The Last of Us | A Masterclass in Storytelling

i have never played the last of us the 2013 game written by neil druckmann i actually have very little idea about what it's even about or the gameplay i know it's got zombies a daddy and a girl who daddy protects somehow i've avoided spoilers for night on a decade so this video will be a day by day diary analyzing my thoughts on its storytelling as i play it with no knowledge of what is to come or what others have said i've stayed well away from that i often take a broader perspective looking back at a work from the end but understanding how the story is presented without that wider knowledge is a different way of studying writing i am probably actually scratch that definitely going to make some mistakes or assumptions that turn out to be wrong as we do this but it'll help us understand how coherently the message or story is communicated in this more grounded and accessible level of analysis in terms of what is set up throughout playing it and what is paid off by its end let's see what the last of us communicates thematically narratively and symbolically as i play with that said spoilers let's go only patreon support allows me to do more niche content especially my writing and word building videos so a massive thank you to those who support me there come join us on the discord it's a great community links down in the doobly-doo [Music] day one the beginning [Music] today i played up till ali and joel reached the capitol building and escaped the military with tess unfortunately dying it opened with what i soon found was a prologue set 20 years earlier during the initial outbreak and i want to talk about prologue justification so prologues are really hard to justify because they ask the viewer player or reader to spend their first moments in your story watching events that take place in a wildly disconnected setting or time often with characters who we don't even see again but the last of us did make the right decision here now at first i thought it was simply to establish the setting a post-apocalyptic world after an outbreak but it became apparent that the prologue was to set up the emotional throughline of the story joel lost his daughter the prologue of the last of us means the player already understands the emotional weight behind joel being asked to care for another young freckled girl it is crucial to understanding the cynical survivalist state that joel is in at the start and just what ali represents to him his past failure and trauma and as far as i can tell so far he's only just starting to see this as another chance at fatherhood from what i can tell there would be little benefit to withholding joel's traumatic past from the player instead it gives almost every line of dialogue and every interaction he has a subtextual meaning that would otherwise be lost on the player what do you know about us about me i know that you are smarter than this really guess what we're shitty people joel it's been that way for a long time no we are survivors this is our channel it is over tess it's a context that viscerally deepens our experience of the main story that follows and is most effectively communicated by having us play through it in real time rather than just being told or shown through a cutscene later on drachmann did choose to write it primarily from his daughter's perspective sarah and i think this wants to make you feel more vulnerable in this dark and volatile world and it works you wake up at night and it's things are shaking there's alarming news reports going on there was a really nice moment where an explosion happens in the distance and the game forces you to step back the line between character and cutscenes and character and gameplay is something that the last of us seems to excel at there is no feeling of any dissonance between what you do as player and what they do as character in the cutscene but what's really interesting is that having the perspective child die makes that transition to playing as joel easier because we impose our father figure feelings on him and the player is put in the same emotional position as joel watching a kid die and quite graphically i might add it's enough to move anyone and it means that joel isn't a blank slate to us when we start really playing as him 20 years later on i have noticed that the writers are immediately starting to draw symbolic connections between ellie and sarah to perhaps signal the growth of joel and ellie's relationship later on sarah gives joel a new watch right at the start of the game but it breaks through a bullet when she dies from the same gun that kills her ellie then later spots that broken watch symbolically the watch represents a moment always frozen in time that sticks with joel sarah's death joel then later mistakes ellie's age 412 the age that sarah was when she died so there are kind of these parallels between them that aren't super subtle but you know they're still cool to be in there i've often been told that ellie is a great example of a video game companion and i can see why in just the start of the game on a narrative level she's incredibly likable she's human the dialogue with her is fantastic in fact the dialogue across all of the game is really fantastic i remember actually smiling when i heard her just beginning to hum a song while we were walking around there wasn't any real point to it but it was so characteristic of her she's empathetic and i want to highlight this moment in the rain that was just so damn sweet but what's really interesting is that all of the points of conflict or tension between the player and le so far at least are instigated by joel's pessimism or irritability not her in dragon another game the companion character is often the one who causes tension between the player and them this makes them feel more like an obstacle or somewhat of an annoyance than an asset ally just doesn't have that problem on a gameplay level she calls out when enemies are behind you she doesn't move too slowly which escort mission characters often frustratingly are and she's not often placed in the damsel in distressed position like a ball and chain around your ankle she is never a burden but rather an asset all of this collectively makes it difficult to dislike her even coming to rely on her and care about her from early on in both a narrative and gameplay context i can also tell that they're framing ally as a character foil for joel there's a moment where they just get out of a pretty heated situation and ellie says you guys are pretty good at this stuff it's called luck and it is gonna run out a character foil is when two characters are set opposite one another in a story and they act to highlight the strengths and flaws of their opposite character ali is an optimist who has largely not lived the survivalist life like joel who seems to have given up hope at the start of the story it's only the beginning but this may signal growth for joel as he becomes more hopeful like ally more believing in the good will of others or that ellie may become more jaded as she sees the horrors of the world that joel has i don't know where they'll take it just yet but i assume they'll build on this dynamic that has so far been set up really really well and that was my day one [Music] day two the journey today i played from the capitol building through to ellie getting her first gun which also means i've entered the second act the first 18s were the characters entering a new environment and finding a new goal here joel is now trying to escort ali himself after tess dies and the fireflies are found dead as i thought they do build on that foil dynamic that they set up earlier in the story really beginning with the ambush ali pushes for them to help the injured man but joel immediately recognizes that this is a trap holy [ __ ] are we gonna help him put your seatbelt on ellie what about the guy he ain't even hurt this once again highlights joel's grim experience and ellie's innocence and naivety but the ambush culminates in her shooting someone marking the decline of that innocence and naivety ellie killing someone to save joel is part of her entering his violent and more grim world and in a sense maturing and becoming a bit more independent but joel is changing too he begins to exhibit more fatherly tendencies a return to his more optimistic and hopeful mindset that he seemingly lost after the death of his daughter when they go to find bill he starts off by saying i don't even know here's how this thing's going to play out you do what i say when i say it now this comes across at the start as him being annoyed with her she's a kid he doesn't want her to screw it all up but as they go through the ordeal with bill including fighting off hordes of zombies he repeatedly steps in to defend ali from bill subtextually his concern becomes more with protecting her than before it's a subtle shift but those fatherly tendencies come through with a change in motivation all of this culminates in him actually encouraging her instead of seeing her just as a burden you're doing a good job i figured you should know that something he didn't do and probably wouldn't have thought of doing before the evolution feels really organic because it's built on that foil relationship highlighting their age strengths and weaknesses they are taking character traits from one another in a way i've also noticed that the designers use a bit of coded imagery which is using commonly recognizable images or descriptions or archetypes that people will already know and have feelings about allowing the writer to harness those feelings that they naturally project the simplest one is watching joel and ellie driving along ali reading a stolen comic and kind of looking at some porn in the back seat and joel listening to old dad music everything about this image speaks of a father-daughter dynamic especially as he listens to her complain about not being able to finish a book and because joel tells her to not look at porn like a dad our memories of long road trips mean we see ourselves in ally and our parents and joel or perhaps we see ourselves in joel all of this quite successfully cultivates empathy for the characters and means that we more easily believe the dynamic that they are developing and one really amazing detail that i encountered today that i need to talk about is how much i love ali's hums and whistles at random points she will just go to do or something there's no reason for it there's no discussion of it for some reason this endeared me to her character almost more than anything else in this story so far it's such a simple thing but it adds so much to let the characters be characters outside of cutscenes it's like they let these open spaces be used to tell another dimension of the story even if there's less gameplay there's a real sense that even during gameplay they move and act like who they are even if i am controlling joel this reinforces that parity between narrative and gameplay ally's whistling and humming makes you feel like oh the girl is precious we must protect at all costs which is exactly what the writers want you to feel i don't know quite how they did it but i actually didn't run a huge amount with the joel it kind of felt like forcing an old man to do slave labor his run isn't that fast and it feels laborious especially compared to other video game counterparts he has this haggard walk when he goes down the stairs and i continually found myself kind of looking back and around to see where ellie is what she's looking at what she's doing there's this interaction between the two characters that you kind of miss if you don't engage with it she's often just looking at plants or looking at the fireflies collectively they somehow put me in the position where i walked a lot gazing at the surroundings moving more carefully i wasn't just moving from objective to objective but i was encouraged to move in a way that fit with the story it really felt like all of this was in line with joel's character once again narrative and gameplay parody i think in a way and i'm a little bit less certain about this they're developing the gun as a multi-dimensional symbol in the story first as a symbol of the trust in their relationship at first he doesn't allow one as much as he also doesn't trust her with the secrets about his life you don't bring up tess ever the point being that joel is reluctant to let her make her own decisions or to take risk on herself it's something she has to forcibly push on him after this we also begin to see snippets of his life how did you know no what about the ambush i've been on both sides once again the gameplay really complements the growth of that relationship as she gives you medic packs shoots at enemies and gets them off your back when you're pinned you really do learn to rely on her also a really interesting gameplay choice is that for all of the obstacles that i've encountered so far in the game almost none of them require you finding a way to get ali alone through an obstacle so a lot of escort games get pretty damn tedious because you are constantly having to find ways to get the person that you are taking through obstacles which you could very simply pass on your own it is frustrating but ellie seems to help you more than you help her directly things like her jumping the fence crawling through a cat flap or putting several letters down for you you do have to move barges because ellie can't swim while you can but this isn't that common so far narratively this means she doesn't feel like a burden but an asset yet again obviously this is what the writers want you to feel something that you need and that was my day too [Music] day three the fall today i met henry and sam and played all the way up to ellie and joel heading to the university in the far-off districts of colorado so a lot happened one thing i've been keeping mental tabs of is the narrative's three-act structure the first state ends with tests dying the second act is the longest and i'm pretty sure that it ended with sam's death so theoretically i am now starting the third act and i don't have a huge amount of the game left the first thing i want to discuss with this whole part of the game is the environmental storytelling particularly the underground community that was wiped out some time ago there was a real and solemn feel that people lived here before being infected and the tragedy that befell them little details like having rules for how long you can shower or finding a note that said they were hopeful because they found someone that wanted to trade rather than kill them though little is said about what this place is joel and ellie barely remark on it you can deduce so much of it just by looking by playing by walking through there wasn't any heavy-handed exposition but so much character and emotion came through anyway in a way it wasn't just a glimpse into the setting but a kind of glimpse into joel's world the character who came from civilization to ruin and struggles with hope and others like these other people seem to have having played a fair portion of the game now i want to talk about this and connect it to pacing through environmental storytelling bottom line it's good the sense of place in this world is really well realized you always see your destination in the distance getting slowly closer like the capitol building the bridge the radio tower but a detail that i appreciated was how there aren't enemies everywhere like there are in some games especially zombie games in the last of us these zombies tend to be in small clusters with large areas almost entirely abandoned leaving you with the feeling of a world abandoned not overrun which facilitates the liberty of those lighter more beautiful moments the zombies aren't placed randomly but with purpose there's often a story told in the environment around them about why they are there the college students who held out for nine months the couple and the sewers dreaming of a better life this means that when the narrative is going through moments of high tension or low tension the game designers can consistently reflect that in high tension or low tension environments for example it's tense when ali and joel are separated in the sewers so it ramps up with tons of runners and clickers and this overrun infected community then afterwards when being reunited we get a long period of just walking through an abandoned town finding supplies and talking the result is pacing parity between narrative and gameplay tension the feeling of being able to breathe after getting out of the sewer was real what do i have to say about henry and sam well they're obviously mirror images in a way they both allowed joel and ellie to develop relationships apart from one another meaning we do get to see a different side to each of them ally as a more playful kid with sam a part of her that has been largely repressed while with joel allows us to get a glimpse into what ellie is missing out on in this horrible world but more importantly i think the writers are using it to reveal joel's failings there's a moment where henry the adult doesn't let sam take a toy from an abandoned store see because of joel and henry's survivalist mentalities neither sam nor ellie can truly be children in a sense i think this forces joel to reconsider his relationship with ellie that he should be trying to let her grow up that a purely survivalist mentality is taking something from her but of course sam dies and henry has to kill him i'm pretty sure that having a scene like this is basically a prerequisite for getting approved by the zombie story society or something but they did use a technique to make this moment more effective that i want to talk about it was immediately preceded by a really sweet moment between ellie and him where she gave him the toy he wanted symbolically only other children can let other children grow up authentically this juxtaposition of joy and horror makes the horror more effective because it's not lost in the swamp of depressing that is much of the rest of the game it's why before a character dies you'll often see them have one last beautiful moment with another character it makes the sudden fall so much more painful oh also joel left the sniper rifle behind for some reason which frustrated me because it was so damn good why joel why that aside the story hits i think its darkest hour at the end of the second act when we arrived at joel's brother's camp in hopes of learning where the fireflies are the group that we need to take ellie to in my reading of the last of us there are two parts to the darkest hour firstly ali says that she wants to talk about sam's death but joel firmly tells her i've got to leave that stupid robot on his grave what should i do with it um what i want to talk about it no why not how many times do we need to go over this things happen and we move on it's just that's enough in this scene we have two parallel journeys joel's struggled to forgive himself for the death of his daughter and ellie struggled to not give in to the grim cynical and move on attitude that joel has they are parallel because the conflict between these two characters comes from these struggles and at the moment in the darkest hour joel's world view is winning this culminates in the second part joel rejecting the photo of sarah and telling ellie somewhat angrily i am not your daddy not her you know what maria told me about sarah ellie [Music] you are treading on some mighty thin eyes here i'm sorry about your daughter joel but i have lost people too you have no idea what loss is everyone i have cared for has either died or left me everyone [ __ ] except for you so don't tell me that i would be safer with someone else because the truth is i would just be more scared [Music] you're right you're not my daughter and i sure as hell ain't your dad this moment is where our characters are at their lowest and their darkest especially joel he says both of these things because he cannot see past what came weyland calls the lie the character believes he is harboring some deeply held misconception about either himself the world or probably both joel believes that he is responsible for his daughter sarah's death 20 years ago and he cannot forgive himself for it because of this joel insists that he just wants to move on instead of talking about the loss and he cannot let himself see ally as a daughter figure again as the darkest hour ends the third act begins with joel stepping back from these comments by taking ellie to the fireflies himself now there's a bit of nuance to this moment that i really appreciated joel as evidenced by the rest of the game is not a talker he doesn't apologize it seems and is more concerned with action rather than words so he doesn't apologize or explicitly take back what he said instead he just decides to take a different path action before words haley get off your horse give it on back to tommy i'm gonna hang on to this fella that's all right well don't make me repeat myself what are you doing your wife kind of scares me i don't want her coming after me sorry for stealing your horse come back to town let's discuss it at least my mind's all made up the fact that ali immediately reads what this means is a lovely testament to the subtext of their relationship the writers didn't feel the need to have them hash it out verbally at least not yet when their characters wouldn't just for the sake of audience understanding which is what some stories do they go alright we've got characters but the audience needs to get it really clearly otherwise they'll miss it and they create these big moments that just kind of feel a bit over the top and obtuse i expect the final act to culminate in joel accepting he isn't responsible for sarah's death and allowing himself to feel again with ellie as a surrogate daughter and that him talking about losing sarah will help ali talk about losing sam and they'll both be more at peace because of it and that was day three day four the end well that didn't go as i thought at all i played through right to the end of the game today and it was amazing it was beautiful and emotional and built up incredibly well and though there were some really beautiful and skillful storytelling decisions there were also some that i kind of doubted but before we get into what those amazing things were let's talk about david and his lot at first i really did believe that david had good intentions when confronting ellie trading food for penicillin the fact that she refused to believe him to believe that others were capable of being good was more an indication of where she was in her character arc and of how joel's somewhat pessimistic or survivalist outlook was changing her in this case for the worse because their relationship dynamic isn't just ellie reawakening feeling and hoping him but her resisting becoming like he is at the start just like joel was ellie is quick to attack does not trust she shoots first and asks questions later fundamentally the last of us like every good zombie story is not a story about zombies but about us losing our humanity this is why the antagonists of the inciting incident the end of the first act second act and third act are all humans not zombies see this moment parallels an earlier scene with henry and sam where joel was the instigator of the violence and nearly killed the guy first it's that sort of lack of trust and humanity that ali initially challenges as a character but here and for a significant period afterwards we see how ellie's lack of trust damages the relationship she could have with a potential ally in this broken world i thought at the time that like henry and sam challenged joel's inhumanity ali now more independent would be faced with a similar crucible that she would need to emerge from the story goes out of its way to show that david has plenty of goodwill even after she killed dozens of his friends she calls him a cannibal an absurd claim see the last of us is just as much about the humanity that we become blind to as much as it is about the humanity we lose but then she's proved right david is evil with sexual undertones and is a cannibal of all things suddenly you don't have to feel bad about killing them and neither does ellie thematically this says that joel's mentality of distrust is the right way to think and ellie's belief in the humanity of others is wrong while part of ellie's arc is distinctly losing her naivety and maturing and seeing the grim realities of the world like joel has i'm not sure this was the best way to communicate that is there a place for good will in the world anymore or are all good people dead people instead of questioning the outlook like they did for joel they instead reinforce allies because it would have been a good way to explore how joel's outlook has damaged ellie an indictment of how blind we can become to the humanity of others but it's really just an indictment of the humanity we can lose a point i think that has already been made it just leaves the idea of choosing humanity somewhat up in the ear when it could have been effective to have ellie's trauma come from her finding out that she killed innocent people and also revealed to joel a flaw in his world view this said just because the story went in a direction that i did not expect does not make it bad the writers may not have intended such a pointed thematic conclusion and it does other things really well for example it shows growth in her shrewdness when contrasting the earlier scene with the ambush there she assumed the best and it would have gotten her killed but here she assumed the worst and it saved her life however i want to talk about how throughout most of the section with the cannibals i got to play from ellie's perspective this was a fantastic decision it was a really nice pairing again between gameplay and narrative ellie's arc is one of independence and maturing especially after joel is incapacitated and she is forced to take the lead and protect him her growing agency in the story is reflected in your player agency as you shift into her shoes as the driver of the narrative and gameplay there are also more surface label changes for example from what i could tell ellie now runs ahead of you instead of behind you like she did earlier in the game she is a more active agent in her own story which really does set up part two where you play primarily from her perspective one of the best parts of the game in terms of storytelling also follow the cannibal section ellie is traumatized you can see the absolute horror as she butchers david as the place burns down and the way that they show this is really effective we are so used to ali responding immediately when we call by now listening attentively relying on her being a team but she's despondent distracted she just seems overall a lot less there everything all right yeah i'm fine yeah you just kind of seem extra quiet today oh sorry no it's not it's fine you have to literally call her multiple times before she responds now you the player know what is going through her mind and you want to reach out to her so badly to talk about this but the option is never given to you gameplay-wise but i don't think that this decision was made to highlight ellie's trauma instead i think it was done to highlight joel's reluctance to confront trauma his things happen and we move on attitude how clearly it isn't working for ally resurfaces how it has not worked for joel gameplay narrative parody but joel really does grow in this final section of the game ali returns the photograph of sarah that joel rejected initially and he says no matter how hard you try i guess you can't escape your past this is the first time that joel really openly acknowledges that he hasn't or can't just move on as he says when he initially turned the photo down he was lying to himself that he didn't want it because wanting it would be feeling it here the beautiful thing is that ali returns the memory to him in both a metaphorical and a literal sense in her symbolic place as a surrogate daughter ally has shown him that it's okay and safe to feel the ending is incredibly powerful and compelling on an emotional level joel chooses to save ellie from the fireflies who it turns out are willing to kill her to find a vaccine and even calls her baby girl we get the obvious literary symmetry between the beginning and the end a trope that i need to be clear i have a weakness for where joel carries ellie out the same way that he does sarah at the start emotionally joel is 100 at that point of feeling again but his arc is not complete and neither is ellie's this was my one kind of big qualm perhaps i had with the ending the story at least in my experience was very much leading to the point where joel would openly discuss the trauma of losing his daughter sarah as he sees the damage the move on mentality is having on ally who lost sam and we learn lost her best friend before the story begins ally repeatedly says that she wants to talk about these losses but joel won't engage the natural conclusion to the story as ali influences joel is for them to candidly and honestly talk about it but they don't really do that they have a brief moment at the end where ali forces conversation about her best friend and joel responds that she can't blame herself and he acknowledges that survivor's guilt is hell but they don't linger on it joel still pushes past the conversation when him instigating the conversation is really what is needed to show real growth the result is that joel never really processes this trauma and ali isn't allowed to process it either however there is a really nice detail where joel touches his watch a symbol of that moment frozen in time that is always with him when he talks about survivor's guilt and remembering sarah it just wasn't the natural place that i felt this chapter of joel and ellie's story should end it was a point of repeated conflict and tension between the two that were set up but not really resolved their arcs weren't quite finished it's not that they haven't concluded both of their character arcs there is still plenty of room for both joel and ellie to grow that's why perhaps there is a part two but this was a question specifically set up in this game and explored in this game but not answered in this game maybe it's going to be answered in part 2 but that would be odd because i know it's set 5 years later when this issue is very much relevant to this story a throughline of all of this though is that whether joel enforces that survivorship mentality or he sees her as a daughter figure joel cannot let ellie grow up he tires of her childish tendencies and optimism at the start suppressing that part of her childhood like how henry suppresses sam's desire to get a toy pointlessly but then when he sees her as her and daughter he doesn't allow her the most important part of maturing making your own choices he lies to her about what the fireflies wanted saying they had plenty of immunes and had stopped looking for a cure anyway the point being i appreciate the nuance that they gave to joel and ellie zark while it's tempting to view both of their arcs as positive arcs which are where characters change for the better there are definitive negative sides to evolving as they do joel doesn't let her make her own decisions as a result of feeling again and ellie is more pessimistic and traumatized as a result of maturing into the world and becoming more independent in line with the thematic world of the last of us there's good and bad in their character arcs it's more complex than just getting better and i really liked that so with the last of us come end what does this experiment tell us where i documented my thoughts day by day instead of just looking back at the work once i'd finished it the fact that i managed to pick up on so many thematic symbolic and narrative elements of the last of us as i played is a testament to how it was constructed for the first time experience the depth isn't obscured by context that you only get by looking back they consistently write depth into the game as you play making it an effective delivery there are some things that i got wrong which is always going to happen as you read it or play it or watch it like that i thought that the gun was going to be a recurring symbol a kind of motif it wasn't really it was just a correlative thread but overall it's incredibly cohesive and the game serves to demonstrate how we should write our meaning in our narrative to be accessible and visible to the majority of our audience who will only ever experience our piece of fiction once fundamentally i loved the last of us and i really recommend you play it it is undoubtedly one of the best narrative driven games i have seen on the platform the ps4 even if it's not the best narrative ever written i hope part two measures up this has been an overdue critique of about seven years come for me on instagram and twitter if you want to ask me questions get hints about future videos or just see what i am up to links are all down below thank you so much to patrons you are the backbone of this channel you are what i want to make content for you are what i am making content for and will continue to make content for thank you all you're awesome stay nerdy and i will see you in the future so you

Channel: Hello Future Me

Views: 189,065

Keywords: explained, theory, lore, analysis, how to, last of us, joel, ellie, last of us part 2, tlou, tlou2, abby, zombies, narrative, story, writing, technique, breakdown, part 2, gameplay, game, ps4, neil dr

Id: FovV8SCJi2g

Length: 41min 32sec (2492 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 20 2020