Escort is Now in Session

Escort is Now in Session

Written by Travis Ryans

“We should go to the main control room.”

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 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 (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 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.”

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 shakeup 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 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