The Last of Us

by BONZO, HSM team writer

The Last of Us is the latest PlayStation 3 exclusive project from Naughty Dog studios. If you have yet to see any of the footage, be it the first aired teaser or the new Truck Ambush cinematic for this Naughty Dog gem which is becoming more and more elevated in anticipation, then please do yourself a favor and check them out here! There are few games that really garner any level of anticipation without being an already established franchise with a hardcore fanbase. This is one that has a developer reputation and an amazing concept for a story behind it propelling it to a height of popularity and anticipation that rivals the expectation for the next installment in an Assassins Creed, or Grand Theft Auto sequel.

The story, what we know so far, is following what you’d believe to be a father and daughter team, surviving in a post societal collapse. As mentioned in a previous article review on I Am Alive, this is a genre that has recently been used almost as often as the Zombie genre. With such a saturation of the theme, it can either be really well done, or really badly done. What we have seen so far has been incredibly impressive and visually stunning, and with the developer of the popular Uncharted series behind it, I fail to see how it could possibly go awry. One of the key elements of modern gaming, and even classic gaming, that has led to such fandom is the same element that can make or break a game, which is the story.

You can polish the visuals to with in a decimal point of perfection, but without a good story to keep the player interested it quickly loses it sheen. One of the several flaws I found in Dead Island, for instance, were the side quests. Aside from the main plot story which was decent at best, the side quests were a real let down. They were downright annoying. What failed miserably was any real sense of empathy for the survivors. It was hard to care about them, whether they survived or not. I blame that completely on the writing.

It was frankly irritating to be every survivor’s errand boy, when you had to chase down liquor or a lost necklace, or a teddy bear. I am not kidding; those were actual fetch quests, just to earn a few hundred XP. If it weren’t for the mere blood thirsty satisfaction of beating down a zombie to death and an expansive open world, the game would have had no redeeming factors. It did bring something new to the genre, and exploring an open world filled with zombies did make it worth playing.

From the first actual game footage teaser of The Last of Us, we see a pseudo father and daughter team and so many questions pop up out of that element alone. Will you play both characters? Will it be a buddy system type of play? Why is it only the two of them? Will Ellie be weak and a burden to Joel or will she be able to hold her own?

The survival horror game AMY brought us an interesting element similar to the one in Ico, where you used the little girl Amy to crawl through spaces to push buttons that opened up new areas. It added further intrigue and elevated the urgency of the situation, when you placed the child in danger, while you were separated. What we know so far is that Ellie won’t be a playable character, but she will have a very sophisticated artificial intelligence, ensuring that the game will not be one long running escort mission. Her character design even has a scar on her eyebrow which hints that she has seen her share of action.

In the initial teaser, alone she shows up as Joel struggles with another survivor fighting over resources, and before entering the room she pulls out a switchblade ready to jump in and help. When they are attacked by mutants that show up after the first brawl, she jumps in and helps Joel fight him off.

Zombie like mutants

So what happened? This is a world decimated from a pandemic that killed millions of people. The story is intriguing enough already and the more you learn, little by little, from what is leaked, it makes it even more captivating. For one thing, Joel, the main character, isn’t really Ellie’s father. Before you go up in arms about spoilers, this is not some great revelation, it will be a common knowledge element of the game. They however develop a surrogate relationship between each other.

It has been a couple of decades since the plague struck, so Ellie has never seen the old world before the disaster. She is an orphan that Joel rescued from the boarding house she was living in, after he promised a dying friend that he would get her our of the quarantine zone, where anyone showing signs of the infection is killed. This results in military involvement, which pursues the two survivors outside of the quarantine zone. Along the way, they also have to face other hostile survivors and of course the infected of the pandemic that started it all.

The disease seems to be some sort of mutagen that changes people and animals into aggressive deranged mutants. The survivors of the quarantine zone live a very oppressive existence in this militarized zone, and Joel is a man who exists with progressively blurring moral lines. These elements of the story pose further questions. Why would he need to rescue Ellie from the boarding house? Then afterwards, why would the military be so interested in pursuing them through the infected zone? How did it all start? Was it a biochemical experiment gone wrong? Or was it a natural occurrence? Is Ellie infected? Is she immune? Is she a carrier?

I am hooked and I want to know what else will happen in the story. Every time there is a new leak on the story or a bread crumb tossed to the public by Naughty Dog, I am all over it. I want this game NOW, I want to be playing it, I want to be bored with it and over it already!

She doesn't just sit back or hide!

So how could this game possibly go wrong? The game is played in the third person, with similar mechanics to the Uncharted games, which could turn off some hardcore first person shooter fans. If this becomes a linear guided game, where you follow a specific path, it would lose a lot of charm. Compare the game play of the “bread crumbed” style of Dragon Age and the “go anywhere and explore” style of Skyrim. Two completely different experiences that just makes them two completely different games.

It would certainly benefit The Last of Us to be a sandbox open world. Although as rich as the environments are, it could pose a serious technical challenge. It is already a disappointment that you will not be able to play as Ellie. I think that being able to do so would certainly have appealed to a lot of female gamers. The fact that she is not weak and is not just an escort is a huge benefit, which adds an interesting element to the game.

The plot and the story so far are already intriguing, and it could go in so many directions that my head just spins trying to guess just how it could progress. I already have several theories as to why Ellie is so important. One is DLCs, which have become inevitable these days. Will this game have any and how will they enhance the experience? Will they be just extra missions, a deeper look into the story of the characters, or perhaps a solo mission with Ellie? Will they include a back story that takes place in the military run quarantine zone? Will they have a multi-player option?

It seems that in modern games, it is almost mandatory to have multi-player, and it would seem that it would be really difficult to tie in the main story line with the experience of a multi-player function. So if there is multi-player, it will be merely an element that is  set in this universe, but won’t necessarily tie into the main story line. If this is done, how will they adapt it to bring something new to the table, rather than just providing a shoot ‘em up standard with the basic features that all muti-players have now? An online feature has been mentioned, but no specific details have been solidified. Hardcore gamers have become very spoiled by the aspects of social competitive gaming, that it poses the question are we still capable of enjoying a single player with just a good story?

Nature will take the world back!

The aesthetic beauty of this game is that unlike most of the post apocalyptic games, this game is green! It’s lush, and beautiful, and they have obviously done their research or watched every episode of History Channel’s Life After People. Most games that I have played of this genre, the producers of these games have made the world gray and drab, and have focused on the destruction. Where as with this one, the focus is on environments with life that spawns out of the collapse of everything we have built to destroy it. Nature will take back the world. Our industrial infrastructure is to a great degree geared towards holding nature back. Once that collapses, nature will take over. It is a beautiful subtext of the game that out of the destruction of the old world, this new one will be rebuilt. In the meantime, in the journey of these two survivors, you follow their story as they attempt to survive in an increasingly hostile world. The story of that journey is intriguing and engrossing, and — in the true meaning of the word — epic!

 

May 28th, 2012 by | 1 comment
BONZO is an editor and artist for HomeStation Magazine.

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One Response to “The Last of Us”

  1. Burbie52 says:

    This game sounds interesting. I have seen the trailer for it and may try a demo if they offer one. I hope it is open world like you said as well, but somehow I don’t think it will be. Many of these types of games are linear.
    Myself, I greatly enjoy single player games, like Skyrim and the one I just finished, Mass Effect 2. If there is online that is cool too, but I was raised in a single play environment, so it isn’t important to me. I have played very few games online with friends, notably RDR, and it has always been totally different from the main story, so I doubt this one would be any different.
    Nice preview Bonzo.

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