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Co-written with Adam Washington
I’ve wanted to make this video for AGES. The Last of Us is one of my favourite games of all time. I think it’s an incredible story (and I wish it wasn’t PS exclusive so my friends could play it!) Today, I wanted to unpack all the ways that it plays to your humanity, making you like someone who maybe doesn’t deserve that grace – and maybe does. I’m really proud of this and I hope you enjoy it!
The SOTC spoilers are in the last 10 minutes of this video so you can safely watch until then. I should have amended the spoiler warning :'(
Bibliography
Ethics and Law, PMC Pub Med Central: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9122144/
“The Not So Hidden Israeli Politics of ‘The Last of Us Part II”, Vice: https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-not-so-hidden-israeli-politics-of-the-last-of-us-part-ii/
Music Used is from TLOU OST, specifically (and in order):
The Last of Us
Fleeting
All Gone (Reunion)
Vanishing Grace
All Gone (Seasons)
The Choice
All Gone (Partners)
Home
Left Behind (Together)
Special thanks to Marcus who got all the footage for me!
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00:00 The Last of Us
03:07 End of Ad Read
12:20 What makes us Like Joel?
50:57 What makes us root for Ellie and Joel over everything?
1:35:57 The Rest is History
1:51:15 The Vaccine
2:04:47 Returning to the Morality of it
39 Comments
Try everything Brilliant has to offer for free for a full 30 days by visiting https://brilliant.org/MertKayKay/ or scan the QR code onscreen—or you can click on the link in the description. You’ll also get 20% off an annual premium subscription.
I don't like your approach to their approach to the past. Past is in the past. Why would they allow their phantom pain to prevent them from moving on and building the mother base…. Wait, wrong game.
Fun fact: Being a parent changes your moral compass.
i had a couple friends who were obsessed with tlou (the show) after it came out who wouldn’t stop harassing me to watch it. i would have much rather played the game, but i only have an xbox so that wasn’t really an option. i could never bring myself to watch the show; i’d since found out about druckmanns personal history and it felt icky to me, but after the pandemic, i especially had no desire to immerse myself in any form of apocalyptic media. we saw how the world would respond to a vaccine, and we saw how little it seemed to matter to a lot of people. it just felt like a torture exercise after that
I’d just like to point out as a funny observation, the story of the two main characters in TLOU2 is extremely similar to Black Ops 2, at least on a surface level.
Ellie is David Mason
Abby is Raul Menendez
Joel is Alex Mason
(There’s also other slight similarities in side characters like Woods being semi-similar to Tommy)
Literally, they’re both a story about the “cycle of revenge”, where Raul (Abbi) gets revenge on Alex (Joel) and his compatriots, and David (Ellie) is (albeit indirectly) attempting to get revenge on Raul (Abby) and to live up to his fathers (Joel’s) image.
Personally I think Black Ops 2 does a better job narratively, simply because they managed to make Menendez so compelling in such a short time, and actually gave the player (albeit limited) narrative agency without compromising on the theme of “revenge bad” (if you kill Menendez the outcome is bad, if you spare him the outcome is bad (even if only for him)) which, for a Call Of Duty game to even be within the same ball park of a narrative game whose sole purpose is telling a story insane.
I think it's safe to say that Ellie is not immune at all; simply asymptomatic. There are multiple real-life diseases, cancers and bacterium that can infect humans and take days, weeks, months, and even years before becoming active; certain cancers may take multiple lifetimes before they become malignant, there have been thousands of asymptomatic COVID infected peoples. Ellie is infected, it may be tomorrow, decades, or never when the infection takes hold, but she is not immune.
On the topic of the climax of the game with Marlene though, I absolutely agree with you, I wish the game had kept some of its subtly intact. For one, Marlene doesn't hold up her end of the bargain at all, which I find odd. The original promise was guns, and we never get to see them. If Marlene intended to leave us empty handed, the game should have hinted at her betrayal.
I wish we had gotten time with the Firelies like we did with the other characters, time to contextualize them and to better inform us to both their and Joel's decision. Have him walk with Marlene while they talk, Joel sees their operations, Marlene says she's leading him to the guns but obviously it would be no matter to him as he just wants to see Ellie. At that point, have Marlene tell him about Ellie and the surgery, and have Joel then ask to see Ellie. Marlene tells him that the surgery is already under way, and they argue about the value of one life over another. Joel then goes onto him rampage.
I think, if fleshed out, would have made the climax a bit better and would have better allowed us to see the dichotomies at play. Have Marlene not antagonistic but understanding of Joel's pain but also that the ends must justify the means.
i liked a lot of your opinions on the first gamee- you truly know this game in and out- i dont however agree with much of any of ur takes on literally any of the other games/media. so much so i almost turned the video off before it even ended. regardless of the opinion u have it was not neccesary in this analysis imo. i think theres obviously lots to be critiques but i think you are wrong to completely write them off as bad, just because they arent the og material and it doesnt go the way you want it to
some changes were made to the adaptation that i dont like (like mushroom kiss 🙁 ) but i do think their focus on the people exploring the side characters more than u could in the media that is video games is vital in tv shows because you can swap perspectives so easily and it still be legible. I wish there was more time within the show to the relationship between ellie and joel, but the lack of violence and fighting in the show is because its a show, not a game.
but regardless, this isnt hate im just sharing my opinion. and commenting to show support i suppose lol. anywho
Was hat Israel und Palestina hier zu suchen. Du bist krank…
“A war is not a war if one side can cut off the other’s supply of water food and electricity” Go OFF. Really glad I’m not just being an as-hole in getting pissed off at the obvious parallels to Palestine in TLOU2. Racist liberal NONSENSE
W vid 🙏🙏
But, Dormin isn't evil.
This is an excellent doc on TLOU#1. i thought I'd heard it all but you managed to rake up some food fkr thought all these years later. Great work
Been a long time, Kay! Been meaning to catch up on your work! 😀
Oh it did manipulate gamers, but unlike the NONE "canon", so called "sequel", it's the RIGHT kind of manipulation. Nothing was really forced, or felt off in whatever way, as opposed to certain lines of dialogue and characters' inconsistent, strange actions in the, again, NONE "canon" follow up to what is a really masterfully told story, that being The Last Of Us.
As for Joel, it was EASY to love him, more so than Ellie, because of the reasons you illustrated, as well as the fact that he felt VERY real and endearing. He does what's necessary for the people he loves, without any second thoughts or regrets. Unlike a certain character from the so called "sequel" (who SHAN'T be named!), Joel was empathetic, had lost so much that Ellie herself, during one of their conversations, realized just how much he troly lost, saying "I'm sorry, Joel." which was LONG after that moment when Joel told her "You don't know what loss is.", especially when you consider how, Ellie was born in the post apocalypse. She NEVER "lost" anything to the lengths that Joel did. His home, the people he knew, his daughter, and all the things that many in said post apocalypse can only long for, or remember fondly.
Joel also had a dry sense of humor to him, something I found amusing. His love for coffee was definitely me! I swear, everytime I think about him I'm like "I miss him!". Think Kenny and Clementine in TWD Season 2 game, where Kenny wished that Lee was with them, because he knew what to do when things goes so wrong, you know?
Some will say TLOU's story was Joel and Ellie's (NOT "Ellie and Joel" as you wrote! Sorry not sorry, but it's Joel AND Ellie! 😜), but honestly Kay, it was really Joel's story. It was his story with Ellie being someone (Sarah) who was taken from him, and who wasn't just "his second chance" at being a father, something Ellie herself also longed for, otherwise she wouldn't be so fearful of being alone, or abandoned by those she bonds with, but was someone who he loved with ALL his heart. Think Brad from the LISA series, and it's important to recall that scene when Ellie felt sad when Joel said "And I sure as ain't your dad".
As for the topic of morality. Right or wrong doesn't mean anything to Joel, even though he was DEFINITELY RIGHT to do what he did, as the Fireflies aren't exactly "the good guys", because what mattered to him above all, something ANYONE with children can understand, is protecting that whose most precious to him, Ellie. Joel shows what REAL love is through his actions and decisions, whether one agrees with them or not. If that's "not" love, then I don't know what else to say.
This video essay is brilliantly written. Not that you made any groundbreaking points but very articulate and entertaining. Found you from the TLoU2 vid so I was hyped to watch this
Gaming aficionados may have noticed that Joel breaks down at Sara's body. That is because she's dead
I love the subtle ripping of GameRant throughout the essay. They have been such an incompetent editorial for years, it is the likes of them that constantly misrepresent the gaming consensus which leads to people like Druckmann being overconfident in writing unappealing stories for video games.
I think Joel and Tess do have some level of a physical relationship, but Tess was more invested in Joel romantically while Joel of course remained emotionally closed off. I think this is hinted more in the show. So “there’s enough here that you have to feel some sort of obligation to me” reads like “yes, I know you’ve kept me at arms length this whole time, but we did have something here and I know you care about me in some deeply traumatized way”
An actual fun tlou tidbit: when Joel gets emotional and starts tearing up, he turns away from who he’s talking to. We see this when he turns around talking to Ellie after Tess dies, and the scene where he wipes his tears away thinking about saying goodbye to Ellie. When he gets emotional when Ellie gives him the picture of Sarah later, the camera avoids turning to see his face until after he’s done talking. This also happens in the very brief moment you play Joel in the last of us part two, when Tommy says “can’t say I would have done any different. I’ll take it to the grave if I have to” Joel gets emotional and you can’t move the camera far enough to see his face. Joel’s on a whole new level of traumatized where he can’t even open up to the audience 😅
Here’s a hidden detail! Bills town isn’t actually the name of the town! It’s only called that because a man named Bill lives there.
1:50:58 that part was just…. Yikes. Genuinely I have yet to rewatch the show because of it. Taking a characters (ESPECIALLY A FEMALES) agency in their death that way was just so disgusting to me. If Tess was a man there is no way in hell that scene would have happened and anyone who says otherwise is lying to themselves. I didn’t like what they did to the side characters in general but Tess especially left such a foul taste in my mouth.
I also agree about bill being a good boy. Especially at the end when he has the gas siphon ready for us even though we didn’t ask for it. He thought about what we would need to survive even as he made jokes about how we’re doomed. His actions show how he really feels
I'd like to say his post about Israel IS him speaking on it? that's what the tweet you showed is about?
31:11
People always assume that the "I've been on both sides," line necessarily means that Joel robbed/killed innocent people. I interpreted as simply him being on the other side of an ambush. He then gets quiet when Ellie asked if he's killed innocent people. Again it doesn't mean that did, only that he may have been ashamed at the amount of violence he committed justified or not, or perhaps that innocents were killed in a conflict, whether intentionally or not.
Point being, the response is intentionally left to interpretation, yet people erroneously interpret it to be the worse possible thing.
EDIT: Tommy reflecting negatively on his experience surviving with Joel could very well be a contrast between his previous nomadic lifestyle with being able to settle down at the dam, rather that a confirmation that Joel was some "ruthless bandit."
I can't believe this was called the best game ever because it had a little girl die in it. Lmao, try playing Zelda instead. It's much better
Fun fact you might have missed: the title of the game, "The Last Of Us", is a reference to the game's apocalyptic setting and it implies that there aren't many people left in the world, and that your actions may impact the last of them.
2:01:52 I don’t think he shot him in the weeenus lol. It was two gut shots I think? I also don’t think it was the “meanest Death in the game”. Also think you might be posssibly looking too deeply into dominating/emasculating situation. He just had an aggressive body language & his presence was threatening as deterrence lol. Unless you were just kidding around. He’s one of the fireflies VIP bodyguards or escorting her protecting her etc. Idk if you noticed before that bodyguards/law enforcement when protecting a VIP are aggressive & constantly passively display a show of force however they can no matter how small, as it is considered a deterrence as well for anyone who is thinking of whatever it is that they’re trying to prevent.
I haven’t played through in a while, but from what I recall, the “meanest death” (by Joel) was when he interrogated the inferred cannibal group men about Ellie’s whereabouts & then he just straight up tortured one in front of the other & kinda gave false hope before suddenly killing him & having witnessed his friend go thru that then killed, he just offed him as well. Must’ve sucked to know you’re screwed & same for the false hope. That is pretty mean when it comes to a way to meet one’s end.
I don’t get all these reactions I seen. In this day n age, like those “react” videos that have people experiencing a game.. it feels like they are either falling a reaction for “entertainment” purposes or that it is the first game they have ever played in their life… growing up I never seen anyone, any age (except for older 55+ seniors or probably older like 60+) act like “omg they just murdered that man!!”
My friend and family that played video games, react how I do/how I had imagined most the world except for 60+ year olds that think it looks super realistic & violent… Even my family and friends who never played games think much of it when they saw me or others playing games like this… When I got to the hospital level I just did what I had to do to save Ellie.. I didn’t think of the morality of it much when it comes to offing a bunch of enemies in a game… especially because we already have experienced fighting human enemies the whole game…. How would one not be used to it by then?? So it’s not so easy to suddenly get triggered out phased to the core, about the morality of Joel/the player taking lives. Like you said, the game was made to “manipulate“ what they wanted us to feel. It’s what a story does when written well.
Those reaction type vids have to be freaking bait for views… there’s no way people aren’t desensitized by games by now if they’ve been playing long or even just through that whole game… if there really are people who genuinely felt uncomfortable or are super against Joel’s actions at the end… then that’s weirds me out… They missed the whole point of the story & are focusing on something else entirely
As a father absolutely not I would do the same thing to save her
i loved the video but the thing is though, in any scenario where it's not explicit that ellie consents (and yes the possibility of that is debatable) i think not rescuing her would not be a choice joel should have to make as a father. you can argue about the utilitarian consequences of it, of not saving the world, but i think it's inhumane to expect a father to sacrifice his child for that purpose. i simply do not believe joel would be evil in that scenario. which does not negate this criticism of the game, i agree with basically all of it, but framing those actions as unquestionably evil just does not sit right with me. there is value in the loyalty that humans have for those they especially care for.
The main think that "justifies" Joel's actions in my eyes (and almost invalidates the cure question) is just how incompetent and overly combative the Firefly's were characterized as (Makes me wonder if Abby and Lev had any trouble with them). And the worst part is if they just let Ellie make the decision then part 2 would most likely be about the Fireflys turning into the next WLF and Joel going on the murder spree that was apparently destined to happen. Joel might not have been in the right to shoot the surgeon, but he was right to shoot Marlene.
Something else, to say Wander is the definitive "villain" denies any sort of conversation/theory about the humans at the end being in the wrong. All the temples and guardians had to be built by someone and there are no signs of evil anywhere in the Forbidden Lands. Nature is healing, birds are chirping and lizards are scuttling. And isn't Wander implied to be the reborn protagonist of Ico or something along those lines?
Stumbled across your Bleak Faith ̶F̶o̶r̶e̶s̶k̶i̶n̶ review, now checking out the rest and oh boy, this is quite the topic.
…uh, I mean, "hahaha remember when they were playing golf?"
i like this video
Great review. It was only halfway through that i realised that it's two hours long – up to that point, time was flowing seamlessly while I listened to it
I actually liked the way the show handled Bill and Frank. It felt like a "this is what you could have if you weren't such an idiot" thing and that resonated more with show Joel. Plus, far less of the "bury your gays" vibe than the game had and, as a card carrying queer, I appreciate that a lot.
O
“as always, ai written dogshit…” too true. mindless, awful fucking dreck everywhere. wordy detritus
First of all, I am incredibly glad to finally run into someone who hates The Last of Us 2 without being a brainlet chud whose main complaint is that Abby has muscles and is therefore secretly a man or something equally asinine. Finally, some proper justified spite.
Personally, I think everything about 2 – the relentless bleakness and pointlessness and hamfisted, callous caricature of the Israel-Palestine conflict as some kind of metaphorical bludgeon to convey the most insultingly childish of messages – really just points to what I think Druckmann's worst trait as a storyteller is: His writing can be extremely emotionally manipulative and relies heavily on contrivances to force an outcome and get a specific emotional reaction out of the player.
When talking about the second game he made that explicit – the goal was basically just to try to prove they could MAKE people care for Abby after having her kill off beloved protagonist Joel. It was basically just – hey, I bet we're such hot shit we can make players feel the way we want them to about a character, with a handicap, just to prove a point. And that stupid answer about the vaccine perfectly illustrates the kind of contrived nonsense that goes into that. It's like the story is constructed backward from the emotional reaction that's desired, going toward the foregone conclusion, and then back through whatever could have led to that… And if something doesn't lead to that it gets changed until it does.
Unfortunately, this just kind of makes the narrative and the characters less interesting and less compelling. It makes Joel and Ellie (let alone other characters) do things that are actually really stupid just so the player can get whacked over the head with "revenge is bad tho" like a child.
It's like the thing hurts you just because it can, not because it wants to set up some greater payoff that makes it worth it. The whole second game is designed to make the characters' lives emptier and more pointless for the hell of it, but that just makes the player's experience just as empty and pointless.
…I guess what I'm saying is that TLOU2 as a whole exists as a gigantic monument to the smug prick attitude you're criticizing around 1:50:00. It's all the exact same tricks and contrived conveniences this video is about. It's just that the first game's storytelling gets to be better in spite of that because of infinitely stronger character writing.
Also, please, PLEASE make a video essay tearing into the second game. Holy shit. That is a position I've literally only heard from and in private conversations I had with a friend. Most of the hate the second game gets is from miserable anti-woke clowns who have precisely nothing of value to add to the conversation.
Edit: Wait, you already have a video on it, that's absolutely going in my watch later queue because I need to hear the take.