitalized below a misdiagnosis at roughly the identical age that Ellie was within the first sport. Forcibly given medicine by individuals who claimed they knew what they had been doing by swiftly locking me up in a sequence of white halls and conserving me sedated, with out dialog or concern for my consent to such a factor, I bear in mind the fear of sitting with the thought that possibly I’d by no means see residence once more. And in contrast to Joel, although I wouldn’t have needed them to bloodbath a hospital of individuals (we’re additionally not residing in a zombie apocalypse), these near me selected to only let it occur. It would take every week earlier than the medical doctors realized “whoops, you don’t have what we thought you had, sorry for the childhood trauma, but good on you all for listening to the experts.”
The morally ambiguous nature of The Last of Us’ ending meant that when Marlene tried to guarantee Joel that every part can be nice, I used to be free to not purchase it—as a result of I bear in mind what it’s like when individuals in control of your autonomy and life take daring, restrictive actions and others simply stand by and settle for it. Joel’s aggression, in some ways, was my very own catharsis for a way I used to be wronged in a hospital some 20-plus years in the past.
A tricky act to observe
But even for individuals who weren’t as cynical or pessimistic about TLoU’s ending or better narrative, the influence of the ambiguous ending was so harrowing and had defied a lot of what many had anticipated, that some felt it didn’t warrant a return journey by means of a sequel. Those who discovered displeasure in TLoU’s story might stop listening to it, however even for individuals who did take pleasure in the place the sport went, there was a transparent need for it to not go wherever else. Lightning hardly ever strikes twice; and a sequel can be too standard. Speaking to that very sentiment in 2013, former Kotaku author Kirk Hamilton stated:
I don’t really feel like I must return to this explicit post-apocalyptic world. I don’t want to listen to any extra tales from it. I don’t must see what Joel and Ellie rise up to now that they’re secure at Joel’s brother’s wilderness retreat. I actually don’t must combat off one other clicker, or make my approach via one other hunter camp.
Expressing a scarcity of need for a sequel to TLoU wasn’t nearly this singular sport, but additionally stems from a paranoia over media, notably video video games, to franchise issues to loss of life. What even would a sequel do? Would it simply be vignettes of fan service? I assume we’ll see Ellie study to play guitar? Maybe Joel will lastly get his espresso? Or wouldn’t it simply be extra of an industrial need to mine a well-liked property below the guise of “more stories,” efforts which generally diminish what magic stays of the preliminary sport that caught everybody’s consideration?
Those who liked the ending and the sport actually wouldn’t need that; this world deserved higher. And those that had been turned off by it positively wouldn’t need that; they’d had sufficient of this place. To perpetuate this story felt like it will minimize towards what made it so distinctive, as Hamilton wrote in 2013, there’s “too much resolution in video games these days, and [we] could do with a bit less surety.”
But The Last of Us marched on with an expanded story DLC that explores the loss of life of Ellie’s childhood buddy, after which a sequel with much more loss of life. Part II meditates solely on Joel’s actions, with justice (or baseless revenge, relying in your perspective) served for his reckless damnation of the world by the daughter of a person he killed years in the past.
Part II is an extremely lengthy sport. In reality, given that you just play half the sport as a completely new character, it’s virtually two video games in a single. Conversation about it upon launch was additionally muddied by infantile, aggressive reactions and harassment campaigns from these upset by the presence of queer individuals, trans individuals, and girls whose our bodies had been deemed by some insufficiently female and fascinating; it’s a firestorm that also burns to today. Outside of conversations in regards to the sport with different critics, I usually really feel like I nonetheless must wade via such nonsense.
Discussing whether or not or not TLoU Part II makes probably the most of its alternative as a sequel to do one thing worthwhile with the anomaly of the unique’s ending would require a protracted dialog a few very lengthy sport. But I believe the truth that the sequel makes use of Joel’s actions to set the stage for an additional exploration of how and when violence perpetuates itself makes the case for it as a worthy observe up—even when I, very like others, would’ve been very happy with a one-and-done journey into this world.
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