Level Story | Issue 6 | The Last of Us by Level Story Magazine

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p. 30

p. 40

FEATURES Let’s Talk About the Ending pg. 48-61

Three writers break down their thoughts on the ending of The Last of Us. 50 // Breaking Down the Ending of The Last of Us 54 // The Philosophy of Naughty Dog’s Tired Morality Play 58 // Justifying Joel’s Decisions

Perspective in the Opening Moments of The Last of Us pg. 14

12 // Story Overview 18 // Who is the Real Enemy? 22 // Medium, Rare 26 // Joel’s Broken Watch 34 // Escort is Now in Session 62 // Pandemic Playthrough 68 // What We Are Enjoying 70 // Fans Write

Exploring what the opening section of The Last of Us is doing and why it is so powerful.

If We’re The Virus, Where’s the Cure? pg. 30

Discussing “doomerism” in relation to Joel’s worldview.

SUPPORT

Making Familiar Tropes New pg. 40

How The Last of Us reconfigures common tropes in action games to tell their story.

www.patreon.com/levelstory

Bill: A Frank Discussion pg. 44

Looking at what makes Bill such a nuanced example of queer representation in video games.

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LEVEL STORY MAGAZINE MISSION STATEMENT

CREDITS

Storytelling in video games is getting better and better with age. What began as simple forms of combat, exploration, and journey missions, has evolved into something much more sophisticated than once allowed. No longer are we content to only be concerned with gameplay mechanics. Although gameplay is really important, the gaming community also cares about other attributes such as style, design, musical score, and of course story. As time has passed, video games have steadily begun to provide well crafted stories to accompany their gameplay. But unlike mediums such as the novel or film, video games are not well respected and therefore are not considered to be an art form. They began as a series of objectives for the player to immerse themselves in. It was only as the technology developed that creators began to challenge the mediums original intent. Video games are still tainted with the taboo of mediocrity that many find to be silly and for the immature. This is an outdated notion. Video games, new and old, are important. Stories are important. All stories regardless of the medium are worthy of study. My goal is to examine the stories that exist in classic and modern day video games. Through careful exploration I will analyze these stories just as one would analyze a novel. Is the story well crafted? What themes are at play? How do our characters grow? And ultimately, what attributes of the video game directly contribute to the game’s core narrative? This is Level Story Magazine.

The ideas presented by the writers in this magazine belong to them individually and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of everyone who contributed. © Level Story Magazine, 2020 WORKS CITED Naughty Dog. The Last of Us. Sony Interactive Entertainment. PS3/PS4. 2013. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

“About.” n.d. Games and Online Harassment Hotline. Accessed August 1, 2020. https://gameshotline.org/about/. “Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality by Itch.io and 1391 Others.” n.d. Itch.io. Accessed June 16, 2020. https://itch.io/b/520/bundle-for-racial-justice-and-equality. Hernandez, Patricia. 2020. “2020’s Best Gaming Deal Outshines BLM Efforts by Bigger Companies.” Polygon. Polygon. June 9, 2020. https://www. polygon.com/2020/6/9/21285134/itchio-bundle-1000-games-5-dollars-best-gaming-deal-pc-black-lives-matter. Calvin, Alex. 2020. “Itch.io’s #BlackLivesMatter Bundle Raised $8.1m.” Pcgamesinsider.biz. June 16, 2020. https://www.pcgamesinsider.biz/ news/71260/itchios-blacklivesmatter-bundle-raised-81m/. iam8bit. “Twitter / @iam8bit: Eco-Packaging: A Thread…” August 4, 2020, 4:47 p.m. https://twitter.com/iam8bit/status/1290751299206561792 Junub Games. Accessed October 4, 2020. https://junubgames.com/. Andy Greenwald, “Winter Is Here: How Game of Thrones became the most important show on television”, Grantland, accessed September 12, 2020, https://grantland.com/features/the-return-hbo-game-thrones/?fbclid=IwAR2orVbQBUzpka5r84_5Q1Pdyv4rAxuncTvn_vuopxPzY87bUhHK6f9MShA Griffin, Paul (2017) The Carbon Majors Database: CDP Carbon Majors Report 2017, 14 pp. United Nations, General Assembly, Climate change and poverty Report of the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights*, A/ HRC/41/39 (17 July 2019), available from undocs.org/en/A/HRC/41/39. Rare. Goldeneye 007. Nintendo. N64. 1997. Telltale Games. The Walking Dead: Season One (Long Road Ahead). Telltale Games. PC. 2012. Square Enix. Kingdom Hearts. Square Electronic Arts. Playstation 2. 2002. Dietz, Jason. 2020. “Metacritic Users Pick the Best of 2019 (and the Decade).” Metacritic. January 9, 2020. https://www.metacritic.com/feature/userpoll-results-best-of-2019?ref=hp. “Understanding The Last of Us Part II | Girlfriend Reviews.” YouTube video, 2:13. “Girlfriend Reviews,” 2020.https://youtu.be/bh5gzGs-63Y. Takahashi, Dean. 2018. “What Inspired The Last of Us (Interview).” VentureBeat. VentureBeat. December 12, 2018. https://venturebeat. com/2013/08/06/the-last-of-us-creators-inspirations/. Mike Dineen and Travis Ryans, hosts, “The Last of Us: The Daddyfication of Gaming” Rainbow Road (podcast), June 25th, 2020, accessed September 12th, 2020, https://open.spotify.com/episode/2LZWEyTGNmC3Y6oDyAP25v Thomas Fuller, “Coronavirus Limits California’s Efforts to Fight Fires With Prison Labor” The New York Times, accessed September 12, 2020, https:// www.nytimes.com/2020/08/22/us/california-wildfires-prisoners.html Brian Resnick, “A third of Americans might refuse a Covid-19 vaccine. How screwed are we?” Vox, accessed September 12, 2020, https://www.vox. com/science-and-health/21364099/covid-19-vaccine-hesitancy-research-herd-immunity

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Creator Letter

A Masterpiece in Gaming Narrative I only just played The Last of Us for the first time at the start of 2020. It is a game I’ve heard people rave about for years so you could say my expectations were pretty high. And to be honest, I didn’t finish the game feeling as elated as I expected. My immediate reaction to the ending of this game was, “that was solid,” but I didn’t feel wowed or as if I’d just played the pinnacle of video game storytelling. To be honest, The Last of Us isn’t necessarily doing anything all that new in terms of storytelling. Many of the tropes being used are commonplace in other mediums such as literature or film - the ambiguous ending, the multilayered protagonist with questionable morals, etc. My gut reaction was to agree with the assessment that this is a good game, but I didn’t feel overly certain about this outlook. In many ways, my mindset has not changed. The Last of Us is good but not as revolutionary as people claim. However, I now have to put an asterisk at the end of this statement. The Last of Us actually is revolutionary for its

contribution to what a narrative can look like in a video game. I write about this in more depth within the issue, but it bears repeating. While The Last of Us isn’t widely different when compared to other stories in games in the action genre, it is the way it uses tropes of the action genre that make it stand out. The story contains subtleties that are absent from other games. The more I play the game, the more I see this. I think this is why the game feels so revolutionary to so many people. It achieved a level of storytelling that most other games within the genre fail to accomplish. The Last of Us is never just one thing but multiple things at once. It isn’t straightforward and isn’t easy to digest. A friend told me the more he plays the game, the more it falls apart. For me, it is the opposite. The more I play this game, the more it blooms. Perhaps this is not the best game to play while in the real world we are also living through a global pandemic (albeit not on the same level as this game but still). There is little hope offered by a game that is essentially about a zombie apocalypse...and it certainly doesn’t quell my anxiety. But despite this, the game offers me a good story that makes me think more deeply about the world, the people around me, and myself. For someone who eats, sleeps, and breathes story, that is enough for me. This issue is the biggest yet and packed with a diverse range of content. I hope my fellow writers and I do this game justice. Thank you for reading.

Danielle Carpenter Creator & Publisher

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The Hot & the Cold

News

Innovation in Accessibility This year, the Game Awards will be introducing an award that will recognize innovation in gaming accessibility. The event will take place on Thursday, December 10th.

Dontnod’s Tell Me Why Dontnod’s newest game features the first transgender playable character from any major studio. The developers worked with GLAAD, a LGBTQ media advocacy group, to create an authentic portrayal of a trans man.

Mario 35th Anniversary Super Mario 64, Sunshine, and Galaxy hit the Nintendo Switch. While exciting, Nintendo only provided a limited release window and did very little to polish the games. And many ask, where is Galaxy 2?

Games or Groceries? With so many new game reveals for new consoles, one can’t help but notice the $70 price tag which seems to have become the norm. If a game costs as much as a trip to the grocery store, then there may be a problem.

Hogwarts Legacy The RPG takes place in the Wizarding World during the 1800s. While the game looks great, it is announced on the heels of J.K. Rowling’s toxic tweets towards trans people. It will take a lot to justify supporting this one.

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Games & Online Harrassment Hotline In recent years, the games space has revealed itself to be more and more toxic. From abusive and sexist behavior in the workplace to harmful rhetoric toward marginalized groups from big name streamers, the time has come to say enough is enough. Enter the Games and Online Harassment Hotline, a text-based hotline that offers emotional support and resources for people in the gaming community. This not only includes developers but streamers, competitors, and players. The initiative was started by Anita Sarkeesian with the help of Christopher Vu Gandin Le. The hotline works to “ensure that anyone who experiences such abuse can reach out...whether it’s just someone to talk to about what they’re going through or referrals to other resources to help them protect themselves or take legal action.” 1 The hotline also hosts live Twitch streams where they bring on various guests to talk about topics in the games space. Past conversations have focused on accessibility in competitive esports, getting started in games writing, and holding leaders accountable. The hotline is active from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Pacific Time Monday through Friday. To use the hotline, text SUPPORT to 23368 from anywhere in the US.

Junub Games: Spider-Man Gets Games for Peace a New Face Salaam is a mobile game from Junub Games that follows a refugee who must flee a war torn region. It comes from Lual Mayen, CEO of Junub and who was once a refugee himself. In Arabic, salaam means peace and peace is what Junub aims to promote in the mindset of their players. “We will humanize displaced people by putting players in the shoes of a refugee forced to deal with daily hardships,” 6 they write. Learn more about the game’s release at junubgames.com.

Insomniac recently revealed one big change coming to Spider-Man Remastered - our hero’s face. Ben Jordan was cast as the new face model to better match voice actor Yuri Lowenthal’s facial capture. Fan reactions have not been the best. Although Insomniac’s Creative Director Bryan Intihar offered words of reassurance, the decision still feels perplexing. The character is unrecognizable and the choice undermines the integrity of the original look. Not to mention he now looks like a Tom Holland rip-off.

News

Donkey Kong Country 1 and 2 have come to Nintendo Switch online! Now we just need 3!

Gigantic Itcho.io “Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality” Raises Over $8 Million Back in June, Itch.io released a massive bundle of over 740 titles from over 560 developers called the “Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality.” The bundle cost a minimum of five dollars and all of the money raised was split 50/50 toward the “NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund” and “Community Bail Fund.” It included notable titles such as Celeste, Oxenfree, and A Short Hike, and these titles don’t even scratch the surface of what the bundle offered. As the bundle gained traction, the amount of games grew to over 1,400 and ended up raising $8.1 million, surpassing the $5 million goal. At a time when many companies are jumping on the racial justice bandwagon without really doing much beyond lip service, Itch.io and the game developers actually put their money where their mouth is. Even games such as Night in the Woods, which normally stay away from bundles, broke their rule in support of the initiative. The bundle was met with positive vibes and shows how much good the gaming community is capable of. To learn more about Black Lives Matter and how you can help, visit https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/. 2 3 4

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity will follow the events 100 years prior to Breath of the Wild.

Untitled Goose Game News Untitled Goose Game was one of the biggest indie hits of 2019 and is one of the most charming games on the market. 2020 is bringing some more great Goose content that we need in our lives. First, it has finally received a free update for multiplayer. You and a friend can now terrorize the local neighborhood together, two honks at a time. What is even more exciting is that the game got a physical release for the Nintendo Switch and PS4, as well as a vinyl soundtrack. The PS4 box is unique because it is the first ever official eco-focused game package. In a Twitter thread from iam8bit, they explain how they used 100% post-consumer, recycled material to create a Sony approved game package. “Our goal was to find the right balance to ensure this feels sturdy and fits on your shelf with the rest of your collection. We promise it passes the ‘squeeze test.’” 5 The box is also made with 20-pt stock and no harmful inks, and wrapped in Biolefin which is an eco-friendly shrinkwrap. Seeing such high measures being taken to help the environment is a step in the right direction! Honk honk for iam8bit and Goose Game!

Say cheese as Nintendo makes us nostalgic for the 1990s! New Pokémon Snap is now in development!

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OCTOBER 2020 | LEVEL STORY

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Story Summary Joel is a single father living in Austin, Texas with his 12-year-old daughter, Sarah. On the night of his birthday in 2013, there is an outbreak of a severe brain infection. The infection has been spreading throughout the United States. Joel and Sarah, along with Joel’s younger brother Tommy, prepare to flee the area. When Joel and Sarah are separated from Tommy, a soldier protecting the perimeter of the area opens fire. Tommy returns and shoots the man, but it is too late for Sarah who tragically dies in Joel’s arms. 20 years have passed and Joel is now living in the post-apocalyptic Boston as a smuggler. He resides in a quarantine zone with his friend and partner, Tess. After she returns from a recent deal, she explains that some men jumped her. They go out to find a man named Robert, who recently stole guns from them. When they find him, he confesses to giving the guns to the Fireflies, a militia group using military tactics to restore the government. After Tess shoots him, they find Marlene, the leader of the Fireflies. When she explains she needs the guns, she tells them that she will exchange them if they smuggle something out of the city. That something is a 14-year-old girl named Ellie. Their job is to take Ellie to the Capitol building. Along the way, they are confronted by some soldiers who test them to see if they are infected. When they manage to kill the soldiers, Joel sees that Ellie tested positive. Ellie explains that she was bitten three weeks ago and the infected usually takes two days to take over the brain. She is immune. After escaping more soldiers, Ellie tells them that Marlene believes that Ellie could be the key for finding a cure. The three of them make their way to the Capitol building, fighting numerous infected along the way. Upon getting there, they realize the Fireflies they were supposed to meet have been killed and Tess reveals a bit she received just hours ago. Joel doesn’t want to continue this mission but Tess says he should take Ellie to Tommy if it means finding a cure. Tommy used to be a Firefly and may know where Ellie should be taken. Some more soldiers are outside and Tess tells Joel and Ellie to run. She would rather die than become infected. Joel and Ellie make their way to Bill, a paranoid man living on his own who may have access to a running car that will get them out of the city. After confronting some more infected, they get a car running and say goodbye to Bill. As they are passing through Pittsburgh, a group of hunters attacks them. Joel and Ellie try to escape and run into two other travelers named Sam and Henry, brothers. When Henry tells Joel that they are looking to find the Fireflies, they decide to travel together at nightfall to a radio tower. When more hunters confront them, Sam and Henry desert Joel and Ellie. They run onto a bridge and are chased by a Humvee. Their only choice is to jump into the turbulent water.

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Joel then wakes up on a beach. Sam and Henry rescue them from the water. Joel points his gun at Henry but Ellie reminds Joel that they saved them from drowning. The group continues into the sewers and find it was once a safe home for some people. Joel and Sam are then separated from Ellie and Henry. They eventually find their way back to each other, fighting hordes of infected until they escape the sewers into a residential neighborhood. But more danger lurks as a sniper shoots at them. Joel, continuously using cover, runs to the house where the shots are coming from and kills the man. Infected try to attack Ellie, Sam, and Henry but Joel shoots them from the window. They flee to safety. That night, Ellie and Sam talk about what happens after someone is infected. Sam wonders if the person is still in their body, cognizant. Ellie assures him that the person is long gone from their body when they become infected. Sam says Ellie isn’t afraid of anything and she corrects him, revealing she is afraid of ending up alone. Leaving Sam for the night, Sam pulls up his pant leg to reveal he was bitten back in the neighborhood. In the morning, he attacks Ellie. Henry shoots his brother and in his grief, shoots himself. Ellie and Joel continue their journey to find Tommy. They find he is living at a power plant with his new wife Maria. Joel pulls Tommy aside and reveals Ellie’s condition and that he wants Tommy to finish the job. Tommy reluctantly agrees before Ellie overhears the plan and runs off on one of Tommy’s horses. Joel and Tommy go after her, and find her at an abandoned house in the woods. Joel confronts Ellie and she brings up Sarah. Maria told her what had happened. Joel angrily tells Ellie that she is not his daughter and he is not her dad. Just as Ellie goes to retort, Tommy appears that they are under attack by some bandits. After fighting them off, Joel reflects and realizes and decides he will take Ellie to the Fireflies himself. They head to the University of Eastern Colorado where Tommy said a Firefly lab is located. The place is abandoned. They find a recorder that tells them the Fireflies are in Salt Lake City, Utah. They then see other survivors in the building who attack them. One pushes Joel over the railing and he is impaled through the stomach by a metal beam. Ellie manages to get them out of there. Joel is unwell and barely hanging on. Ellie has him hidden in the basement of an abandoned house. While hunting one afternoon, she meets two strangers. They make a deal that she will trade her catch, a buck, for some

antibiotics. One man goes to get the medicine, and Ellie is left with David. They fight off many infected before David reveals that it was his men who attacked her and Joel at the university. Ellie raises her weapon at him as the other man arrives with the medicine. Ellie takes it and leaves. She gives Joel the medicine but soon hears people outside. They tracked her back to her location. Wanting to lead them away from Joel, Ellie runs but is soon stopped by David who knocks her unconscious. Ellie wakes up in a cage and angers David at her refusal to cooperate. Meanwhile, Joel has also woken up. He quickly realizes Ellie is in danger and violently interrogates two men about her location before killing them. David brings Ellie out of the cage and raises a knife to her when she bites him and reveals she is infected. She gets away but David catches up with her in a restaurant. Ellie stabs him multiple times before they are both knocked unconscious in a struggle with one another. Ellie wakes and after another struggle with David, she gets ahold of his machete and violently hacks him to death. Just then, Joel arrives and they leave together. They continue toward Saint Mary’s hospital when Ellie spots a group of escaped giraffe’s from a local zoo. Joel says they could turn back and forget all of this, but Ellie says she wants to finish the job. They make their way through an underground tunnel and come to a flooded area where Ellie is knocked unconscious. Joel swims to her and tries to revive her but is knocked out by oncoming soldiers. He wakes in the hospital and learns the soldiers were Fireflies. With him is Marlene. He asks after Ellie and Marlene says she is being prepped for surgery. This surgery will reverse engineer a vaccine from the infection on Ellie’s brain, killing her in the process. Upon this realization, Joel finds out where the operating room is and fights his way to Ellie. After killing the doctor, Joel grabs Ellie and runs out of the hospital. He carries her to the parking garage where Marlene begs him to do the right thing. He shoots her and drives off with Ellie. When she wakes, he lies and tells her that there are many immune people like her and it hasn’t done a bit of good. The Fireflies are no longer looking for a cure. They return to Tommy’s community and Ellie confronts Joel about the events that transpired at the hospital. She talks of survivors guilt, reflecting on the night she was bitten, and then asks Joel to swear to her that what he said was true. Joel swears and Ellie uncertainly believes him.

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Perspective in the Opening Moments of “The Last of Us” Written by Samuel Gronseth

here are a few specific moments in The Last of Us that had a particularly powerful impact on most people who played it. One of these, of course, is the very first few minutes of the game. This is mostly due to excellent execution. After all, on its face the opening of the game is fairly standard. It establishes a good relationship between father and daughter, then the outbreak happens, and in the rush to get away safely the daughter is killed, the father is sad, and the scene is set for a story of Joel finding a surrogate daughter in Ellie years later. This isn’t a criticism, just an observation; there’s nothing wrong with doing something standard and doing it well, which this opening certainly does. Nevertheless, it’s easy to dismiss its power years later; the theme of protagonists protecting or avenging a loved one has always been common in this medium, but since the early aughts (home to such classics as The Last of Us and Telltale’s The Walking Dead) the gaming landscape has been saturated with the specific subcategory of self-serious games about sad dads protecting or avenging their children. This means that describing this sequence now, in which a man tries to protect his daughter at the onset of the zombie apocalypse but ultimately fails, may sound stereotypical, if not kind of empty. At the very least, the

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basic concept wasn’t very original before games started employing it en masse, and it’s even less so now that they have. Inevitably, early examples of a once-powerful narrative device become less and less impactful as more stories employ them, which tempts one to view this sequence less charitably in hindsight. But not all the impact of this scene is lost to time. The craft behind the game’s opening is still admirable and effective, making it impacting for reasons well beyond the simple surprise or tragedy of the scenario. So let’s take a look and see how it was crafted to be as impactful as it was. The first scene is a standard cutscene, establishing the positive relationship between Joel and his daughter Sarah, as well as the watch she gives him as a gift (which will serve as a permanent reminder of her death and a symbol of Joel’s brokenness throughout the game). But then the game does something subtle, but rather inspired; the next morning Sarah wakes up to a distressed phone call from her uncle Tommy, and the game gives us control of her. Sarah is not the protagonist of the game; she won’t even survive to the title screen. But the game starts the player out in her shoes. The reason why will be clear in a bit. The player’s first task is to explore the house. Technically, all they need to do is go downstairs toward

the sliding glass door in the study, but Naughty Dog knew full well the player would likely explore first, and used optional content to set the scene for what was coming. Most notably, the door to Joel’s room is cracked open with light coming from it, and while he’s not inside, the TV is tuned to a news story that cuts short by an explosion, which can be seen out the window in the distance. This event changes the tone of the scene significantly; Sarah goes from sleepy and confused to alert and concerned, and the difference is palpable. It’s unsurprising that this particular studio pulls off this mood change so well, considering their famous attention to detail. Part of it is in the voice acting; Sarah’s calls for her dad immediately gain a shade of fear and worry, where before they were mostly just sleepy. But more impressive is the way the character is animated. Up until this point, Sarah’s movements are loose and tired. She toddles around the house, wobbling side to side with every step, occasionally lifting a lazy arm to wipe sleep out of her eyes. She walks like… well, someone who was woken up in the middle of the night and isn’t fully alert yet. The player can feel this simply by how their character is moving, which is fairly standard for video games at this point but still excellently done. But immediately after the explosions, that changes. Sarah’s eyes dart around with alertness, she walks as though she’s ready to sprint away at the drop of a hat, and her arms are held up, around herself, instead of flopping lazily at her sides. This may seem fairly basic, but it’s something often taken for granted in how games are visually designed. All this exists to establish a tone and sell the reality of what the player is seeing; the more realistically Sarah acts, rather than moving robotically and acting the same throughout the whole sequence, the more the player can believe in the reality of what they’re seeing on screen. But this is also an interactive cue; the player has an inherent connection to the person they’re controlling, and the more they believe in the reality of this scene, the more it affects the way they feel its feelings and play through its events. The more effectively the game communicates the feelings of its player character, the more effectively those feelings get through to the player, which then affects how they perceive the character and play the scene out. What follows continues on this theme of building tension and establishing the growing emergency. Multiple cop cars zoom past the house, lights on and sirens blazing. Joel’s smartphone is left in the kitchen with eight missed calls and panicked texts from Tommy. Things eventually come to a head when Joel comes in from the backyard in a panic and gets his gun out, saying there’s something wrong with their neighbors. Only once someone slams against the glass door does the game take control away from the player, switching to a cinematic cutscene to show Joel shooting their neighbor in self-defense. Crucially, the actual shooting is shown from behind Sarah; it’s a non-interactive sequence, but it’s using the

framing of its third-person gameplay perspective for the moment of violence, as Sarah is hiding behind her father. This is a subtle way the game plays with interactive perspective, a running theme we’ll return to later. After a desperate, hushed pep talk, Joel leads Sarah out front where Tommy has parked his car, and ushers her into the backseat. This is where the player is handed control again, though somewhat on rails since Sarah isn’t the one driving the car. As Tommy drives for the highway, little vignettes play out; a family hurriedly throwing their things into an SUV, a car smashed into a tree on the side of the road, the burning home of Joel and Tommy’s friend Louis. The player can look around anywhere they want, with Sarah smoothly scooting around the car to look with them. The most memorable moment from this sequence is when a family is walking on the side of the road, and Joel tells Tommy to keep moving rather than help them. The father even waves and yells for help, but Tommy dutifully drives by. Tommy sadly remarks that they have a kid, to which Joel shoots back, “So do we.” But as they leave this family behind, Sarah dejectedly muses that they should have helped them. This is, on paper, an establishing moment for Joel. We’ve already seen that he’s capable of mortal violence, but that was in self-defense; we now see also that he prioritizes the safety of his daughter over the safety of others, even if it means leaving people to their likely deaths (and even if the person he’s protecting would prefer he have more of a conscience). In practice, this moment gains something from the game’s choice of interactive perspective, which we’ll get to in a moment. The game keeps the player in Sarah’s perspective until a car crashes into them and the screen blacks out. Only then, when Joel wakes up upside down in the burning car, does the game switch perspectives to the game’s primary protagonist. What follows returns to a fairly normal set of events; the player controls Joel as he rescues Sarah from the car, runs from the infected, and makes it to safety only to be confronted by a soldier with orders to shoot everyone, even if they don’t seem infected. Tommy shows up to kill the soldier, but not before he gets a few shots off, and Sarah dies in Joel’s arms. The death scene itself is an effective gut-punch and a famously effective start to what will be an emotional ride of a story, but what I want to focus on is the buildup. This scene wouldn’t be nearly as effective if it hadn’t set the player up to care about these people and their plight, and it’s actually pretty impressive how the game accomplished this. Some of it is fairly standard storytelling; Joel and Sarah have good chemistry, and the opening scenes strongly establish how good their relationship is. The absence of a mother indicates a level of dependency between them as well, since they’re all each other has of their immediate family. The fact that Sarah is killed by a soldier rather than one of the infected sets the scene for the game’s cynicism

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toward government handling of the pandemic. But the game’s use of player perspective is the real key to making this work (as you may have picked up on by all the “we’ll get to this later” remarks throughout this article). Perspective matters in all mediums, but in video games the player feels a rather direct and inherent connection to the character they’re controlling. There’s a reason why we so often refer to the events of a video game as things “we” did, even if we had no control over the narrative outcome of the situation; our direct control makes us feel like an active participant in the things that happen on screen. So what is accomplished by portraying the opening sequence from Sarah’s point of view, rather than Joel’s? Well, let’s consider what this would have looked like from Joel’s perspective. We don’t know how he was woken up or exactly what happened in the moments leading up to the shooting in his study, but we can surmise the basic experience; the player would control Joel as he investigates something worrying, comes across his neighbor, and realizes this neighbor is acting strangely and violently. The player then rushes back to the house and talks to Sarah while Joel prepares his gun, then the player takes control of the situation and shoots Joel’s neighbor. Then, after loading Sarah into Tommy’s truck, the player looks around much like in the existing sequence, but from Joel’s perspective in the front seat rather than Sarah’s. In this vision, Joel is in control. He’s in a scary and unknown situation, but he’s the one with agency. He discovers the infected neighbor, he rushes home to safety and gets his gun, he assures his daughter it’s alright, he sits alongside the driver and tells him what to do. As disturbing and out-ofcontrol as this situation is, the player’s position from Joel’s perspective is generally one of control. Sarah, on the other hand, is quite the opposite. She wakes up unsure what’s happening. She sees things escalating but has no idea exactly why it’s happening. When Joel shows up, she hides behind him while he defends her, and when she’s put in the car she’s left with no influence on the events around her at all, watching helplessly while the world falls apart and her father and uncle work to protect her from it. The difference here is fairly obvious, in terms of the game’s tone. One puts the player in a position of relative power (if still rather uncertain), while the other puts the player in a position of helplessness. But while that’s crucial to the game’s tone, it’s not actually the most important effect of this opening sequence’s interactive design; not only is the player in a position of helplessness as Sarah, but the one protecting her (and thus, the player) is Joel. This is part of the biggest trick up The Last of Us’ sleeve when it comes to interactive storytelling: the use of shifting perspective to change our outlook in pivotal moments and

OCTOBER 2020 | LEVEL STORY

create an uncomfortable dissonance between Joel and the player. That second part doesn’t really manifest until later in the game, but the first part is a defining feature of the game’s opening moments. It’s easy enough for the game to put the player in the position of the protector and say, “This is your daughter, you care about her, now keep her safe.” But they chose instead to design a firsthand experience of what it’s like to depend on Joel for safety. For most of this opening, the player is a passive observer of a world going mad, and the only thing standing between them and that madness is Joel. The player has to look up to him, as Sarah does, to see him as someone who will do his best to keep them safe because they can’t do it themselves. That perspective only changes in time for a futile attempt to protect Sarah, and the tragedy of the moment is rooted not only in Joel’s failure to protect her, but the player’s personal identification with the character who’s now dying in their arms. The player may not be directly responsible for any of this—this is a scripted event that can’t be changed without breaking the game—but they’re still the one in control when it happens. They go from looking to Joel to protect them, to personifying him when he fails. Deeply feeling the need to be protected, then deeply feeling the failure to protect. There’s no doubt that Sarah’s death is the most emotional moment of this sequence, and perhaps even the most overtly emotional moment of the whole game (despite the more subtle, conflicted emotions of the ending potentially outranking it for sheer emotional volume and power). But that emotion is owed in large part to the buildup, and Naughty Dog’s decision to play with perspective in the way they did. And that kind of interactive storytelling is what really makes this opening as memorable and impactful as it is.

SAMUEL GRONSETH

is the creator, writer, and host of the popular YouTube channel, “Games as Lit. 101.” https://www.youtube.com/user/gamesasliterature

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W H O I S R E E A A LL R

Written by Danielle Karthauser

OCTOBER 2020 | LEVEL STORY

T E E

H N N

E E M M Y Y ?? E Written by Danielle Carpenter

The Last of Us does not have a clear villain. In video games, villains translate to being the final boss who functions as a means for the player to witness the game’s climax and test their skills with the game. The lack of a final boss in The Last of Us still surprises me. My first playthrough was a general mess as I never mastered the game’s mechanics. As I neared the end, I dreaded who or what I would face because I knew my combat skills weren’t up to the task. While the final gauntlet challenged me, it didn’t feel incredibly different from the rest of the game. As I rushed through the halls with Ellie, my body tensed up as I feared I would get caught. Who would be waiting for me at the elevator? What was I about to face? In my experience, whenever a game presents a heightened situation or problem to be solved, the player will be the one solving it. But this did not happen. It turned out the game was over, apart from one final gameplay segment walking through some forest. With no final boss in the game, it begs the question: who is the real enemy in The Last of Us? Joel and Ellie face a plethora of enemies throughout the game. There are the human enemies: the military, hunters who prey on people invading their territory, bandits who raid areas far from quarantine zones, smugglers who work to acquire

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Having a final boss may risk undermining the themes of the game... No one person is the villain of this story. and deliver illegal goods, and cannibals who consume human flesh. Then there are the Fireflies, the militia group fighting against military oppression to restore “peace” and government. Joel works in direct opposition to their goals, though they are never placed as a primary force of antagonism. Even when he does work with them by bringing Ellie across the country, it isn’t because he wants to carry their agenda. Then there are the non-sentient enemies, the infected. Infection moves through four stages: runner, stalker, clicker, and bloater. All four pose a threat, though each is unique in its approach. Runners charge toward you while stalkers lurk quietly so they are difficult to find and can sneak up on you. Clickers are a late stage of infected where the infection takes over the person’s face so they can’t see. They use hearing to find their victims and make clicking noises to create sound waves. Bloaters, however, are the final stage of the infected. Their entire body grows massive and grotesque, and they hurl mounds of spores at people. Outside of gameplay, there is still more potential for a possible capital B bad guy. Marlene, leader of the Fireflies, is a good contender as she stands in direct opposition to Joel’s belief system. Joel has no love for her cause, and she gives the order to perform surgery on Ellie that will kill her for the possibility of discovering a cure. Although the player never has to fight Marlene, we watch Joel defeat her in a cut scene. Marlene fits the villain description because her views oppose Joel’s. Joel also positions himself as a potential villain. After being attacked by hunters in Pittsburgh, Ellie asks how he knew about the ambush. “I’ve been on both sides,” Joel responds. Not only was Joel a smuggler in Boston but played the part of a hunter offscreen. At one point in the beginning of the game, Joel and Tess kill a handful of men on their way to Robert, a two-bit gangster. They chase Robert down and murder him. Later in the game, after Ellie is kidnapped by David and Joel goes out looking for her, he interrogates two men to find her. He ties one guy up and beats the other before killing them both. This isn’t to say any of these people would not have done the same to Joel, but that is not the point. Joel and those two men are the product of this world. Both perform villainous actions.

OCTOBER 2020 | LEVEL STORY

The end of the game reinforces the theory that Joel is meant to be the villain of the story. He actively works to keep the Fireflies from finding a cure for the cordyceps. From killing a bunch of Firefly men to killing the doctor himself, Joel acts in service of selfish motivations. On reflection and re-play, finding a central enemy has proved fruitless. Having a final boss may risk undermining the themes of the game. The Last of Us does not hand us a traditional hero who comes to take down the moral bad. No one person is the villain of this story. When looking at a conflict such as Ellie and David’s dilemma, it is not just about cannibalism (although many remember David for this reason). It begins because Joel and Ellie murdered David’s men at the lab. Although this was self-defense, the same could be said of other people Joel and Ellie have killed. Violence is rampant in this story and comes in a variety of forms. It is a game of survival of the fittest. It is all a cycle that started with the pandemic. When you get to the core of this game, it becomes clear that the virus itself is the villain. Many small conflicts exist between characters throughout the text, but deep down it is a person vs. nature story. The acts of violence that Joel and Ellie perform are no better and no worse than the violence enacted on them. It all boils down to survival in a world that has been ruined by the pandemic. People are performing in reaction to the world’s new demands. The pandemic broke down societal structures. The world lives in chaos. Building on this, the game seems to suggest that the real enemy is not just nature but the human condition and how a pandemic can bring out the worst of people, whether their actions are conscious or unconscious due to being infected. After the mass outbreak of the cordyceps, society spiraled. Although the Fireflies want to rebuild and FEDRA is doing their best (their best being very poor) to keep what is left of society under control, no one is able to escape using violence as a tool for survival. Joel and Ellie are pitted against many enemies while also acting as enemies themselves. There are no good people here, only survivors. The lack of a true final boss in this game is a statement in and of itself. Everyone is the villain in someone else’s life in this game. The pandemic ruptured society, and in doing so, cracked open the worst of humanity: that we will do anything to survive. Anything.

DANIELLE CARPENTER

is an avid reader and writer. She graduated from West Chester University with a BA in English Lit., and is the creator of Level Story Magazine. https://dcarpenter.carrd.co/

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Medium,

Rare 22

OCTOBER 2020 | LEVEL STORY

Written by Travis Ryans

When Joel murdered a doctor in cold blood, I wasn’t sure how to feel. When the game cut to black after Ellie’s cryptic “okay,” I wasn’t sure how to feel. Both of those moments pale in comparison to the pained ambivalence of hearing that HBO will be adapting the story of The Last of Us into a television series. If Reddit is any indication, everyone else seemed elated by the prospect. So why was I so conflicted? I mean, this is a terrible idea…right? Basic pattern recognition should tell us this is a terrible idea. Video games don’t make for great movies, we’ve learned this time and time again. Entire podcasts have been dedicated to showing how this form of adaptation is destined for failure. Either they’re hilarious campy messes like Super Mario Bros and Mortal Kombat, or they’re just mediocre action films like Resident Evil and Tomb Raider. Interactive experiences just can’t be properly translated into a passive medium. At least, that was my initial reaction. In 1964, media theorist Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase “the medium is the message” in his book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. This adage, in short, posits that the medium by which a message is delivered (say, a story or a news broadcast), is just as crucial to the context of the message as the content of the message itself. With my basic knowledge as a media student (dropout), I felt fairly justified in my suspicion of this new rendition of The Last of Us, but no one else shared my reservations. I felt like the Grinch listening down on Whoville as I watched the internet excitedly fan-cast the series, and speculate wildly about the various scenes and locales. I wracked my brain trying to balance out which screen adaptations had been done successfully, and which had been done poorly, when I realized that the comparison I needed was actually hiding inside The Last of Us all along.

It’s at this point that I would like to re-direct you dear reader, to watch The Last of Us Alternate Ending on YouTube. In it, Neil Druckmann playfully ambushes Troy Baker (the actor for Joel) and re-frames the ending as a musical without warning him. Whether this was a fun prank, a way to blow off steam, or an acting exercise to help explore the scene, it reveals a deeper truth about video games: they have an odd literary similarity to the Broadway musical. The Broadway musical is a unique medium that was born out of a hybrid of theatre and opera, much in the way that video games are a cross between a physical game or sport, and a television series or film. It has also evolved as a storytelling medium, from empty spectacle to its current form of storytelling. That is to say, The Last of Us is to Pong, what Wicked is to Paris, a musical so bare of story that “critics could not find the plot.” Each medium is at its best when it’s playing to its strengths, and they both give the audience unique perspectives that are not afforded to other visual media. Listening to Joel sing through his anger and confusion in that silly clip is actually a rare insight into his psyche that

THE LAST OF US “ALTERNATE” ENDING Watch the surprise The Last of Us alternate ending that was shown during the PAX Prime 2013 panel “Pitching The Last of Us.” http://bit.ly/alternate-ending

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we can only approximate through his taciturn dialogue in a cutscene. Likewise, being in player control of Joel while he murders a defenseless doctor creates a unique sense of sympathy and dissonance from his actions that can’t be achieved in a passive cinematic either. That isn’t to say that musicals and video games are both superior to all other media, but one must simply consider the expectations of the medium when adapting. Failing to understand how the features of a piece’s medium worked in its favour will inevitably mean that you don’t know which ones to play up in the new medium. Originally released in 1967 as a feature film Mel Brooks’ The Producers was eventually adapted into a stage musical in 2001. The Broadway show was very successful, in no small part because it was adapted well to its medium. Songs were added beyond the diegetic performances, and the musical format only served to heighten the satire of Broadway musicals themselves. Following this, the musical was adapted back into another feature in 2005, which was nowhere near as successful as its two predecessors. This new film was almost an exact re-creation of the stage musical, to its own detriment. It was all filmed with three-walled sets from the same angle, and did very little to adapt itself back into the strengths of cinema again. What lesson can The Last of Us possibly learn from The Producers? It needs to respect its source material, without being blindly faithful to it. The act of transformation alone will not save a show. Chicago, widely considered to be one of the best movie musical adaptations, could have very easily fallen into the same trap as the 2005 Producers film. It too used elaborate stage numbers, but it framed them through the vivid imagination of its protagonist, the fame-hungry Roxie Hart. Each performance was a surrealist interpretation of the events around her, instead of being treated as human expression in the real world that just happened to look exactly like a stage show. The cinematic language of a courtroom drama doesn’t allow for burlesque dancers and a three-ring circus. By juxtaposing the two realities against one another, the audience gets a humorous look into the viewpoints of both Roxie and her huxter lawyer Billy Flynn while still grounding the audience in the real world. The strength of The Last of Us lies in its characters. The bond between Ellie and Joel, and how they’re reflected by the people they encounter. Bill is a reflection of Joel’s emotional detachment, Henry and Sam are a lesson in dependency, David is a logical extreme of survival at any costs. Cinema is not bound to a single character’s perspective and could give the audience a chance to explore this ensemble in more detail. It will also have to find ways to make up for how the interactivity strengthens our connection to the characters.

OCTOBER 2020 | LEVEL STORY

Conversely, some elements will need to be left behind. The game may be in the stealth action genre, but that requires the patience and control that is only possible in a video game. Speeding up that pace into something watchable will make Joel into some kind of ninja and likely send the wrong message. He will need to be slowly presented as brutal and nearly barbaric to sell the ending that the game has established. The crafting system in the game may have helped inform us on Joel’s resourcefulness, but watching him search every last drawer for isopropyl and scissor blades is going to kill the pacing. Movie musicals have also taught us that the creator must be carefully chosen. I personally love The King’s Speech, and think Tom Hooper is a very talented director. I also think that hiring a man who has been vocal about his disdain for melodrama may not have been the best choice for a sung-through operetta whose title is literally translated to: The Miserables. Adaptations aren’t suited to a director who chooses to force his performers to sing live for a movie because it’s, “like Broadway,” without factoring in that movies shoot for roughly 12 hours a day, and musicals are performed at most twice. That would be like forcing the HBO Last of Us actors to do the entire series in motion capture because the game did it. I’m not even really engaging in comedic hyperbole, considering that’s exactly what Tom Hooper did with his next musical. Choosing to impose hyper-realism on Cats - where the main appeal is face paint, leotards, and legwarmers - is a catastrophic failure to understand both mediums he’s working in. HBO themselves have been guilty of this lack of vision in the past, having hired two completely inexperienced writers to helm their largest television series to date, Game of Thrones. The book series’ looming threat is an overt reference to climate change, and HBO chose to hire two showrunners who boast that they think “themes are for eighth-grade book reports” 7 It’s probably safe to say that the majority of previous video game adaptations have been soulless cash-ins from studios that just wanted to make a safe bankable product, and didn’t have any appreciation for the source material or the fans. Thankfully, HBO does not seem to have made this same mistake. They have hired the acclaimed writer of Chernobyl, Craig Mazin, to work alongside Neil Druckmann himself, the writer and director of The Last of Us. Neil was given complete control over the story, and it’s hard to imagine him choosing to share his work with someone who didn’t have its best interests at heart. The path to a great adaptation for this game is not a clear one, and is filled with many questions. How will a new audience ever feel about Sarah the way I did after spending time playing as her? How can a television audi-

ence so used to seeing red-shirts murdered to establish stakes in the first five minutes, appreciate the shocking loss of Sarah when video game familiarity leads you to believe she’ll be a main character in the story? A television audience won’t have to struggle with deciding whether to take a solemn look down at Tess’ corpse, or use every second she bought you to escape. How can someone appreciate the desperation I felt in that surgery ward as I tried to walk away? As I searched the room for a non-lethal weapon, fired warning shots, and was then forced to eventually kill the doctor and humanity’s last hope for salvation? How can anyone truly feel guilty themselves for Ellie’s misplaced trust in Joel, when they were never the ones to betray her? Those are all great questions, but they all could have answers, even if I’m not the one who has them myself. At the end of the day, it’s elitist to deprive other people of this story just because I think they’re experiencing it wrong. Heck, my boyfriend loves The Last of Us and he’s never even picked up the controller. Can I really say that he doesn’t love it as much as I do, because he’s only watched me play through it? There’s endless ways this series could breathe new life into one of my favorite games. The Last of Us is already a feast for the eyes, but who knows what kind of images we could get from a locked camera, properly framed, with good lighting. Imagine the prosthetics work that can be done with the clickers and bloaters. I can watch without fear that Joel will commit certain atrocities - I imagine the doctor killing will have to stay faithful, but I’m of course referring to the cruel choice of leaving Ellie hanging for a high five at the dam. As a television creator myself, and an avid video game fan, I’m cautiously excited to see what this adaptation brings. Which story elements will be kept, and which will be changed, to reflect the medium it’s being told in? If the series can’t naturally reproduce the same emotions I felt in those moments, what changes will they make to evoke that experience? Furthermore, the series has expanded since that initial game. Will we see Ellie’s relationship with Riley? Will we see Abby at the Firefly hospital? Will we see hints of what is to come in an unannounced The Last of Us Part III? Mostly, I’m intrigued to hear the takes of new audiences on the story of Joel Miller. The video game discourse surrounding Joel’s actions has been fascinating to me. I can’t help but feel like the player-protagonist relationship has influenced people’s sympathy for Joel, and it will be interesting to see whether a new audience feels the same way. Prestige television is the realm of the anti-hero, after all. How will they present Joel to an audience that has likely followed the journeys of Walter White, Tony

Soprano, and Dexter Morgan? If this is successful, who knows what this could bring for the future of video game adaptations. In a perfect world, this could position Neil Druckmann as a new Howard Ashman: a man who understood the book musical so intimately that he was uniquely suited to bring it to animated features. Ashman was the creative mastermind behind Disney’s “renaissance period,” and famously fought against studio head Jeffrey Katzenberg who did not respect the medium. He taught a masterclass on the musical to the creators at Disney, showing them the importance of certain genre elements, and how they could be adapted. Without him, we would have lost masterpieces like “Part of Your World” for being too sappy. Druckmann knew how to apply interactivity so carefully in The Last of Us, that I’m optimistic he’ll understand the new medium well enough to know what works and what doesn’t, in the same way Ashman did. The only thing that’s certain right now is that none of these decisions could impact my love for the game. The issue of video game preservation aside, I will always have that story of Joel and Ellie’s journey in my memory, and not even the most cynical and butchered cash grab can take it from me. And if one of my friends watches the show and decides they want to play it for themselves? They will get to borrow my game free of charge, so long as they let me watch them play it.

TRAVIS RYANS

is an Assistant Director in the film and television industry, as well as the co-host of the podcast “Rainbow Road” - a podcast about queerness in gaming. Twitter: @travisryans @RainbowRoadPod

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OCTOBER 2020 | LEVEL STORY

Joel’s Broken Watch

Written by Danielle Carpenter

“Here. You kept complaining about your broken watch, so I figured, you know. Do you like it?” This line of dialogue is among the first moments of The Last of Us. Sarah, Joel’s daughter, buys him a watch after his broke some time ago and he hadn’t yet bought another himself. After she says this, Joel then proceeds to make believe that the watch is broken to jest with his daughter. It is a light-hearted moment that works to establish the relationship between these two characters. But more importantly, there is much more happening than first meets the eye. Naughty Dog is subtly setting up a core theme for the game: time. The opening scenes of the game, a pseudo-prologue, beautifully set up this theme in regards to Joel and his character arc. Joel receives a watch from his daughter since his was broken. The watch, an artifact which Joel wears for the rest of the game, is not only explicitly tied to

Sarah for giving it to him, but tied to Joel’s personhood. The moment she no longer breathes is when Joel’s world stops. He had joked about the watch being broken, not knowing that this foreshadowed his own fate. Throughout The Last of Us, the entire crux of Joel’s character hinges on Sarah’s death. 20 years afterward and the start of the cordyceps pandemic, Joel has still not moved past it. He doesn’t talk about it, doesn’t think about it, and all around seems intent on pretending it never happened. Although a lot has changed since that day, Joel has not dealt with the death of his daughter. In that way, he is stuck in time. Joel has become hardened by that night (understandably so). He is cynical, aggravated, and detached from those around him. Joel’s broken watch is a symbol for his entire character, and throughout the entire game he never takes it off. It is no surprise that the person who points out Joel’s broken watch is Ellie, the character who will become a surrogate Sarah and

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often pushes against Joel’s worldview. Ellie believes in dealing with problems while Joel would rather toss them under the rug where they grow, fester, and linger. The relationship between Joel and Ellie is a core component in The Last of Us. When they first meet, Joel is adamant about avoiding new relationships. The very idea of coming to care about another human being terrifies him, because deep down he is scared that he will be hurt again. Although he clearly cares for Tess, he doesn’t show this care actively. It is scarce and removed. His visceral reaction to taking Ellie on is not just a guy who doesn’t want to be weighed down by an annoying kid, though the game could have easily gone in this direction. The fact that Ellie is young and close to Sarah’s age only scares Joel further. If he comes to care for another person, that may lead him to move past Sarah and Joel can’t do that. He does not want to deal with it. After Tess dies, Joel wants to move forward. When Ellie mentions her, Joel angrily tells her that they will not talk about Tess, his tone suggesting that Ellie has crossed a line. “You don’t bring up Tess - ever,” he tells her. “Matter of fact, we can just keep our histories to ourselves.” Ellie wants to talk about it and turns to an adult to do so, but Joel won’t talk. He does not deal with things. He defends this worldview later in an optional dialogue prompt after Henry and Sam’s deaths: Ellie: “I want to talk about it.” Joel: “No.” Ellie: “Why not?” Joel: “How many times do we need to go over this? Things happen...and we move on.” Ellie: “It’s just…” Joel: “That’s enough.” Ellie: “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

Much of the journey in The Last of Us is Joel’s cold exterior thawing because of Ellie. For 20 years he had not allowed himself to be emotionally available to someone else, but Ellie slowly begins to bring out this side of him. But instead of emotionally healing to let go of Sarah, Joel unconsciously replaces Sarah with Ellie. In this way, he has still not truly let go of what happened 20 years ago and losing Ellie is essentially Joel reliving that night all over again. Ellie may have brought Joel out of his shell, but Joel is still stuck at that moment in time. He still wears his broken watch. Tommy, on the other hand, has moved forward with life in the best way he can. He once followed Joel and then the Fireflies, but later moved to his own path by working to create a safe community with others. Tommy thrives on the relationships he creates with other people, while Joel runs from them. When Joel reunites with his brother, Tommy still has Sarah’s picture and tries to give it to him as a way to remember her. Joel apathetically refuses the gift, exemplifying the large difference between him and his brother. More than anything, Tommy is an example that change is possible. A person can move on from the horrors of their past. That doesn’t mean the past goes away. Tommy directly references the start of the pandemic and says that what he and Joel did to survive was not worth living for. Clearly he is living with a lot of dark stuff, but he is moving forward while Joel still can’t. Additionally, the game structures itself in a way that promotes change. Each section takes place in a season of the year - summer, fall, winter, and spring. The seasons are a reminder that change is constant. Moving past summer, the longest section of the game, into fall is a strange cathartic moment. Walking through the university while leaves crunch beneath your feet and crickets chirp in nearby bushes is a small

MORE OF THE LAST OF US LISTEN: Endure and Survive: A The Last of Us Podcast Sox and Monkey explore the depths of story and stupid jokes within The Last of Us.

OCTOBER 2020 | LEVEL STORY

WATCH: Games as Lit. 101 - Literary Analysis: The Last of Us The Games Professor analyzes how The Last of Us accomplishes such inspired storytelling.

detail that presents natural, positive change. Life moves forward and things change. Whether a person moves with it is another matter. I have a feeling this was not intended by the developers, being that seasons are a natural way to frame story progression, but the fact that seasons are examples of change in a story where the main character just can’t change is very revealing. If this were another story, Joel may have ended the game by taking his watch off, symbolically letting go of Sarah and coming to terms with her death, despite how cruel the circumstances. He may have listened to Marlene and thought past his own pain that he holds inside, allowing Ellie to die for the good of humanity. Perhaps he would have returned to Tommy and grown to support his cause. But that is not Joel’s story. As Ellie reflects about her guilt for being alive in the wake of all those who died before her who didn’t have a chance to survive like she did, Joel intervenes to say that he too struggled with surviving while others died around him (his rebuttal completely tone deaf in the wake of recent events). As he says this, he slowly grazes the broken watch with his hand and briefly glances down at it. In this way, the story has come full circle. While Joel has changed as a character since his time with Ellie, he is also still in the same place where he started, unable to move past Sarah’s death by replacing her with a different daughter figure. He inadvertently sees Ellie as Sarah, robbing Ellie of her autonomy in the process. The watch is still on his wrist, still broken. Because Joel has not moved past Sarah, he killed dozens of Fireflies, a doctor, and Marlene so that he could hold on to the one person that made him feel like she was still there: Ellie. He still

hasn’t moved on from Sarah and his actions show this. Losing Ellie would mean he would have to go through the pain again, the pain that he has been keeping locked away for so long. Joel doesn’t confront feelings because dealing with them and moving forward is more difficult than surviving. In this way, Joel ends where he started, unable to reconcile with his past, thus lying and killing, all the while convincing himself that these were the right things to do. While the world and people change around Joel, he does not move. His broken watch is a symbol of his inability to move forward. His worldview is locked, still stuck at the hour Sarah was killed. Only when Joel forces himself to internalize what happened can he confront the choices he has made since. Doing this would make him face himself, something he can’t do.

DANIELLE CARPENTER

is an avid reader and writer. She graduated from West Chester University with a BA in English Lit., and is the creator of Level Story Magazine. https://dcarpenter.carrd.co/

MORE OF THE LAST OF US WATCH: The Last of Us Part II and Ambigous Endings Red Angel explores why ambiguous endings can sometimes strengthen a piece of work.

LISTEN: The Last of Us: The Daddyfication of Gayming A pair of gaymers, Travis and Mike, discuss the world of gaming through a queer lens.

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If We’re The Virus, Where’s The Cure? 30

OCTOBER 2020 | LEVEL STORY

Written by Matilda Knarr

hen the “Nature is Healing, We Are The Virus” meme appeared online in late March of 2020, many remarked on its similarities to The Last Of Us. The images of fish in the Venice canals and deer taking over city parks in Japan drew an immediate parallel to the Salt Lake Zoo’s escaped giraffes. The parallels went deeper than just this scene, though, evoking everything from the cordycep fungus’s backstory to the ivy-clad ruins of the environmental design. There’s a deeper common ideology at place, underpinning both the meme and The Last of Us: climate change is karmic retribution for humanity’s choices. Nature will reclaim its space and flourish without us. Humanity was just a quick flash in the pan, always doomed by its own hubris. This is called “doomerism.” It’s not an uncommon point of view in 2020. The meme was only popular because people knew someone who spoke that way - an aunt on Facebook, or a colleague making small talk as you wait for others to join a zoom call. It wasn’t designed to mock the idea behind the text itself; its humor was in its familiarity. It’s strangely comforting, isn’t it? Doomerism lets us hold on to the optimistic notion that the world is fair, and the instant gratification of our everyday actions will only be punished quickly at the end of our lives. It frames our guilt, not as a result of our choices, but as an inevitable byproduct of existing. There’s nothing we can do as individuals to turn the tide in an epic battle between the natural world and mankind. But, as we’ve all been told by our mothers while throwing a hissy fit, “Life’s not fair.” We know that 100 companies “account for 72% of global industrial GHG emissions,” 8 and that the expenses of climate change “are borne disproportionately by people in poverty.” 9 We’ve seen Flint, Standing Rock, and Hurricane Katrina. We cannot feign ignorance on climate inequality in the age of Twitter. As well, most indigenous communities still work with the planet’s resources mindfully, providing a model for smaller communities to live sustainably. Beyond living carbon-neutral lives, indigenous activists have also been injured protecting the land they’re on from environmentally exploitative developments. Despite opting out of the modern industrial system, they’re still being “punished”. The doomerist framing is not benign, either; the assumption that climate change will render humans entirely extinct encourages a specific and dangerous kind of nihilism. Very few events could kill every human at once, and there will be survivors of any single natural disaster. The decision to let the planet die is an easier one to make if there’s no human life on it to suffer because of your mistakes, but that’s not the reality of the situation.

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The Last Of Us does a good job of showcasing the danger of this kind of detachment. After Sarah’s death, Joel’s life loses meaning, and he’s largely unable to connect with others. Despite living to see the restructuring of society under FEDRA, he’s still almost entirely anti-social, with the exception of Tess. While Joel does serve as a physical power fantasy and strong masculine archetype, he’s not aspirational. He’s not happy. Enter: Ellie, prospective savior of the human race, and of Joel’s humanity specifically. Much of the game is her convincing Joel that silly things like toys, comics, and jokebooks have a place in this world, while selling him on the importance of genuine connection as well. It’s a slow process for Joel; from appreciating Ellie’s company, to relying on her, to putting himself in danger for her, to staying with her past Jackson - the first altruistic choice he makes that isn’t just about delivering Ellie to a checkpoint. Joel’s relationship with Ellie becomes a gateway to further empathy as well. She encourages him to help a wounded hunter, and when they meet Sam and Henry, she de-escalates the conflict between the patriarchs until they’re sitting around a hearty meal and talking motorcycles. By the time they get to Jackson, big alpha male Joel asks his little brother for help because he’s too emotionally involved. What growth! Because of this, the choice to leave Ellie’s voice out of the game’s climax (having her passed out, not offering any flashbacks, and characters barely mentioning what she would want) removes her agency in an interesting way. Up to this point, The Last of Us has established solid feminist bona fides, with their female characters having complex internal lives, status within the narrative’s world, and agency to affect the plot meaningfully. So when the game ignores Ellie’s perspective from the scene here, we can assume it’s not disinterest. The creators are making a point. Joel has to dehumanize and objectify Ellie (not sexually, literally) to rationalize acting on what he considers “her behalf.” Her body, hanging limp in the player’s arms, reminds us of Joel’s motivations as we mow down enemies just as depersonalized. Joel at no point argues that this would be what she would want, nor does he suggest they wake her up and ask her. All this talk about her uniqueness, her value, has led here, to her inevitable commodification. Joel is, in effect, resource hoarding.

OCTOBER 2020 | LEVEL STORY

...believing humanity is irredeemable as a whole gives us an excuse for selfishness, because our kindness wouldn’t do anything. This approach to scarcity and environmental crisis is quite similar to ecofascism, an ideology that centers closed borders, increased state power over resource distribution, and the philosophies behind eugenics. Ecofascism traditionally defines an in-group of deserving survivors - the most “modern” civilization - against an outgroup that can run along lines of race, class, religion, nationality, and more. In modern politics, these racial outgroups are blamed for the climate crisis based on overpopulation, poor safety regulations, or in the case of Jewish people, shadowy cabals that run the world. This is a fixture of post-pandemic society in The Last of Us. FEDRA uses closed borders, rationing, and violent policing in the name of keeping residents safe. Importantly, it’s also the governing ideology that leads to Sarah’s death at the start of the game. The military using a “shoot first, ask questions later” approach to protect a border in the midst of environmental disaster is a story that exists today, and that’s only going to get more prominent. Instead of recognizing and resisting this ideology, Joel adopts it as a defence. He internalizes the message of scarcity implied by using ration cards as currency, and the fear of betrayal keeps his dealings with others impersonal and hostile. His mistrust becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and from there, his worldview upholds itself. If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a zombie’s head. This mindset gets reflected in the gameplay, too. We fight infected and soldiers and cannibals, all as ruthless as the others. While the game works

mechanically to make you like Ellie, it’s doing just as much to paint everyone else as an obstacle to your progress-- an “other” stopping necessary progress. This ends up confirming for Joel that violence is the only way to survive in this world. By the time we get to Salt Lake City, the game has primed us to understand Joel’s outlook. Ellie is an aberration, one of the few lifelines the game throws to us, and she’s become irreplaceable. It’s been “us” (Joel and Ellie) against “the world” for so long that it’s hard not to feel like her death would doom us too. This is where the two schools of thought, doomerism and ecofascism, come together. Joel’s arc and final decision show how climate doomerism and disdain for humankind can be a stepping stone to ecofascism: believing humanity is irredeemable as a whole gives us an excuse for selfishness, because our kindness wouldn’t do anything. What’s the point in saving everyone else if we’re all just going to kill each other anyway? The game itself doesn’t endorse Joel’s perspective. He never gets to justify his decision, nor is he rewarded for his choice. Instead, we end on Ellie’s suspicious face, seeing that the two are already getting more distant by the second, as she tries to deny to herself that someone she trusted would doom humanity like that. It’s clear there was no resolution where Ellie could still fully trust Joel, because he’s made it clear that her life doesn’t have inherent value to him - it’s conditional on him feeling a kinship with her. The most important part of the game’s commentary, to me, is the optimism of Jackson. The community thrives both because people are inherently collaborative, but also because it’s run by Tommy. When they’re reunited, Tommy tells Joel that he still has nightmares about their time together pre-Jackson, and goes as far to say that what they did to survive “wasn’t worth it.”

This admission points to what makes Tommy and Joel different: Tommy can admit that his choices were selfish, and not natural or earned. In opening Jackson to outsiders who need help, he’s acknowledging that antisocial behavior and self-interest aren’t inherent to “humanity,” they’re just a response to scarcity and fear. Eliminate that scarcity, protect one another, and everyone can benefit together. Society is not a zero-sum game. By foregrounding Ellie’s perspective as they return to Jackson in the final moments of The Last Of Us, the game makes us face the same questions she’s left with. What do we do with a life given to us unethically? If death is a meaningless sacrifice, and protecting our lives at any cost will just continue this pain vicariously, how do we find meaning and morality moving forward? The answer comes in the same place we found the question: Ellie. Trust others. Open up. Enjoy and spread the small joys. Search for community. Sacrifice what you can. Remember, even if humanity begot the virus, humanity will also beget the immunization.

MATILDA KNARR

is a writer and media professional from Toronto, Canada. She has a BFA in Image Arts from Ryerson University, and produces Rainbow Road: a Gay Gaming Podcast. Twitter: @RainbowRoadPod

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ESCORT IS NOW IN SESSION Written by Travis Ryans

OCTOBER 2020 | LEVEL STORY

“We should go to the main control room.” 10 This is the now infamous line you will repeatedly hear from Natalya as you move through the Bunker in the original Goldeneye 007 - and you’ll often hear it over the sound of the gunfire she’s placed herself in the middle of, but still muffled by the concrete wall she seems intent on walking into. Escort missions in video games are such an established cliche that even discussing how annoying they are has become a tiresome subject in and of itself. Comparing the extensive (yet incomplete) list of examples on the TV Tropes page for “Escort Missions,” to the overwhelming number of articles decrying the annoyance of such sequences, shows that audiences became exhausted with this idea much faster than developers did. Designing The Last of Us as a roughly 25 hour long escort mission is certainly a bold choice, and one that could have easily backfired. After watching the documentary and reading interviews, it’s very obvious to me that the developers were aware of the inherent dangers and were careful in their decisions. In the seven years since the game’s release, I haven’t heard a single person bemoan Ellie’s presence in the game, and it’s a testament to the hard work of her creators. In order to understand the success of this sidekick-turned-protagonist, one must look at the history of the escort mission, how it’s historically been implemented and received, and what Naughty Dog did differently. For the purposes of this discussion, let’s clarify what an escort mission is. You, as a protagonist, are given a non-player character that you must guide and protect through some (if not all) of a game, without allowing them to die or be captured. If this does happen, it usually causes a fail state. That is to say, Pokémon can get back up with a simple Revive item, but having a Phoenix Down on hand isn’t going to bring

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Naughty Dog uses the escort mission to tell a story, not just about Ellie and Joel, but a meta-narrative about the idea of an escort mission itself. Ellie back from a bullet to the head. This also typically does not apply to any game where you can directly control the actions of the escorted party, because mechanically it feels less like protection of someone else and more like self-preservation. I’ve read and heard many a rant on the dreaded concept of escort missions, but they all seem to focus on the mechanical player experience. Rather than re-tread the ground of people much smarter than me, I’m going to focus on the impact these mechanics have on the narrative. Many players assume the narrative of a game is isolated to the dialogue in cutscenes, and forget how the interactive nature of the medium causes the gameplay to be just as crucial to the storytelling. A surface glance would seem to indicate that an escort mission is designed to make us feel compassionate and protective of another person. In practice, these sequences frustrate players with bad A.I, pathfinding, and walking speeds. This leaves players feeling like more of a babysitter or sheep dog rather than a valiant protector. It’s hard to feel compassionate for a character who is actively obstructing your progress, and creating more work for you. This dynamic can be used to a developer’s advantage, like with Princess Ruto in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. It seems the creators wanted you to view her as spoiled and bratty, and I think they might have been a little too successful in their goal. You follow her inside a giant fish

OCTOBER 2020 | LEVEL STORY

(long story) trying to convince her to help you, and when she finally does, she promptly sits down and commands you to carry her throughout the dungeon. While carrying her, you may not use your shield or weapons to defend yourself from enemies, and some mistakes could cause her to warp back to where you originally found her, functionally erasing your progress. She can technically be used to deal damage against enemies but as this is never explained, the only real way to discover this is by throwing her at them. I have to assume that if you’re choosing to toss this petulant child to a monster, it wasn’t because of her presumed offensive capabilities. This all serves to reinforce your resentment towards her, and seems to be one of the rare cases where the inherent frustration of this mechanic is actually supporting the narrative. I am very glad that neither I nor Naughty Dog ever seemed to consider the possibility of yeeting Ellie at a clicker. We’ve come a long way, baby. Narratively, escort missions are most often used to create a power fantasy for the player. You are strong, they are weak, and you must protect them. This means that the escorted character is often a child such as the Little Sisters in Bioshock, or naive creatures like Trico in The Last Guardian. However, just as often, the person in need of your protection is an otherwise capable adult woman. Players are likely to remember Resident Evil 4 where they must protect the President’s daughter Ashley, or at least have her hide in a dumpster for safety. While Ashley is young, she’s apparently still old enough to sexually proposition Leon at the end of the game, which adds a layer of “sex as reward” to this already misogynist trope. It’s disappointing to think that the strongest female escort before The Last of Us is Minnie Mouse of all people. In Kingdom Hearts 2 she can use magic (with your help) to deal significant damage to enemies. Meanwhile, adult men are almost never the escorted party, because they aren’t seen as vulnerable and defenseless like their female counterparts. The only example in my gaming experience has been escorting the President to his escape pod in Perfect Dark, but this is hardly surprising given that the game is designed to be a subversion of the sexist James Bond cliches, like with Natalya in Goldeneye. Your companions Jonathan and Elvis must also be escorted

at different points in Perfect Dark, but they are experienced fighters who have weapons and can defend themselves. This is similar to Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor, where the male escort mission is with a capable soldier named Hirgon - however when escorting a female character, you are saving the helpless princess. This is all turned on its head with The Last of Us. While you do have Tess as a companion after the prologue, she is not framed as needing your protection. She is running the smuggling operations and giving orders to Joel. In the first combat sequence of the game, she actually fires the first shot and instructs Joel to flank the enemy so she can take them out. Marlene, even while bleeding out from a gunshot wound, also holds her own in a fight. This game has no interest in making its female characters damsels in distress. The majority of the game is spent with Ellie, who could have easily been seen as a bratty child just like Ruto had she not been handled carefully. The relationship between audience and protagonist is stronger in games than other media because we are in control of them, and we often see them as extensions of ourselves. Through Joel, our first introduction to Ellie is her jumping us with a knife, and then both of us sulking about being forced into each other’s company. She often argues with Joel, and even disobeys him at several points, which should be the cardinal sin of any escort mission. She’s never fired a real gun, doesn’t know how to swim, and nearly gave me a heart attack the first time she decided to try whistling. Why then, do we like her? Much of the frustration with escort missions stems from how our ward impedes us during gameplay, usually combat. In The Last of Us, we are not immediately saddled with this responsibility. Joel does walk with Ellie for a while to the safehouse, but there are no combat encounters, just dialogue and set pieces. Tess joins the group, and takes the burden of conversation off Joel. When you first encounter some enemies, we are only required to run away from them, and don’t actually need to be mindful of Ellie. Even during our first encounter with the infected, Ellie and Tess will safely hang back while Joel carries on ahead. When the ceiling collapses and Joel is separated from Tess, Ellie is trapped on her side. We spend hours getting to know Ellie and bond with her, before we are truly expected to consider her

well-being in combat. Even after that point, Ellie is an ally to us, and not a hindrance. She will call out enemy locations, toss projectiles, and occasionally help free you from enemies grappling Joel. She follows the player closely, and doesn’t remain in our path if walked towards. The developers consciously decided to have Ellie be unable to give away the player’s position in stealth. They knew how crucial it was for players to form a bond with Ellie and they were willing to sacrifice that immersion to make sure we didn’t resent her presence. Ultimately she still can be grabbed by enemies, but this is not an instant fail state and the timer to help rescue her is generous. This bond grows faster than one might expect, given that Joel is our protagonist. He may grow to tolerate Ellie, but it’s a while before he learns to respect her. Even after she saves him from being drowned by a raider, he lashes out at her for not following instructions. She is clearly struggling with having taken her first life, and snaps back at him for not being appreciative or empathetic. The act of being saved by her, coupled with some wonderful performances by the actors and animators, strengthens our attachment to Ellie even while it’s strained with Joel. Joel pushes through and begins to trust Ellie with more responsibility and autonomy, handing her a rifle and asking for her to watch over him when they approach a raider encampment. Again, Naughty Dog makes the choice to have Ellie be safely out of range the first time we see her being given more freedom during combat. We are not forced to worry about her, and can take the opportunity to be genuinely grateful for her assistance. She is now trusted with a gun, which she will use in combat sequences for the rest of the game. This is then put in direct contrast by the following sequence when our pair teams up with Henry and Sam. Henry does not view his younger brother Sam as an adult, and while parenting him, does not allow him to become independent. While playing through this section, I could not help but be reminded of a quote from another post-apocalyptic zombie video game where a man must look out for a young girl in his care that is not his daughter. In Telltale’s The Walking Dead, Lee does not want to shatter Clementine’s

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innocence by forcing her to use a gun, and is given the following advice: “You’re either living or you’re not. You ain’t little, you ain’t a girl, you ain’t a boy, you ain’t strong or smart, you’re alive.” 11 Children don’t have the luxury of just being children in this world. The escort mission works here because in this context we’re not unfairly asking too much of our partner. They have to learn to defend themselves and be part of the team, as cruel as it may seem. They are not infants, they are adults-in-training and we must train them well. Through this lens, we realize that our actions don’t just affect their safety in the moment, but have long-term consequences as well. When the player is split up from Ellie and forced to take care of Sam in the sewers, we are reminded of what this game could have been: being saddled with a child we have no connection to, or investment in, and who does not offer any assistance when we’re in trouble. In her absence, we become grateful for Ellie and the place she has in the game. In a final crushing blow, we’re reminded of what could have happened when Sam gets bit and turns. This cautionary tale could have been Ellie, and we need to stay on the path of allowing her to become independent and resourceful. That’s to say nothing of the foreshadowing of Henry taking his own life, telegraphing how Joel couldn’t stand to live without Ellie. This dynamic reaches its full potential at the first Firefly base when Joel is severely wounded and we struggle to control him as he limps towards the exit. Joel is now the weakened character unable to defend himself, and the player must watch Ellie defeat enemies and keep him safe. This transcends the idea of a simple power fantasy, or a simple shake-

up of the mechanics to keep the player engaged. Naughty Dog uses the escort mission to tell a story, not just about Ellie and Joel, but a meta-narrative about the idea of an escort mission itself. We, as video game players, have now essentially gone on the same journey as Joel. We have had a long history of not wanting to be connected to other people because of how that connection has caused us pain, but through Ellie, we have learned to value and appreciate others and what we can do for each other. It’s not that this subversion has never been done before, but that it’s never been executed this well. Kingdom Hearts for example, has a level that tries to hit some of the same beats, and on the surface seems very similar to The Last of Us’ use of the escort mission. The protagonist, Sora, is deprived of his weapon and must rely on a friend for protection. At the end of the sequence, he proudly proclaims: “My friends are my power,” 12 which indicates that we are meant to have learned the value of friendship, and that we don’t need our weapon for strength. Here’s why this falls flat for me: The second you are deprived of your weapon, the friends who’ve been with you all game - Donald and Goofy - decide that you’re useless to them now and just abandon you. Instead, the character you’re relying on for protection is a stranger that you’ve only just met. He has no real interest in protecting you, other than you both wanting to get past this level. It’s definitely intended to feel like the “You are weak, and Ellie must protect you” inversion of the escort mission, except that you don’t know this stranger and haven’t developed any connection with him. Furthermore, if you’ve built Sora up as a magic user, you were never relying on your weapon

IF YOU LIKE THE LAST OF US, THEN YOU WILL LIKE... MUSIC: I Am Easy to Find by the National Melancholy yet hopeful, this album contains thought provoking lyrics and melodies.

OCTOBER 2020 | LEVEL STORY

BOOK: The Road by Cormac McCarthy A boy and his father walk through a ravaged America, struggling to survive.

anyways, and therefore aren’t weakened. It’s not just that these concepts weren’t developed well, it’s that they’re actually in direct conflict with one another. The line “My friends are my power” doesn’t have the same emotional impact when your friends just left you for dead, and your power has actually been casting fireballs like a mighty sorcerer. The Last of Us succeeds where Kingdom Hearts and others failed because it chose to make the escort mission mechanically relevant and omni-present throughout the game, and focused its theming on the specific bond between Joel and Ellie, instead of an abstract concept of friendship. These bonds take time, and using a mechanic to reinforce friendship can’t just be a one-off twist for a specific level. The Last of Us understands that video game tropes are only bad when they’re used improperly, and this is evident throughout the game. Forced stealth sections are often tedious and frustrating (I’m looking at you Spider-Man), but playing as Ellie in the burning steakhouse is genuinely terrifying and heart-pounding. Quick Time Events are derided as a lazy way to keep players engaged during linear story segments, but forcing us to press the button to murder the doctor as Joel makes us feel culpable for his actions.

I’m excited to see more re-inventions of video game cliches into meaningful experiences for the player. Show me a fetch quest that meditates on the futility of transactional friendships. Show me a fishing mini-game that has environmental impacts on the ecosystem. Show me a teammate who has lasting existential trauma after continually being brought back from the dead. But mostly, and I beg this from the bottom of my heart … show me a morality system that accurately rewards or punishes my choice to pet the dog, you cowards.

TRAVIS RYANS

is an Assistant Director in the film and television industry, as well as the co-host of the podcast “Rainbow Road” - a podcast about queerness in gaming. Twitter: @travisryans @RainbowRoadPod

IF YOU LIKE THE LAST OF US, THEN YOU WILL LIKE... MOVIE: Logan directed by James Mangold When Logan meets a young mutant like him, he must protect her against dark forces.

TV: Chernobyl created by Craig Mazin Mini-series which explores the April 1986 explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

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MAKING FAMILIAR TROPES NEW

OCTOBER 2020 | LEVEL STORY

Written by Danielle Carpenter

ig triple-A games look the same, let’s be honest. When I’m watching previews it often feels like one game being duplicated over and over and over again. They feature a hero, often male, dressed in some sort of military garb, drab environments, and dull colors to reflect the edgy tone of the game. The combat usually feels uninspired and formulaic. Tack on a ridiculously over the top orchestration (usually a reworking of a famous song from the ‘90s) and you have a modern action game trailer. The trend was largely kicked off by Gears of War, a game released exclusively for the Xbox 360 by Epic Games in 2006. Though the game felt revolutionary at the time for its next-gen graphics, it has a lackluster story, the gameplay is repetitive and uninteresting, and the level design is bleak and uninspired. Ubisoft games followed the same pattern, in no small part led by the Tom Clancy and Assassin’s Creed games. In many ways, The Last of Us embodies many of the traits I listed above. It adheres to action game tropes and cliches. Tropes and cliches are not inherently bad in and of themselves. They exist to help consumers understand what they are getting into. But when you look at the way The Last of Us approaches the tropes of action games and action stories, this is where it proves itself to be much more purposeful than others in the genre. The game wastes no time by immediately setting itself apart in the prologue. A typical action game would begin with Joel as the player character. Joel would come home from work, receive a present from his daughter, put her to bed, and then follow his life from there. The player would get to see Joel hear a disturbance at the neighbor’s house and encounter his infected neighbor for the first time. Then they would play as Joel as he runs back home, grabs his gun, and shoots in order to protect

his daughter. That last bit might even contain a triangle button prompt. Following this, the player would also be the one to drive the car, making sure to follow the right path and avoid infected and pedestrians on the street. This section would serve as a good driving minigame. All of this would serve to throw the player immediately into the action, similar to Uncharted 2 which opens on Nathan Drake climbing out of a train that hangs off a cliff. The Last of Us chooses to have us play as Sarah, Joel’s daughter. Unlike Joel, Sarah is young and powerless. Playing as her is a very passive experience as everything that occurs happens to her. She lacks agency and is unable to affect the world in a meaningful way. She doesn’t carry a gun or know how to drive. This forces the player to reside in a vulnerable character who has no power to defend herself. By removing that power, the game demands we pay attention to the smaller details that allow the story to unfold organically. Sarah wakes up to a strange phone call from her Uncle Tommy and meanders around the house. She may see the newcast on TV and witness the explosion from his window. She will see police cars racing by the front of the house and hear a dog cry out in the backyard. Sarah is unable to do anything but walk in fear. This vulnerability and lack of control help set the tone for the rest of the game. After Joel kills the infected neighbor, he and Sarah jump in the car with Tommy. In this section, when the player moves the camera, Sarah moves with it. She will watch her home disappear, stare at the neighbor’s house on fire, or watch as the family on foot fade off in the darkness as they cry out for help. Playing through this section always makes me feel as if I am on a 3D zombie dark ride at Universal Studios. The riders would be in Sarah’s

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shoes and would have to rely on Joel and Tommy to get them through this crazy turmoil. The ride queue begins in Sarah’s bedroom and transitions to the various rooms of the house while she looks for Joel. Mounted TVs play the news program on loop while red and blue lights flash every few minutes. When strapping into the ride, it begins with a presentation of Joel killing the neighbor before he and Sarah run outside and into the car. The ride lurches forward, slow at first. Then bang, hold on for dear life as Joel and Tommy whisk us through the chaos. No time for hesitation, no time to slow down, the only thought: escape the city... Okay, clearly I have put way too much thought into this. My point in being so specific is that like a dark ride, the player is watching the action instead of participating. Both experiences cater to the same emotions. But unlike a dark ride where the outcome is in our favor, the game does not allow us to escape. The Last of Us follows the standard action game loops when it comes to its combat. Joel and company will traverse areas as they explore for survival supplies. Eventually they will enter combat and solve the encounter using stealth, ranged, or melee tools. Exploration and traversal will then recommence and Joel will search the area to replenish his supplies. But one thing that became readily apparent to me upon first playing is the game’s heavy consequences in combat. If I played a Tomb Raider or Uncharted game, dying to a horde of enemies may force me to change my position on a second try or memorize enemy placement. I may try to use a wider variety of weapons. While The Last of Us contains this same type of strategizing, it feels far more punishing than other games. One wrong

OCTOBER 2020 | LEVEL STORY

step and a clicker will devour you. In comparison, many action games like the aforementioned Uncharted focus more on getting to the goal and making your way through areas. Dying does not feel so much like a punishment but a brief failure and a chance to do better next time. The Last of Us doesn’t feel this way. The “game over” shots of Joel getting his throat ripped out by infected feel discomforting and final. During my first playthrough, I struggled a lot with the combat to a point where I was having such a hard time I wasn’t having fun and had to change my difficulty settings from normal to easy. But even though there were sections in the Uncharted games that killed me over and over again, I never stopped enjoying the gameplay. I don’t think this leads to the conclusion that Naughty Dog purposefully made The Last of Us “not fun” in an attempt to say something deeper; to do so would have been pretentious. The combat explores the necessity to not act reckless when it comes to survival, something that is not felt in other action games. The infected are literal monsters, disfigured, grotesque. The threat they present is far more dire than your typical action game enemy, whether they be human or supernatural. Adding to this is the overwhelming sense that making it through a horde of infected or past a group of hunters feels less like a win, and more of a necessary action to stay alive. There is no victory in this combat but a continuing sense of dread. As you put enemies down, a mercy for the infected, the disillusionment grows, reflected not just by the combat, but Joel himself. Joel is disconnected with few interests beyond survival. On the surface, this could be any action game protagonist. However, it is Joel’s

underlying motivations that make him atypical. His disillusionment comes from Sarah’s death. He has been conditioned to bury his emotions beneath the surface, keeping him from truly connecting with those around him. He acts out of self-preservation and this often leads to his questionable actions. Beneath his tough persona is a great deal of fragility. He isn’t someone who aims to get along with people and wants to help others because this risks growing close, and in turn risks the pain of loss. Joel’s reclusion is cowardly, and the game takes pains to challenge this behavior. He is not to be celebrated: he is not a great agent of change doing the right thing. Aspiring to Joel would be a severe misreading of the text. And this ties directly into Joel’s choices at the end of the game. Joel does not go out as a hero and this may be the biggest departure from the action game genre. While most games will show the main character doing something in the name of a worthy cause or choosing to do the right thing at the last moment, Joel does something entirely selfish. He doesn’t face the ultimate bad guy or come out victorious (though in his own mind he certainly achieved what he thinks was right). The whole plot is about him bringing Ellie to the Fireflies for a cure and he robs the world of this possibility. Additionally, he robs Ellie of her agency. He takes away her ability to make decisions, as the pandemic stripped Sarah of her agency, and life. The ending is more unsettling than anything else. It leaves the player with more questions than answers. On top of this, the lack of a final boss or true villain reflects on the nuanced nature of The Last of Us as an action game. It isn’t as simple as taking down a singular bad guy and you win. The game actively forces players to question what

they are doing. It doesn’t tie a bow at the end. Joel gets what he wants, but at a great cost. And that cost weighs heavily on the final minutes of the game as it is clear he and Ellie’s relationship is unstable. Joel’s final line being a lie is the opposite of a feel good ending. There is no moment of reflecting on the journey and where we have been; no gazing off into the sunset. The Last of Us directly contradicts many tropes of its genre in service of the overall narrative. The confronting combat, coupled with the ending, delivers a coherent and unique play experience. It is these choices that result in such an excellent and thought provoking game. There is a reason why so many consider this the best game of the decade, if not all time. The game uses tropes in unique ways that make it stand out from others on the market.

DANIELLE CARPENTER

is an avid reader and writer. She graduated from West Chester University with a BA in English Lit., and is the creator of Level Story Magazine. https://dcarpenter.carrd.co/

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BILL: A FRANK DISCUSSION Written by Travis Ryans

OCTOBER 2020 | LEVEL STORY

s young as 9 years old, before I even understood I was a homosexual, I saw myself being mocked in a cartoony and family friendly video game. The game in question was called Banjo-Tooie, a platformer released for the N64 in the early 2000s. Partway through the game, you meet one of the many colorful characters named Jolly Roger. Despite the fact that he was not human, and spoke a gibberish language, the developers still managed to make it very clear from his movements and intonation, that this was a very gay frog. With the grace and nuance of Alex Jones, Banjo-Tooie turned the freakin’ frogs gay. Even as a small child, I could tell in that moment that I was being mocked, although I didn’t fully understand why. I just knew I wasn’t welcome here. That didn’t stop me, however. I had been playing video games for years, and would continue to love them all through my life. I accepted that I would never see myself represented in them. That experience would not change significantly until, at the age of 22, I played The Last of Us and met a solitary, caustic, gay man named Bill. Video game storytelling has a long and troubled history with its queer characters - longer than one could ever hope to cover in just one article, or even just one podcast. From the sexualization and objectification of lesbian relationships, to the heinous treatment of trans women as deceptive predators, gaming has a legacy of problematic depictions. While I cannot speak to the experience of all LGBTQ+ gamers, what I do know is how I felt as a young gay man, seeing myself portrayed in video games. Depictions of gay men in gaming (especially before the 2010’s) tend to fall into two broad categories. There are the big buff daddies like Ash in Streets of Rage 3, and there are the effeminate androgynous twinks like Ghirahim in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Ash is a buff leather-clad biker and the ‘humor’ is that, despite all this, he is still mincing about. The developers could have made his walk animation more macho, but they felt the need to communicate his queerness in a comedic way, because we are a joke. If they had left all of his presentation on-screen completely masculine but still showed him with a male partner, all the laughs would be sucked out of the room. That’s not funny anymore, that’s just a person. The only socially acceptable form of queerness is repression. We must shove it down so deep that no one must ever see it, not even ourselves. Ghirahim’s presentation is on the exact opposite end of the spectrum, but is still very much a caricature. Everything from his costume, to his makeup, to his body posture, to the way the camera frames him and cutscenes edit him, are all meant to display him as faaabulous. I don’t say this to denigrate androgyny or performative displays of gender - I am a dedicated fan of the art of drag. However, any queer person can immediately tell that this was a character made by cis straight people, for cis straight people. This is not an empowering depiction of someone dismantling the gender binary and being their au-

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thentic self - this is a freakish villain who is supposed to make you feel uncomfortable. This kind of stereotyping is a problem within the queer community itself, but it certainly doesn’t help to have it reinforced by straight creators who dominate the media landscape. These characters are not authentic representations that exist to make queer people feel seen, they exist for a presumed straight cis male player to laugh at. They are extreme versions of gender presentation, because no matter what we do as queer people, we are still seen as abnormal and unwelcome. After years of resigning myself to these kinds of cartoonish depictions, it didn’t even occur to me on a conscious level how disconnected I had felt from the games I was playing. That is, until I encountered Bill. This stereotyping was so thoroughly normalized that I didn’t even pick up on Bill as a gay character as fast as some other queer people I’ve spoken to. We, as a marginalized group, have a tendency to project our own experiences onto characters out of a desperation to feel seen by an industry that refuses to acknowledge our existence beyond a joke. Many of my LGBTQ+ friends heard Bill say the words, “I had a partner once,” and immediately had their queer little ears perk up. I’m sure Naughty Dog was banking on this ambiguity, because my straightwashed brain immediately assumed he meant a sort of “business partner” as they were helping Joel and Tess smuggle goods into Pittsburgh. This felt consistent even as I discovered that Bill’s partner was a man named Frank. It wasn’t until I saw Bill’s reaction and Frank’s note that I came to understand the emotional relationship between them. Bill’s queerness does not dominate his story. It managed to go completely unnoticed by this gay player until his story was almost over. However, it isn’t irrelevant to his story or character either - it colors everything we know about him. Bill is so guarded and mistrustful that he doesn’t just put up walls, he puts up explosive traps. This man’s home is his castle, and he chooses to live with a moat of literal monsters so that he can keep people away. At one point, he remarks: “You know, as bad as those things are, at least they’re predictable. It’s the normal people that scare me.” It’s sadly not uncommon for queer people to close themselves off like this. I have seen far too

OCTOBER 2020 | LEVEL STORY

many community members teetering on the edge of depression and paranoia, defaulting to a sort of “blackpill” suspicion that every person will eventually harm them - and that’s before the apocalypse. Given all this, I can only imagine the personal growth and vulnerability it must have taken for Bill to open up to another person like Frank. Then, think of how crushing it must have been for Frank to leave him, and how it would have validated all of Bill’s worst fears and insecurities. Bill clearly has a level of internalized shame around his sexuality. A gruff loner like Bill doesn’t strike me as the sort of person who cares what people think of him. He’s sarcastic, abrasive, dismissive, and our first introduction to him is when he handcuffs a child. He doesn’t seem to be self-conscious about having conversations with himself out loud either. He evidently has zero desire to earn anyone else’s compassion or respect, and if you’re isolating yourself behind a horde of zombies and traps, there’s not much reason to. Why then does he choose to use the gender-neutral term “partner” when referring to Frank? Why does he get anxious when Ellie peruses his magazine pile? He doesn’t care whether anyone knows that he has pornography - in the next hour they’ll either be dead or out of his hair forever. It’s not the shame of being sexual, but rather the shame of who he’s sexualizing. It’s not others he can’t face, but himself. Although it’s never outright discussed, I refuse to believe that a man who has zero internal conflict about his sexuality chose a confessional booth as his bed. He has an entire town to himself, he could have chosen any number of locations that were more comfortable or defensible. Instead, he lays his head down in a tiny closet exclusively designed for the purposes of guilt and shame. The last moments we share with Bill break my heart. As he discovers and examines Frank’s body, he is clearly trying to hold back emotion as he coldly walks Joel through the infected bites and subsequent hanging of the love of his life. He’s too conflicted by grief and resentment to even hide his connection to Frank from Joel. As the player character, you can discover Frank’s last note to Bill, where he spews venom at Bill for restricting him with his reclusive behavior. “I guess you were right. Trying to leave this town will kill me. Still better than spending another day with you.” In subsequent playthroughs,

I can still never decide whether to show this note to Bill or not. Am I prying? Will this bring him closure or more pain? Will this help him grow as a person, or cause him to retreat further within himself? We never get the chance to find out, because once Joel can safely leave, Bill curses at him to leave his town and presumably never come back. This is of course, classic Bill behavior, but is it also because Joel now knows his painful secret? Bill is one of the few characters to survive The Last of Us, but he does not escape unscathed and I cannot help but wonder where his story goes from here. I am quite sure he wouldn’t want our pity, but he has mine all the same. The longing for this kind of story is something that’s hard for some straight audiences to understand. We want our queerness to be seen and validated, without straying into an overdrawn caricature. The vast spectrum of queer people out there in the world can’t be distilled into a single character, which is why it’s important to have a range of queer characters in the medium. But even then, some people feel like we’re asking storytellers to hit too narrow a target with each depiction. I promise you: that fine line you’re picturing between invisibility and stereotype? It’s actually as wide as my entire life experience, and that of the people around me. This is why we advocate for marginalized groups being financed and resourced to tell their own stories. It’s a level of understanding that takes more time and empathy than most straight creators are willing or able to invest so that they can replicate it artificially. This story is not unique to queerness. Everyone has loved and lost, everyone has struggled to connect with other people, and everyone has grappled with

their own personal shames. At the same time, Bill’s queerness can’t be ignored either and it’s crucial to understanding him as a character. I’ve seen my share of queer characters like Bill before and since, handled with varying degrees of deftness, but none of them have stuck with me quite like him. I’ve learned so much more from Bill than any other queer game character. I’m no buff daddy, I’m no skinny twink (well, not anymore), but this fat grumpy survivalist who’s so afraid of others and himself? That’s someone who means something to me, and someone I can learn from - even if it’s what not to do. I will be myself, unapologetically, and still learn to trust and value the people around me. I will do what Bill taught me, and learn to craft a nail bomb - or at least paint my nails something explosive.

TRAVIS RYANS

is an Assistant Director in the film and television industry, as well as the co-host of the podcast “Rainbow Road” - a podcast about queerness in gaming. Twitter: @travisryans @RainbowRoadPod

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LET’S TALK ABOUT THE ENDING. Three writers break down their thoughts on the ending of The Last of Us.

OCTOBER 2020 | LEVEL STORY

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Breaking Down the Ending of “The Last of Us”

Written by Danielle Carpenter

OCTOBER 2020 | LEVEL STORY

According to a Metacritic poll released at the beginning of 2020, The Last of Us was voted to be the game of the decade. 13 Although this vote does not speak for the games industry or gamers as a whole, it was still considered to be a very significant achievement and many news outlets reported on the results. Hearing this news did not surprise me. While I am fairly new to The Last of Us, having first played it around the time the poll results were released, it is no secret that many consider the game to be a masterpiece. It makes sense that it would come out on top. This got me thinking about why this game resonates with such a large audience. After replaying the game a few times in preparation for this issue, I found that I grew to love this game more and more with each playthrough. If you’ve read through most of this issue, you will see the various elements that make this game so remarkable. But what truly makes the game stand out is the ending.

What Happens Before diving into an analysis, I want to recap what exactly is going on in this end sequence. The end of The Last of Us begins with Joel waking up in a hospital room after being knocked out by some Firefly soldiers. The last time he saw Ellie, he was trying to revive her after she had passed out underwater from being unable to swim. With Joel is Marlene, the leader of the Fireflies. He hasn’t seen her since early in the game, back in Boston, and it is a relief to see a familiar face. When he asks if Ellie is okay, Marlene provides good news. Joel wishes to see Ellie but Marlene stops him, telling him he does not have to worry about her anymore. When Joel rebukes her suggestion, Marlene finally comes out with the truth about what is going on. She tells Joel that Ellie is being prepped for surgery. They are ready to study her brain in hopes to create a vaccine. The only catch is that in order for them to do this, Ellie must die. The realization is sudden and Joel immediately questions it. Marlene, however, is firm about her decision. When Joel shows signs that he wants to stop this from happening, Marlene assigns a guard to escort him out of the hospital. Joel complies for a short while before seeing his backpack and catching the soldier off guard, taking his gun. He asks him where the operating room

is. When the guard is slow to respond, Joel shoots him in the stomach twice before the man finally answers. As his body sinks to the floor, Joel shoots him in the head. Alerted to the gunshots, soldiers can be heard coming toward him to respond to the situation. Joel makes his way to the top floor where the guard said the operating room was located. He fights off hordes of Fireflies to make it to the surgical unit (it should be noted that the player is not required to kill the Firefly soldiers, so this part of the game is largely open to how the player handles things. The player can choose to kill all of the Fireflies or run past them stealthily). During this climb, Joel can also find some voice recordings from Marlene mulling over her decision to sacrifice Ellie for the cause. It is clear she loves her, but wants to do the right thing. Once in the operating room, Joel kills the doctor and unhooks Ellie from the surgery table. As Fireflies move in to stop him, Joel evades gunshots and carries Ellie’s limp body to the elevator. He takes it down to the parking garage. For good measure, he presses the emergency button so that no one can follow him down. Exiting the elevator, Joel finds they are not alone. Marlene is standing with a gun pointed at him. She attempts to reason with Joel and appeal to his better judgement. Marlene: “You can’t save her. Even if you get her out of here, then what? How long before she’s torn to pieces by a pack of clickers? That is if she hasn’t been raped and murdered first.” Joel: “That ain’t for you to decide.” Marlene: “It’s what she’d want. And you know it. Look…you can still do the right thing here. She won’t feel anything.” The scene cuts short and we see a shot of Joel driving toward the mountains. When Ellie wakes up in the back seat and asks what happened, Joel tells her that they found the Fireflies. He says it turns out there are a lot of people who are immune, like her, but it didn’t do a bit of good. He then says that they are giving up on finding a cure. At this news, Ellie turns her back to Joel and Joel says he is sorry. Intercut with this scene is a continuation of Joel’s confrontation with Marlene in the parking garage. Joel seems to be questioning his decision to abduct Ellie. Marlene reaches for Ellie, but Joel shoots her. After

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putting Ellie in the back seat of an abandoned truck, he walks back to Marlene. She pleads for him to spare her life, but Joel reasons that she will only follow after Ellie before shooting her. The scene cuts to black. We then open to a familiar landscape. Joel and Ellie have returned to Jackson, where Tommy lives. Ellie sits on the edge of the front car seat, staring reflectively at her bite mark and tracing it with her fingers. Clearly she is distraught, similar to the start of spring after her trauma with David. Joel, on the other hand, is in good spirits. As they make their way toward Tommy’s on foot, he reminisces on the hikes he and Sarah used to take together and suggests that she and Ellie would have been good friends. Ellie does not say much, only responding to Joel with short, one word answers. As they approach a hill overlooking Tommy’s community, Ellie stops Joel and tells him about the night she was bitten. She explains that she was not alone but with her best friend, Riley, who was also bitten. Not knowing what to do, Riley says, “Let’s just wait it out. Y’know, we can be all poetic and just lose our minds together.” But despite this, Ellie is still waiting for her turn to die. Now, it isn’t just Riley who has died but Tess and then Sam. Joel interrupts her, saying none of their deaths are on her and that he struggled with survivor’s guilt for a long time too. As he speaks, his hand slowly grazes his broken watch and he glances down at it absently. Ellie cuts him off and makes him swear to her that what he said happened with the Fireflies is true. Joel gives her a quizzical look before responding, “I swear.” Ellie, clearly torn between her belief that he has lied and the fact that he just swore he didn’t, nods and says, “Okay.” Queue the credits.

Diving Deeper There is obviously a lot to unpack here. Naughty Dog spared no expense when it came to providing the player with an intense conclusion to this game. The final scenes of The Last of Us present us with several moments of ambiguity and subtleness. No character is good or bad, nor are there any easy answers to the questions being presented.

OCTOBER 2020 | LEVEL STORY

One of the central conflicts going on here is between Joel and Marlene - to let Ellie die for the possibility of a cure, or allow her to live. It is the trolley problem: do you sacrifice one to save the many or sacrifice many to save the one? The thought experiment is one of ethics. Both Marlene and Joel love Ellie, but Marlene believes in acting for the good of humanity. She believes it is more moral to take action to kill one person to save many, rather than to let many die but not directly harm anyone. Even though it is painful for her, she believes that this is the right thing to do. When Joel confronts her in the parking lot, Marlene’s persuasion to let Ellie die because of the horrors that lie outside (the infected, rape, murder) is vulgar yet true. But Joel’s response to her caution is that this isn’t her choice to make. This is a valid point and one that could be easily overlooked by the player. Throughout all of this, Ellie is never allowed to give her consent. While it is probable that she would have sacrificed herself to find a cure for humanity, the fact is that the question is never offered. Ellie is unconscious when the Fireflies find her. Instead of waking her up, they prep her for surgery. By removing Ellie’s autonomy from the situation, it becomes morally unethical to operate on her. And yet, it is the right thing to do, right? Joel may make the argument that the final decision is not for Marlene to make, but the same logic can be turned against his own choices. He can’t make the decision that she should live. Joel does not want to lose Ellie. Over the course of almost a year, she has become a surrogate daughter to him. Unable to deal with the grief of losing his daughter 20 years prior, Joel refuses to lose someone else. In many ways, his choice to remove Ellie from the operating room is understandable. It makes sense. But like Marlene, it is not his decision to make. In the process of “rescuing” Ellie, Joel proceeds to kill dozens of Fireflies. We have seen Joel kill dozens of people before in the name of survival, but this has gone past that. Though he is still fighting to survive, it is in service of a selfish cause. Rather than deal with more grief, Joel will resort to killing and removing the possibility that a cure can be discovered. It is easier for him to do that than confront his loss.

The connections between these scenes and the start of the game are stark. At no point has the game been more clear about Joel’s relationship with Ellie. Just as the start of the game shows Joel carrying a wounded Sarah through swarms of infected, desperate to survive, so does the end of the game show Joel carrying an unconscious Ellie while evading Firefly soldiers, desperate to survive. Joel is the protector of the vulnerable, though a very different sort of protector at the start of the game than at the end. He couldn’t save Sarah, but he can save Ellie. He is unconcerned about the ethical dilemma going on. Joel is not rescuing Ellie for the fact that she didn’t get to make her own decision. His intentions are purely selfish and for his own wellbeing. After all, Joel has never been one for the cause. Time and time again we’ve seen this in the game. Joel has a distaste for the Fireflies and their cause, scoffing at Tess when she says they should transport Ellie for the sole reason of hoping for a cure. It was Tommy who joined the Fireflies, not Joel. Joel has never been in this for anyone but himself. As far as he is concerned, bad things happen and there is nothing you can do about it. All of this culminates in the moment when Ellie wakes up in the backseat of the truck and Joel lies to her. Right away it is clear that Ellie is disappointed by his words, though what isn’t clear is whether she is disappointed because she believes him or because she doesn’t. It should be pointed out that Ellie is still wearing her hospital gown. If Joel’s story were to be believed, it wouldn’t make much sense that they dressed Ellie up for surgery when they had also given up on looking for a cure. Perhaps Ellie recognizes this. Not one to let things lay dormant and untouched like Joel, Ellie decides to talk about what happened as they approach Jackson. At her inquiry, Joel once again lies. He swears that what he told her was the truth and she has no choice but to believe him. These last three words are the most powerful part of the ending. They convey just what they need to, no more and no less. This is what sets The Last of Us apart from other games of its genre. Where many action games, and to a certain extent games in general, would feature over expla-

nations and long winded ending sequences, Naughty Dog opts for simplicity. There doesn’t need to be a final boss or grandiose moment to hit the player on the head. Just these three words sum up the messiness of what happened. In many ways, there is a lot of ambiguity to the ending. We don’t truly know what Ellie is thinking. There are no answers as to where their relationship goes from here. Where there was once a strong bond are now questions and underlying doubt. But more importantly, the game does not try to deal with what happened. It is all left up to interpretation for the player. This is a powerful tool in storytelling because it requires the player to use their imagination. Naughty Dog isn’t telling us what is right and what is wrong but simply presenting what happened in the story. The player gets to determine what to make of it all. The Last of Us does not tie itself up nicely because the truth is, it couldn’t. Our characters are living in a horrific pandemic that turns humans into literal zombies. Had this story ended with our characters learning a lesson and staring off into the sunset, the end would feel disingenuous. Ending things nicely would not be true to the source material. The pandemic still persists with no cure in sight. Joel and Ellie’s relationship has been tested and broken, perhaps permanently. The future is unknown and that is the best way the story could have ended.

DANIELLE CARPENTER

is an avid reader and writer. She graduated from West Chester University with a BA in English Lit., and is the creator of Level Story Magazine. https://dcarpenter.carrd.co/

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The Philosophy of Naughty Dog’s Tired Morality Play

Written by David McNeill

OCTOBER 2020 | LEVEL STORY

A crucial element of literary discourse is understanding the context under which a reader approaches a text. When we approach video games it can get complicated. Is there a wrong way to play a game? A right way to interpret a game’s story? Maybe. I’m not in the business of telling anyone that a reading is wrong, but certainly some readings are more correct than others. When it comes to discourse, analysis, and craft of video games, it becomes far harder to agree that a particular reading is objectively more correct. My ten years of ongoing experience with Dark Souls and complete inability to play first person shooters means I’ll always experience the new Call of Duty differently than most folk, and so too with a new FromSoftware game. My background in fantasy fiction, literature, and world building allow me to readily decode the signifiers and coding in a Dark Souls game far more readily than Call of Duty. I do not know an awful lot about guns or modern warfare, nor about what makes a good shooting game. I’ve included this preface for an important reason—I don’t think The Last of Us is one of the best games of all time. I think it’s competently made and tells a story that, for the critical mass of gamers, was a new experience. Unfortunately for Druckman and Straley, I’ve read The Road, The Dark Tower, and To Kill a Mockingbird. This ain’t your papa’s Dad story but it isn’t exactly an original idea either. The Last of Us landed as a revolutionary narrative driven and emotion stealth-action, and this felt so revolutionary that we were slapping 10/10 labels on the game like they were going out of fashion. In their review of The Last of Us Part II, “Girlfriend Reviews” aptly identifies that the first game’s plot and story are different. We’ll use this language for clarity, where plot refers to the external genre of the story— what is the primary motivation of our characters? What drives their actions? Story, here, refers to the internal genre—the arc of our main characters and how it relates to the themes of the text. For the game, then, “the plot was a cure the zombie apocalypse cliché, and the story

was about the effects of Joel’s grief.” 14 The generally accepted reading is that the game examines how Joel’s grief drives him to the brink of death, and that it’s Ellie’s role as a stand-in daughter to bring him back. It’s a heart-warming story that appeals to the most amount of people. Like man, how lovely that they’ve formed this bond and Joel has something to live for. Hurray, it’s great he’s letting himself feel a feeling again. Good on him. The troubling politics of a female’s primary role being in service of a man’s mental health aside, there’s a more important question I want to address—is this reading accurate? Is it the most correct reading? In other words, what the hell is the story of the game actually about? In its climactic moment, The Last of Us sees Joel carrying an unconscious Ellie from the Fireflies hospital. Marlene confronts Joel in the car park, and tells him there’s still time to do the right thing. The right thing. The game’s final question is, should Joel sacrifice Ellie’s life to potentially save all of humanity? Regardless of your approach to the ethics of the game’s central questions, the narrative underscores its final moments with a precarious epilogue, where we learn Joel has lied to Ellie about her possibility to cure humanity. Joel tells Ellie she was no good for a cure. The Fireflies did some tests and determined her immunity couldn’t change anything. Joel stops the Fireflies from vivisecting a child; in abstraction, an objectively good thing to do. But the outcome of this planned vivisection is a potential cure. Potential, being the keyword. Because the people doing the vivisecting have not proved themselves the most reliable operators. We’re introduced to the Fireflies as a revolutionary group who leverage guerrilla warfare to undermine the military in Quarantine Zones—there’s a lot of themes and ideas the game throws around like totalitarianism, militarism, and Marxism, but it boils down to this—the Fireflies want to overthrow the FEDRA, the current authority, and restore their version of pre-outbreak democracy.

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Joel wants nothing to do with the Fireflies ideology, and the story does its best to position the Fireflies as well-intentioned bad guys. I think it’s fairly telling that the game’s Wikipedia lists them as villains. That Joel brings Ellie to Marlene to develop a cure is the central spine of the story. Everything else stems from this journey to get Ellie to a place where they can make a cure. So this decision, to let them vivisect Ellie or let her live, is the question of the game. And the way Joel, and us as the player, relate to the Fireflies is critical in how we perceive the events of the story and its ending. I think for most players when they arrive at the climax, they are on Joel’s side. We’ve gone through the journey of growing close to Ellie with Joel, and we feel that natural paternal instinct kick-in. But the underlying motivation to save Ellie is where the game gets muddied. The typical reading here is that Joel saves Ellie because he cares for her as he cared for his deceased daughter—he even mentions Sarah during the epilogue. But is that the reason Joel saves Ellie? The critical narrative of the game almost certainly confirms the above reading. Joel can’t bear to let Ellie go and saves her at the cost of humanity. In story structure, this is your “best of bad choices’’ character climax, and defines Joel moving forward. He is now materialistic and paternal, traits in western fiction that are valued and sought after, undercut by the necessity of Joel to murder dozens of revolutionaries to achieve this. This subverts the player’s expectation—it robs Joel’s crusade of its heroism, and instead reveals him to be nothing more than yet another flawed human. It’s not exactly re-inventing the morality wheel. The closest the text approaches to complexity is: killing Fireflies bad, but Ellie dying bad, but which is more bad? Moral choices in video games! Except this never really resolves in a meaningful way because even in the text’s own logic, Joel butchering the Fireflies is not even the best way to keep her alive. Regardless, this ending remains strong enough to resonate for most players and critics even to this day. This is the ending most players experience. Joel denies the world salvation and galvanizes himself as a bad guy in the eyes of anyone with stock in a cure. 15 But…is it what actually happened? I’m one of those people who reads everything in a game. All the diary entries you find, all the bulletin boards, all the ledgers, everything. I like to understand how and why world’s function, what makes them tick. I recently finished Control, a game built around the notes and memos of a bureaucratic office. So much of the game’s intricacy is communicated via these diegetic readings. The Last of Us has two flavors of this non-critical text—additional dialogue options and collectibles. Additional dialogue is prompted by objects in the world, and allows the player to experience more banter and insight into Joel and Ellie’s relationship. It’s fun, well-written, and focuses on characterization rather than world building. There’s some exposition within—Joel alludes to what he misses from before the outbreak, revealing the current state of the world. Or Ellie discusses her childhood during the Outbreak, giving us a glimpse into how childhood has changed in the apocalypse. But the collectibles and items around the world are where we learn the most about the world at large. Notes from one bandit to another, ledgers explaining cargo shipments, and so on. You

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don’t have to read any of these items, but the more you do, the more context you learn—even just glancing at every third collectible will increase your contextual knowledge and help certain moments land with more weight. And yet these little snippets of the world are at times more engaging, and subplots like the hunters and the cannibals prove more compelling than anything the Fireflies have to say. I think this is a function of the Fireflies and the FEDRA being the most obvious incarnations of their respective ideas — the Fireflies are revolutionaries with a good goal but bad methods, while the FEDRA are authoritarians with a bad goal but understandable methods. The crucial counterpoint to a typical story here is that the Fireflies are not particularly good at what they do. Whether it is bombing a compound, disrupting a supply run, or taking hostages, the Fireflies blow it, a lot. For example, let’s take the first note you find. It’s by an unnamed Firefly who has snuck out of the Boston Quarantine Zone to meet up with Tess and Joel. The unnamed Firefly and his squad hear soldiers approaching. In their panic, they duck into a spore infested building. In this world, keeping an eye out for spores and dealing with the military are the only two things the Fireflies need to be good at. That the squad responsible for maintaining the safety of the only immune human on the planet can’t even achieve this basic task is telling. The failed Pittsburgh revolution, arming vindictive citizens for random suicide missions, and Marlene’s complete inability to manage her people gradually illustrate the Fireflies as incompetent. To the point where Marlene even doubts the Firefly cause by the end of the game. And yet even this reading feels reductive because we experience the world via Joel’s point of view. Joel’s mistrust of the revolutionaries at the start of the game is partly due to his own desire to remain agnostic to the politics of the apocalypse, but it’s also his experience of them lacking basic competence. Joel and Tess are extremely competent. By contrast, every Firefly operation they encounter has gone awry—to the point where it’s why they end up taking care of Ellie in the first place. So in another setting, Joel’s choice is to give over the girl to save the world. But in reality, his choice is to give over the girl to a group of people who have continually failed to enact their ideology, keep their people safe, and execute on the most basic missions. Joel’s hesitation is natural, then. He’s afraid that if they vivisect a child, they might botch the cure. Or create a cure and lose it. Or create a cure and never be able to administer it. Or they’ll use it wrong. The possibility of the Fireflies obtaining a cure might be worse than the alternative. The question that lingers as the credits roll is far less important than how and why Joel ended up in a

position to make the choices he did. When we meet Joel post prologue, he is a smuggler, bereft of purpose, following Tess’ lead. His actualization as Ellie’s protector, and eventually, her friend and father, is the work of this game’s story. The examination of how bonds are formed over great periods of time is the real success of The Last of Us. Where other stories simulate brotherhood, or closeness, or simply tell us people are friends, The Last of Us reveals the way intimacy ebbs and flows. It examines healthy and unhealthy relationships in a unique, extensive process. Joel rejects the cure, yes, but he doesn’t damn the world. The cure in the hands of bloody revolutionaries is no kind of salvation. Instead, he backs a different kind of redemption for humanity—his relationship with Ellie, Tommy’s community, and relying on others. But it is a redemption built on a lie, a foundation of quicksand. Even in his moment of true vulnerability, Joel can’t quite let Ellie in, because now that he’s found someone he cares about, he’s terrified of losing her. Just like Tess. Just like Sarah. Even though the verbs of The Last of Us are the most obvious (third-person shooter, melee, stealth) it attempted to deliver an intricate story to raise a lot of pretty compelling questions, but the game’s own text undercuts the way this can land for so many players. The ending comes out as a strange, ambiguous fadeaway that implies far more interesting moral questions than the text can ever achieve.

DAVID MCNEILL

is the editor-in-chief at ZeroIndent and the author of the Maynard Trigg series. https://zeroindent.com

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Justifying Joel’s Decisions Written by Samuel Gronseth

oel’s rampage at the end of The Last of Us leaves scores dead, including doctors central to the search for a cure, for Ellie’s sake. His actions save her life, but in doing so he effectively destroys any known chance of finding a cure for the infection that’s left the world in ruins. This act, and his decision to lie to her about it, leave the player asking themselves: did Joel do the right thing? This question has endured long since The Last of Us released in 2013, and it persists after The Last of Us Part II intentionally refused to definitively answer it. As with many of the game’s central conflicts, the morality of the situation defies black-and-white moral judgments, and there’s value to be had in debating the ethics of Joel’s decision to kill the Fireflies and save Ellie. That said. Just because there’s value to be had in the discourse doesn’t mean most of the discussion that actually happens contains that value. As with so many issues within the gaming community, this question gets muddled, simplified, overthought, and all other manner of bent out of shape. So I’m not here to provide definitive answers, but I thought it would be worth going over the facts, as well as some of the common arguments, and set a few things straight. On a basic level, this is the question being asked: is one person’s life worth saving all humanity? The Fireflies are trying to find a way to spread Ellie’s immunity to others. If this doesn’t result in a cure, it could at least result in some kind of preventative measure to keep the living from being infected. Obviously, this would be a good thing. But there’s no way to study Ellie’s immunity without killing her. But of course, it’s also a little more complicated than that. As many people are quick to point out, this is not a guarantee of a cure. It’s a chance. There’s no guarantee that studying Ellie’s immunity would result in a usable cure, only that they could study her biology and use their findings to try and develop one. So this alters the core question, if only slightly; is one person’s life worth the chance to save all humanity?

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But beyond that development, the rest is all rather subjective. There are a number of arguments based on both the game’s lore and the understanding of the characters. If one wants to condemn Joel’s actions, it’s fairly easy: the answer to our core question is “yes.” Taking Ellie’s life for the good of all humanity is justified, if tragic, loss.. A reasonable chance to counteract a threat to the entire species is, by most ethical standards, worth the life of a single person. That doesn’t make it easy, or even necessarily “good,” but it’s a fairly easy answer and all one really needs to condemn what Joel did. Alternatively, one of the most effective angles is the character-based approach. Whether Joel’s decision was wrong or not, it was relatable. The point, one could argue, is not whether he did right or wrong, but understanding why he did what he did. And this is very much true; The Last of Us is far more invested in its characters than its world or the moral questions they all face, and a full understanding of the story will focus far more on who these people are and why they did what they did than what was happening on a larger scale and whether it’s good or bad. According to this interpretation, Joel acted emotionally, out of a personal need to protect Ellie. Whether he did it out of love for her or desperation to hold on to his surrogate daughter is a question worth asking, but somewhat aside the point for the purpose of this article. The point here is that we can sidestep the ethical question by making it less about “doing the right thing,” and more about flawed, emotional people making the decisions that seem right to them. Some people say they might have done the same thing in his situation, regardless of right or wrong, and that’s a legitimate reading. But that’s not enough for some people, because to sidestep the question of Joel’s guilt inherently presumes some degree of wrongdoing, or at the very least, the possibility of it. Some would rather exonerate him entirely. Most of these attempts focus on a single question: would a cure have been possible to begin with? At first glance this question seems impossible to answer; after all, the game itself intentionally leaves it unclear. But that doesn’t stop fans on the internet from speculating! Some have pointed out that, technically, a vaccine isn’t capable of fighting a fungus, and that is legitimate as far as I (someone who earned a BA in English and hasn’t taken a biology class since 2012) am concerned. It’s also a pretty empty and bad faith approach to the game. The word “vaccine” is indeed used in the game to refer to the cure. But “vaccine” is a generally understood word for injections that prevent the contraction of deadly conditions. Even if there’s a more medically accurate word, it would not only be better for the game

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to use a word the player is more likely to understand, it would make more sense for the characters to use this word as well. And yes, that even includes the doctors when talking to non-medical personnel. The goal is to determine how Ellie’s immunity could be granted to other people, and that isn’t changed by a technically inaccurate word choice. This kind of nitpicky critique treats the game less like a story to be conveyed and more like a puzzle meant to be outsmarted. Even if this argument was in good faith, it bumps up against the simple fact that it’s exceedingly unlikely that the word “vaccine” was intentionally used to indicate that the doctors didn’t know medical science and couldn’t possibly do what they set out to do. It’s an intentional misreading of the story for the sake of proving a point, and those may help people feel smart, but they don’t help anyone understand the story. Then there are questions about whether the Fireflies could have mass produced a cure, considering their limited resources. This is a legitimate question, but it presupposes two things: first, that humanity’s numbers are large and consolidated enough that the Fireflies would need a significant amount of doses to immunize people, and second, that the cure isn’t worth producing if it can’t save literally everyone. The first falls apart pretty quickly. The game establishes how few people are still alive (it’s even called The Last of Us, it’s not subtle about this), and especially considering how spread out communities are, it’s reasonable to expect that “saving humanity” would play out practically as immunizing the few people near the Fireflies’ base and branching out, even if very slowly as the cure is produced. Even if they couldn’t mass produce the cure, they don’t actually have to make all that much of it to immunize the low numbers of people necessary. And second, even if they can’t immunize everyone, does that make it not worth it? Even a small number of immune people would have increased survivability and be capable of repopulating humankind. I shouldn’t need to say this, but between this argument and the similarly common and weirdly nihilistic, “humanity is not worth saving,” it seems I must: saving some lives is better than saving no lives. An inability to save everyone on the planet is not a reason to give up on saving as many as possible. When it comes down to it, all the attempts to ethically justify Joel’s actions by disproving the Fireflies’ ultimate goal of a cure don’t really measure up. They tend to be based on over-analytical nitpicks that value pedantry over narrative comprehension, and when they’re not, they just lead to moral quandaries with far more obvious answers than the one we started with. In the end, it still comes down to a chance to save humanity, and the loss of one human life to gain it. Shifting away from the cure to Ellie, however,

When it comes down to it, all the attempts to ethically justify Joel’s actions by disproving the Fireflies’ ultimate goal of a cure don’t really measure up. there is a more compelling ethical breach on the Fireflies’ part: Ellie is unconscious when they find her, and still unconscious when they plan to operate on her. The issue here isn’t just the uncertainty of a cure; it’s the fact that the one most affected by this has no opportunity to decide her own fate. The Fireflies would have lost little, if anything, for waiting until Ellie woke up and asking her what she wanted them to do. Even a cursory reading of her character makes it clear that she would willingly give her life for the hope of a cure (even before this was confirmed in the sequel), and the core ethical question here would be significantly simplified by pinning “with her consent” onto the end. Which, I expect, is why Naughty Dog didn’t write it that way. There are a number of reasons the Fireflies might have intentionally done the operation without waiting to consult Ellie about it (most likely concern that she might refuse), but I’m not convinced any of them overcome the simple fact that, if they had, Joel’s actions would be far more unambiguously wrong, and the game’s famous gutpunch of an open ending would have been impossible. But even if there are some writing contrivances at play, it doesn’t change what happens in the game, and the questions that arise from it. As it stands, the Fireflies were planning to kill Ellie in hopes of finding a cure, and they were planning to do it without her input. Joel’s actions could be interpreted as not only saving Ellie from death, but more specifically from a death she hadn’t had the chance to explicitly choose. At this point, there’s something of an established theme; the vast majority of the arguments formed from scouring the game’s optional content and worldbuilding details are in defense of Joel’s decision. Theoretically, there should be a number of arguments that could be made for both sides, but instead we get a ton of effort put into defending Joel and only a few key arguments for the reverse. Why is that?

Well, there’s a fairly simple explanation for that: The Last of Us is an interactive story, and one of the most basic elements of video game storytelling is that the player will, inherently, relate to the protagonist on some level. Joel’s decisions are his own, but the player acts them out, and as such, the player wants to believe the things they do in the game are good. I’m sure we’ve all done something wrong in our lives and spent entirely too much time afterward trying to justify why, actually, it wasn’t really that bad. Maybe we did it for a good reason, or maybe the stigma against it is what’s wrong, or maybe we block out the negative consequences to shield ourselves from guilt. It’s only human. And while The Last of Us has no interest in saddling us with the guilt of Joel’s decisions, our control over the character does have an unsettling effect. He may have been the one to do it in the story, but we’re the ones who pulled the metaphorical (and literal) trigger. That makes a lot of players uncomfortable. It’s only natural they would seek to justify it in hindsight. I genuinely think that, if the upcoming HBO adaptation of The Last of Us faithfully and successfully adapts the story of the first game, most first-time watchers will feel far more negatively about Joel’s decision than most players do. Separated from that need to justify what we perceive as our own actions, the emotional stakes we have in the situation are significantly lower, and I expect that will make a big difference in how people see the ending. But time will tell. I’m fully aware that characterizing a large swath of the gaming community as making unsound ethical judgments to salve their guilt is a bit presumptuous, but I think players and critics alike often underestimate the subtle power of interactivity in non-linear stories. Even while The Last of Us plays with perspective to create a dissonance between Joel and the player, the bond between player and protagonist is a powerful one that often goes overlooked. At the very least, it’s definitely powerful enough to drive players to justify what they perceive as their own actions when Joel’s decisions require them to drive a knife into a doctor’s throat.

SAMUEL GRONSETH

is the creator, writer, and host of the popular YouTube channel, “Games as Lit. 101.” https://www.youtube.com/user/gamesasliterature

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Pandemic Playthrough

Written by Travis Ryans

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In preparation for the release of The Last of Us Part II, and for my podcast episode (Rainbow Road, a podcast about queerness in gaming) covering the original game, I began to replay The Last of Us in April of 2020. Something felt off in this playthrough, and I couldn’t seem to put my finger on what. I had already played through this game several times already, so I was mentally prepared for the violence. It wasn’t during those climactic scenes that this feeling crept in. Rather, I felt uncomfortable and uneasy in some of the game’s quieter moments. I had chalked it up to playing the game for research and feeling the need to keep a critical lens on it, but deep down I knew that still wasn’t the whole truth. It wasn’t until the Rainbow Road recording, when one of our guests Ashley Cooper, a games writer, made a comment that put everything into place for me. She remarked upon the spooky image of “caution tape draped across a playground,” 16 and how that is now a sight we see in our everyday lives thanks to COVID-19. I realized that this unsettling feeling was the experience of playing a game about a pandemic during a pandemic. Video games have an incredible ability to immerse us in strange new worlds. I can be a space cop in Mass Effect, a wizard in Skyrim, or perhaps most outlandishly, a financially stable homeowner in The Sims. The post-apocalyptic world of The Last of Us was supposed to be one of these alternate realities that I’d never have to inhabit. It had a touch more realism with the zombie outbreak being grounded in a real-life fungus, but the connection to our own contemporary life was supposed to end there. In the 1990s, Hollywood had a unique obsession with disaster films like Independence Day, Mars Attacks, and more. In these films, we would see the explosion of various buildings and

government monuments for shock and spectacle, but those abruptly stopped for the years following the terrorist attacks of 9/11. We can’t go back to that moment when it was all silly and grandiose, because now we all know for sure what a grand building or monument looks like after it’s been destroyed. Either it’s inaccurate and disrespectful, or it’s too accurate and it hits too close to home. I feel like the same has happened with this game. That isn’t to say I can’t or won’t play The Last of Us again, but there’s no denying that it hits differently now. Ashley Cooper was right: I have seen caution tape strung across a playground, and it is an eerie sensation. I have casually chatted with neighbors while lined up for my weekly food pickup. I have handed out masks, gloves, and sanitizer to protesters in the street, while we demanded better treatment from our authorities. I have walked the halls of Union Station, and the massive shopping complex The Eaton Centre in my hometown of Toronto, completely alone. I can’t properly convey the horror of seeing these familiar settings that are normally packed with people, now completely desolate. It’s unsettling to see nothing but the urban tumbleweed of plastic wrappers rolling through these vast empty spaces. I look at the quarantine zone of Boston and see too much that feels familiar. I see people lined up for ration cards, getting temperature checks, clashing with the police. Curfews have been in effect in various places around the world, much like the Boston QZ. We’ve seen community alternatives to policing with places like the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone in Seattle, which could have ended up like The Last of Us’ Fireflies, or even Tommy’s community in Jackson. Joel makes allusions to the things he had to do to survive in this harsh reality, but that’s after 20 years in this world. He seemed pretty normal

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in the prologue, and we’re only a few months into a less foreboding disease. We already saw him leave a family on the side of the road; is it that hard to believe that he would be one of the toilet paper and sanitizer hoarders we saw a few months ago? Joel and I both give Ellie the same incredulous look for not wearing a mask when the spores are around. I have the same lingering questions about the permanence of Ellie’s immunity, and the antibodies of recovered or asymptomatic carriers of the disease. I have that same feeling of apprehension when I’m forced to leave the relative safety of a big open area where I can maneuver and must go indoors where I have to be hyper-aware of the living creatures around me. There is a direct correlation between being indoors and my risk of being infected, and I can’t ignore that. Towards the start of the game, you can discover that people are being assigned “outside duty,” which means being forced to work in dangerous conditions outside the safety of the quarantine zone. In California right now, authorities are having trouble fighting forest fires, because their usual reserve of compulsive labor from prisoners is compromised due to inadequate protection from the disease. 17 Many people have speculated about the effectiveness of a vaccine for COVID-19, and whether governments will even be able to effectively replicate and distribute such a thing. Already we’re seeing plenty of studies showing how vast swaths of the population will refuse the vaccine even if it’s affordable and accessible. 18 That starts to lend at least a little credence to those who support Joel because they don’t trust the Fireflies to create and deploy the vaccine that they promised. I now feel like I treat some everyday situations with the same hyper-vigilance with which I approach stealth action games. I am evaluating my positioning to others and the dangers of touching certain surfaces and objects. I’m trying to determine whether some friends are downplaying their risky attitudes towards exposure,

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like a survivor hiding a zombie bite. I’m developing a natural distrust of the people around me for my own survival. Whenever I step on the subway, I immediately cast furtive glances around to see who is wearing their mask improperly, or not at all. What is the game trying to tell us, the audience? The Last of Us warns that people are selfish and misguided. That when push comes to shove, they’ll look out for themselves and no one else. The government wants to control you, the raiders want to take advantage of you, Frank leaves Bill, Henry abandons Joel and Ellie, David betrays Ellie - Joel betrays, well, everyone. Despite all this, I have not given into despair. When I look around me, I don’t just see a carbon copy of a post-apocalyptic hellscape. When brought into direct comparison, I see just as many changes around me too. I see my government finally (and begrudgingly) implementing a form of universal basic income. I see my best friend starting an affordable mask business. I see my mother-in-law coming out of retirement to work at a screening centre. I see my employer donating PPE to frontline workers. I see my supervisor texting me, asking if I’m doing okay because she knows I haven’t worked in months. I see another friend, whose politics I vehemently disagree with, organizing a charity drive to bring food to people who can’t access it. I see various community groups forming online to bring people together. I am glad I played The Last of Us again in 2020. I don’t see it as a doomsday prophecy of the nightmares to come, but as a cautionary tale of what could happen if we don’t look out for each other, and let the most bitter and cynical convince us that we’re all like them. We are not the military who shot Sarah, we are not the raiders who set ambushes, we are not the distrustful Bill, and we are not Joel. We are who we choose to be, and I choose not to be The Last of Us.

TRAVIS RYANS

is an Assistant Director in the film and television industry, as well as the co-host of the podcast “Rainbow Road” - a podcast about queerness in gaming. Twitter: @travisryans @RainbowRoadPod

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OCTOBER 2020 | LEVEL STORY

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WHAT WE ARE ENJOYING

THE COVERS - EP [re:think]

Excellent cover songs. Highlight: Wish You Were Here by Audrey Assad.

YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS [Karina Longworth]

SAVING FOR A CUSTOM VAN

IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK

THROUGH LIFE AND LOSS

Artists pay tribute to Adam Schlesinger.

Nicholas Britell’s score is lush and captivating.

An epic track to accompany Final Fantasy VII Remake.

THE HOLD UP

THE HISTORY CHICKS

UP YOURS, DOWNSTAIRS

Beckett and Susan talk about various women from history in an easy to digest format.

The best way to stomach Downton Abbey is to listen to this hilarious recap show!

[Father/Daughter Records]

[Molly Sanchez & Sam DiSalvo]

Two adults look back and see A podcast that explores the secret or forgotten histories of if the things they liked as kids are still worth loving. Hollywood’s first century.

[Lakeshore Records]

[Miracle of Sound]

[The History Chicks/Wondery]

[Kelly & Amy]

CROSSWORD Across 1. Name of Ellie’s comics 2. Marlene is the leader of the _________ 3. Good dog 4. Joel’s last name 5. Ellie fears ending up _____

Down 1. Name of the virus 2. Sam’s older brother 3. Location of Quarantine Zone 4. Ashley Johnson 5. Joel’s brother 6. Gives Ellie medicine 7. Bill’s partner 8. Joel’s birthday gift

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Answers: Across: 1. Savage Starlight, 2. Fireflies, 3. Buckley, 4. Miller, 5. Alone; Down: 1. Cordyceps, 2. Henry, 3. Boston, 4. Ellie, 5. Tommy, 6. David, 7. Frank, 8. Watch

ANXIETY, ESCAPISM, AND GAMING HABITS [Games as Literature]

INSIDE AND THE HORROR OF BEING A PERSON [Electric Didact]

ANSEM THE WISE’S REDEMPTION MAKES NO SENSE [Absolutely Everything About]

The Game Professor talks seriously about not being okay during these troubled times.

Playdead’s INSIDE throws into question our ideas about what it means to be a person in the midst of exploitation.

Ansem the Wise from Kingdom Hearts is a tiny bit problematic. This video goes into great detail about why.

IN SEARCH OF A FLAT EARTH [Folding Ideas]

HAMILTON AND THE RIGHT MESS IT’S GOTTEN ME INTO [What’s So Great About That?]

TYLER PERRY & THE ART OF ABSURDITY [Nyx Fears]

Dan Olson takes a hike out to north shore of Lake Minnewanka and talks about why certain people believe the Earth is flat.

Does Hamilton challenge or uphold the status quo? The answer is...a nightmare to work out.

Nyx Fears explores his strange fascination with all things Tyler Perry. Violent, contrived, immoral, and hilarious - no one makes movies quite like this.

THE WARMTH OF OTHER SUNS [Vintage]

GAMING REPRESENTATION [Indiana University Press]

I’M STILL HERE [Convergent Books]

Isabel Wilkerson chronicles the Great Migration, the decades-long migration of black Americans who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life. Masterfully written and a must read.

A book examining portrayals of race, gender, and sexuality in a range of games, from casuals like Diner Dash, to indies like Journey, to mainstream games like BioShock and The Last of Us.

Austin Channing Brown looks at how white, middle-class, Evangelical culture has participated in increasing racial hostility.

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FA N S W R I T E What The Last of Us means to me is a near perfect distillation of how we as humans form connections with each other, and how strong those connections can be. Against all odds, and sometimes without even meaning to, people grow closer to each other. Even in the face of unspeakable loss, like Joel with Sarah, or Ellie with Riley, individuals instinctively warm to those around them, to the point where they would kill and die for each other. That, in my opinion, is what the title The Last of Us means-it is not the last of humanity as a species. but the last surviving parts of all of our individual humanity, that we use to cling to hope and form bonds with one another. - Luka Newcombe I first played The Last of Us 6 years ago when the remaster came out. To make a long story very short, I was in a terrible place, and it reminded me that there was love in the world, even through the worst of times.. - christian_harben78 on Reddit In my opinion, The Last of Us represents a triumph of Humanity’s best intentions and emotions through dark times. It suggests that an eventual apocalypse will get us in touch with many parts of our nature, even the ones that we didn’t know or were afraid to expose - ultimately, it’s a multitude of crossroads with no correct or wrong paths, just the ones that feel the most authentic to our essence, at the time. - Raul Figueiredo The Last of Us means a few things, I think. We are, in a literal sense, looking at what remains of The Last Of Humanity. We are also looking literally at what remains of the humanity of The Last Of Humanity. But the core of the title I think is that we are taking an introspective journey at What Remains Of A Person individually and Of People collectively, at a social/behavioral, emotional and philosophical level. Not in a sense of ‘this is what happens to people when bad things happen in the world’ but on a level that explores what it means to he a human being, and how human beings behave when confronted with their own emotions or the actions of others, places they travel to mentally, for better or worse. When all of the materialistic outside bullshit is stripped away, the part that animates a body, the ghost in the machine, is The Last Of Us. That extra missing percentage of what makes a human being that is questioned at the start of Breaking Bad. What is a life? - tinydansenman on Reddit The Last of Us is a journey that will always be with me and it’s a journey everyone should experience. I care so much for this world and the people in it I just can’t let it go, this was the first game that made me feel so much all those years ago and still to this day I feel those same things, it’s just so special to me. Truly unforgettable. - JusticeJackal on Reddit

OCTOBER 2020 | LEVEL STORY

To me, The Last of Us is about what makes us human and the people that we meet on our journey through life who we grow to care for and love. The idea that no matter how awful things can get we’d still do anything for our loved ones is something that really stands out. Naughty Dog expertly crafts a story and characters that balance both the purity and selfishness of this theme. - OotMm444 on Reddit The Last of Us was a story that really connected with some of the personal struggles I was wrestling with at the time. It helped me realize that no matter how dark this world is, or how many intimidating challenges face my way, there is an inherent beauty that is often overlooked by the bright lights and noise of mankind around us. Seeing a curious Ellie question the lives and tribulations humans faced before the outbreak made me realize a lot of the problems I was facing (bipolar, anxiety, and self confidence) less daunting. If these characters can pull through the hell they experienced with loss and tragedy and still comment on the beauty of the world, i can get through the daily altercations with my mind. It had resonated with me hardcore and has changed how I look at my own situation. No other game has made me self reflect in this way.- Ben S. I feel that its about the connection between 2 people, both hurt or alone in some way due to the apocalypse, forced together and forced to rely on the other in order to survive. I believe it’s about that connection, as well as the emotions and actions that come about because of that connection. - just_f***in_done on Reddit The Last Of Us, for me, is not only the greatest experience I’ve ever had with a game...(or one of the greatest experiences I’ve had with a piece of media/art...point blank period)...it’s forever a part of me. I remember being in awe when it was first announced, and being at my friends house watching people on YouTube play the prologue after it launched, and spending the rest of my weekend trying to track down a copy so I could find out what happenned next after that emotional gut-punch of an opening. From the moment I started it up to that now iconic ending, I can safely say I’d never been more engrossed in a story or set of characters and likely haven’t since. As harsh and unforgiving as the world of The Last Of Us is - the first game brings a certain warmth to it as you watch a broken man find a new reason to live and fight for survival in Ellie. The game came into my life at such a pivotal time and had such a profound impact on me, teaching me the value behind the words “Endure and Survive.” - Noah Madore

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OCTOBER 2020 | LEVEL STORY

Level Story | Issue 6 | The Last of Us

Articles inside

Pandemic Playthrough

Justifying Joel’s Decisions

The Philosophy of Naughty Dog’s Tired Morality Play

Breaking Down the Ending of “The Last of Us”

Bill: A Frank Discussion

Making Familiar Tropes New

Escort is Now in Session

If We're the Virus, Where's The Cure

Joel’s Broken Watch

Medium, Rare

Who is the Real Enemy?

Story Summary

News

Perspective in the Opening Moments of The Last of Us

Creator Letter: A Masterpiece in Gaming Narrative