Holy Shit, Joel.

[rionaleonhart]

I've now finished The Last of Us! Here is a mile-long entry that spoils absolutely everything in the game.



The end of the university section, where you're essentially controlling someone who's slowly dying and you have to rely on Ellie for once, was amazing. When Ellie was helping Joel up after his impalement, I suddenly realised that I was sitting forward on the sofa and every muscle in my body was tense. A game that can provoke that sort of physical reaction from me without my even being aware of it must be a hell of a game.


Sometimes the dialogue in this game really doesn't match what's actually happening onscreen, simply because I'm so bad at this genre.

David: (hands Ellie a hunting rifle) You know how to use this?
Ellie: Yeah, 'course. (shoots once, misses, ends up meleeing all the infected instead)
David: You weren't kidding; you're a better shot with that thing than I am.

That fight against David when he's got the machete, incidentally, was the worst thing that has ever happened. I realised whilst running away from him in terror that I was actually saying 'no-no-no-no-no-no-no' aloud.

Playing as Ellie was quite difficult to adjust to. It makes sense; Ellie and Joel are completely different physically, so of course they're different to play. My strategy up to Winter had very much been 'MELEE EVERYTHING' (my number of melee kills when I completed the game was more than double my number of kills with every firearm put together), but of course Ellie is much smaller and slighter than Joel and unlikely to come out unscathed if she engages all these muscular men in hand-to-hand combat. I found myself very much relying on bottles and bricks, which I'd largely ignored before. Just as well that I had to rethink my general strategy, because otherwise I'd have been so screwed in the David fight.

Speaking of David (allusion to attempted sexual assault; highlight to read): I didn't realise there was sexual intent in his last scene until Ellie's distressed 'He tried to—' afterwards. It's perhaps a little strange that I didn't clock it, given that I'd suspected him of having rather unsavoury proclivities since the last couple of scenes in the cabin where we first met him. I suppose I was watching too intently for button prompts to realise what was actually going on. On the one hand, I sort of wish I'd noticed, because it would probably have made the end of that scene even more effective. On the other, I'm sort of glad I didn't, because nobody needs that.

Seriously, seriously freaked out when Ellie was pitched into the water towards the end, just before the Fireflies found us. I knew she was drowning and I couldn't find her! 'Ellie? Ellie? Ellie? Ellie?' I kept saying aloud, because apparently some part of me believes that I can communicate with Ellie through the television screen. And then I found her and my freaking out because I couldn't find Ellie switched to freaking out because I couldn't find the surface. 'NO. Yes? Yes? No!' I can't remember the last time a videogame made me talk to the screen so much.

I was so determined not to drown. Rationally, I knew that I'd just be able to play through the short sequence again, but I had to bring Ellie to the surface. I couldn't let her drown. I just couldn't, even if it'd be undone in the next second or so.

Getting caught when you're trying to rescue Ellie at the end is the most horrible, horrible thing; rather than just having a quick death animation, you have to watch as she's torn away from you before getting a bullet through your head.

And then the ending!

I was quite glad that the credits were very plain, without any visual distractions, because they gave me time to get my thoughts about the final scene in order. Ellie knows Joel is lying. He probably knows that she knows. But by swearing to her that he isn't lying, he's claiming responsibility for the world. Ellie already feels the weight of all the people she thinks died because of her. A lot of people will die in the future because Ellie wasn't sacrificed for the vaccine. If Joel told Ellie the truth, she'd have to either sacrifice herself or live with their blood on her hands. But Joel is determined that these people will die because of him, not because of Ellie.

And he's also selfish, of course, and doesn't want to lose her. And it isn't the right thing to do at all. But it's the only thing he can do. And all Ellie can do is try to believe in this fragile fiction. If he told her the truth, she'd give herself up for the vaccine, but what can she do in this state of uncertainty? Just cling to the tiny possibility that maybe what Joel says is true, maybe she can just go on with her life without guilt, maybe there's no real reason she woke up drugged in a hospital gown.

Sooner or later it'll break down, but for now they both just have to keep pretending.

So I suppose, to sum up a great deal of rambling, that my interpretation of the ending has both Ellie and Joel sort of complicit in the loss of humanity's hope, although I don't like the word 'complicit' because I don't really blame Ellie for anything. By creating this lie, Joel is, in a way, giving Ellie an excuse to keep living. Ellie doesn't just sit back and let him - she presses hard on the lie, tries to see if she can break it - but when Joel takes full responsibility by swearing it's true she accepts it, because you can only fight so hard when the thing you're fighting for, your own death (because I'm sure she at least suspects that that's the reason Joel dragged her away from the hospital), is fucking terrifying.

That's how I interpret it, anyway. I don't know.

I suddenly thought of Tess an hour or so after finishing the game, and that's when Joel's actions at the end hit me really hard. Tess died for the hope that Ellie represented. There were a lot of heartbreaking deaths in this game, but in light of the ending Tess's in particular becomes so, so awful. Sarah, Sam and Henry died horrible, pointless deaths. Tess died for a cause, and in the end Joel rendered her death pointless as well.

But I can understand why. There's no option that isn't horrible. There's a huge gulf between theoretical questions about morality, the greater good, giving Ellie the agency to make a free choice, and the reality of losing the one thing you care about in this ruined world. When I was fighting my way to the operating room where Ellie was, I barely gave a thought to the rest of humanity. Ellie was in danger, and I was going to save her. I was very much Joel in that moment.

Joel's fault wasn't breaking Ellie out of the hospital, of course; it was lying to her afterwards. It wasn't right for Joel to make the decision for Ellie, but it wouldn't have been right for the Fireflies to make that decision either, even if the Fireflies' decision was probably the one Ellie would have made if she'd had all the information laid out in front of her.

I did feel like the worst person in the world when I killed the unarmed surgeons, though. Christ.

(EDIT: Augh, I just read an article about the ending and you don't have to kill all the surgeons? I didn't realise that! I feel awful!)


On a final, lighter note: I love that you get to press a button to high-five Ellie at the hydroelectric dam. Of course, this raises a question: what happens if you don't high-five Ellie, like some sort of monster? We'll never know, because nobody will ever have the heart to leave her hanging.


(EDIT: Here's my e-mail exchange with th_esaurus after she read this entry:

RD: lol i think i hated joel a lot more than you did in the immediate aftermath.
Riona: This game might as well be called The Last of Us (Because Joel Horribly Killed All the Rest of Us), so I suppose I don't have especially high moral expectations for Joel to disappoint!)



The Last of Us was an incredibly intense, brilliant experience. I recommend it very strongly.

Comments

[futuresoon.livejournal.com]

About David and sexual assault: I had vague worries when he had her on the ground, but literally all he did was try to strangle her; there were no real indications I could see of him trying to rape her. The possibility was definitely there ("You have no idea what I'm capable of"), but it didn't happen. So Ellie's line doesn't really make sense to me. I can very much believe her having a little breakdown, though, given how stressful a day she'd had. Girl earned a bit of freaking out.

I love the ending, because it's just so awful--which is a weird thing to say, but you get what I mean, right? A happy ending wouldn't have worked for this game. And yet it isn't even a clear-cut bad end, either; Joel and Ellie are both alive and they're going to live in what seemed like a pretty decent place. But Joel's doomed humanity and his relationship with Ellie is never going to be the same again, yay! It's complicated, and complicated is great.

(I think there are very very few people who didn't think they had to kill all the surgeons during their first playthrough. Maybe it should have been more obvious that you could pick Ellie up after having only killed the first one? But on the other hand you are being a terrible person anyway so you only deserve to feel like it.)

There's a gifset somewhere on tumblr about what happens when you don't high-five Ellie--she stays there and says stuff like "It'll only take five seconds, don't leave me hanging" until you walk far enough away that she has to follow. I don't understand how anyone could possibly have found that out. That makes you a terrible person.

[rionaleonhart]

'Complicated' is definitely the right word for the ending. I haven't stopped thinking about it since I finished the game. I really hope Joel and Ellie's relationship survives it, even if there's no way it'll survive unchanged.

(It makes me feel marginally less awful that at least there were other people who didn't realise you could spare the surgeons. That was probably the single thing in this very upsetting game that most upset me.)

I CAN'T BELIEVE SOMEONE ACTUALLY DIDN'T HIGH-FIVE ELLIE.

[nano_moose]

Mmm, see, I've been thinking about the practicalities of the vaccine, and while I still firmly believe it wouldn't have mattered how effective that vaccine may have been (it could have been a insta-cure magic button or, like, a cataclysmic failure that makes the 'shroomy dudes breathe fire or something - either way, Joel would never allow Ellie die if he was capable of preventing it period full stop end of line case fucking closed) but I don't think Joel threw away all humanity for Ellie.

Ellie's not really "immune"; her infection is benign. They have absolutely no clue why this is the case. Nothing in her blood or cerebral-spinal fluid explains why she's not bleeding from the eyes and gibbering. Since the growth begins in the brain, yes, they may need to remove it, but only once all other options are exhausted; otherwise you've just killed the goose with the golden eggs, you know? It's suspicious to me that the Fireflies are so quick to go with "TAKE THE BRAIN", especially if Ellie is unique (and do we know if she is?). If that's their way of getting samples, I wonder at how sophisticated their equipment actually is; how capable they are of synthesising a vaccine. And how they'll distribute it. And who they'll distribute it to. If you have a vaccine, would you give it to a Hunter? Would you give it to David? Follow that thought out the end and you might have a horrible sort of eugenics taking place - only the people the Fireflies deem worthy get vaccinated. Or someone shoots the Fireflies, steals their vaccine, and they get to decide who goes shroomy. In their fervent quest to find a way to rise up from the ashes, the Fireflies may not have considered their plans all the way through. Their pinning all their hopes on one thing, imbuing it with power it doesn't have. Vaccine = "an end to the nightmare", says Marlene, but it doesn't. The Cordyceps dealt a heavy blow, but the entire game is a flailing, screaming testament to humanity's capacity to tear itself apart given sufficient fear or desperation or hatred.

On the other hand, I wouldn't say the human race is totally screwed. Civilisation as we know it is a write-off; there's nothing remaining of the previous infrastructure but the military, but the biosphere is more than fine (so many plants!) and there are communities. Agriculture! Horses! Fresh water! Medicine! Tommy's place, Jackson, has electrical power! Joel still knows how to drive a car! It's only twenty years since the outbreak and already there's someone born with benign mutation that negates the threat of infection - in less than a single generation. What if Ellie's children are like her? What if there are other people like her already?

None of this, of course, means Joel is less of a bastard but - I don't know, I wasn't disappointed in him. It seemed entirely within his character. He's a man of the present. Past is over, future may not happen, live through this moment and keep up that habit, whatever you have to do - and in that moment, what Joel had to do was keep Ellie alive, and that was all that mattered.

WHY CAN I NOT KEEP MY MOUTH SHUT

[nano_moose]

I only shot the surgeon who threatened me with a scalpel, when it became clear he wouldn't back down. (Of the remaining staff, one protests a little and the other warns them to quiet down, and I could only silently agree. Shut up and live.) I...was even more careful of casualties than I usually am in the hospital, which is so strange; I wound up choking a few guards I couldn't avoid and crept by the rest of them. I guess I felt like karma was already going to kick me in the head, so I may as well not add more potential skull fractures? I can't even say what I was thinking, really, because it's not like I could pick apart individual threads from all the internal screaming.

What a fascinating game, morally speaking. And I'm just going to listen to the title music again, because it is so gorgeous. (Also, here, have the icon for the other game that kicked me in the self-justifications. It was even in third-person!)

RE: David, I am deeply unsettled by the knowledge that he was voiced by Nolan North. I mean, okay, North was also the guy in my icon, and he's been Deadpool, and the Penguin, but hooooly shit. What was that meeting like? "You're a fantastic Drake, Nolan! In our next game we have a leader of a cannibalistic cabal who threatens a fourteen-year-old girl with sexual assault! He chases her around with a machete! We'd love in the role!" "Sure thing! I'll sign right away!"

WHY THE FUCK WOULDN'T SOMEONE HIGH-FIVE ELLIE? It's adorable, and Joel's long-suffering body language is hysterical! It's a tiny masterpiece of animation! WHY

Re: WHY CAN I NOT KEEP MY MOUTH SHUT

[rionaleonhart]

I can't say I was at all surprised or disappointed by Joel's decision; I would never have expected him to do anything else. His actions may not have been the most moral, but they were understandable and, as you say, they were entirely believable for Joel. He can't lose Ellie. It's hard to write Joel's actions off as totally, unambiguously fine, but it's equally hard to condemn anyone for preventing the death of someone they love, no matter what the stakes are. (And, yes, there's no guarantee that they'd be able to develop a working vaccine. Can anyone really be expected to sacrifice someone they care about because some greater good might be achieved?)

I didn't realise David was voiced by North until th_esaurus told me. I believe my reaction was 'NO. WHAT? NO.'

[emmarrrrr.livejournal.com]

I, in my infinite wisdom, watched someone else play through this game instead of attempting it myself. (But watching my dad swear at infected was hilarious.)

God, the ending, THE ENDING. I definitely got the feeling that Ellie knows he's lying to her. Also, if you get caught in the hospital it is ABSOLUTELY HEARTWRENCHING YOU'RE RIGHT actually almost everything involving Ellie that isn't SUPER ADORABLE is kind of painful.

(Don't even talk to me about their reunion after the whole David thing because Joel calling her 'baby girl' broke my heart into approximately a billion tiny pieces.)

ALSO HI RIONA I HAVEN'T BEEN ON LJ IN AGES HOW HAVE YOU BEEN

[rionaleonhart]

Oh my God, yes, 'baby girl', my heart my heart my heart. I really, really love those two.

And hello! I do wonder on occasion how you're doing these days. I'm all right; still determined to be the last person posting on Livejournal, which is increasingly turning into a Last of Us-esque wasteland. I've missed you!

[emmarrrrr.livejournal.com]

I MISSED YOU TOO. I actually cleared out my journal a while ago (and am now regretting it because I didn't think to save any of my old fic beforehand, oops) and I'm mostly on tumblr now! Also on the very very rare occasions that I write fic, I put it on AO3. I'm loving your FF13/8 crossover by the way! EVERYTHING GOES TERRIBLY WRONG AND SQUALL & CO ARE L'CIE, OH NO.

(PS, if Troy Baker voicing miserable assholes is a thing you now enjoy, you should definitely try Bioshock Infinite. Even I, of the terrible-at-FPS-games type, managed it on Easy!)