Things are supposed to be looking up. We've made it through the unstable building, survived the clickers in the subway, and fended off a rushing horde of infected. We're past the danger posed by the infected now, and we are supposed to feel a bit like we're out of the woods. This is also reinforced by the arrival of daylight, something we tend to associate with safety in these types of stories. Even more, our target destination is just a few blocks away. We're pretty much there.
Of course, not everything is great. Tess, who we know can handle herself, is starting to act a little strange. She's no longer engaged in much of the conversation, instead mostly issuing orders and keeping everyone focused. At the same time, she's a bit panicky. When Ellie asks what they'll do if they get there and the Fireflies are all dead, Tess gets almost confrontational while saying everything will be fine. "It has to be," she mutters under her breath. Though everything around us suggests we're good, there are these kinds of subtle hints to tell us we're wrong.
Just before we get to the capital building, we see a bombed out street that is flooded. We must cross it. It's easy-peasy, of course. Nothing special about it, really. What's interesting is that they choose to use this moment to introduce the idea that Ellie can't swim. Normally in games, they introduce a new concept when it is relevant to the gameplay. Here, they introduce something that will come up a bunch of times throughout the game, but it doesn't matter here. It seems like such a small thing, but this helps reduce the "gamey" feel of the game. I know, I know. That sounds really strange and dumb. However, so much of The Last of Us is successful because of how immersive it is. It's these kinds of seemingly minor decisions that increase that feeling. It would feel a bit "gamey" if Ellie stated that she can't swim, and then immediately the player has to find a palette for her to jump on so we can cross a body of water. And sure, we have to do that in a little bit, but that delay between when you have to do something "gamey" and when the concept is introduce as a character trait through the narrative helps keep us fully immersed.
Of course, here we get our first big emotional moment in this new world. Turns out, Tess has been acting strangely because she was bitten and infected. This is her last stop, as she calls it. It's not as emotional a moment as Sarah's death in the prologue, but it's still a powerful scene with great writing. More importantly though, there is great acting and animating here. Those are critical in the way the scene plays out.
The acting and animation have to work in tandem here, otherwise the scene wouldn't work. Everyone's body language is key. Joel is angry, almost pissed off that Tess is going to be leaving him. Tess is, understandably, flustered knowing she's about to die. She's also desperate to have her death mean something - in this case, getting the immune Ellie to the Fireflies so there may someday be a cure. Ellie, meanwhile, is smart and observant, but she stands there tensed up. What is extremely clear in this scene (if it weren't already) is that these actors are on a set and acting physically. A lot of video games will have animators work on the character motions with the actors just lending their voices to the scene. Here, all actors are present on a set. They're in mo-cap suits. And they're doing more traditional style of acting. That decision goes a long way in this game.
Joel seems angry at Tess, as if he's offended that she could "let this happen." When he says that this is not "us," Tess finally snaps. "What do you know about us? About me?" It's a great little moment where you realize that Joel's relationship with Tess might very well be similar to the player's. It's easy to like Tess, and she's a solid ally in these early stages, but we don't ultimately know that much about her. This is probably how Joel sees her too. She's easy enough to like and get along with, but really, she's been a survivor. Joel may have been drawn to her simply because she's been around and lasted. We know he likes to keep his distance. There's some ambiguity in their relationship presented here. On the one hand, Tess says that there surely is enough between them for her request to mean something, for Joel to feel some sort of obligation to her. At the same time, it's tough to tell just how close and open these two really were with each other, and how much of the relationship may have been built on the foundation that they're good at surviving.
Now, I'm admittedly not sure how the military knew they were at the state house. It's one of those plot contrivances for the sake of drama and action. It sort of doesn't make much sense, really. No one ever argued the game was perfect. Nothing ever is. The nice thing it does, though, is allow Tess - someone we've probably come to really like - to go out on her terms as best as possible. She's always been strong and determined from what we've seen of her, so refusing to turn into a mindless zombie creature is within her character. It also helps us deal with it a bit better. She tells Joel to "just fucking go" in order to make it easier for her, but letting her go out to delay the military so we can escape makes it a little easier for us too.
Of course, the military fires a hilarious number of rounds just to take out one person. We're now left with the remainder. It's the first time we will spend in an enclosed space with armed enemies. It can be a bit tricky, as a result, especially since the map here can be a little confusing to navigate with it's many rooms, open spaces, and enemy and cover distribution. As we go, Ellie seems pretty disturbed by everything. Makes sense. She's young and new to this stuff. Joel basically yells at her for getting too emotional, pretty much the basis for their relationship in the first half of the game.
The Tess moment is one of the few occasions in which we immediately follow an emotional beat with a lot of action. Typically, they let you catch your breath, or sit on what you just witnessed for a bit. After Sarah's death, for example, we flash forward twenty years and then just walk around for a bit. Here, we're forced to deal with a few segments of armed soldiers. The second part of the state house is surprisingly difficult to sneak through. It's one of the great maps where you have to be really careful and aware of your surroundings. Every room has several open doors, and they all sort of face each other meaning guards will almost always have the ability to spot you if you aren't cautious.
After escaping the state house, you find yourself again in the subway. There are spores everywhere, prompting Joel to put on his mask, but Ellie doesn't have to. If we players weren't convinced yet, like Joel, now we know for certain that she absolutely is immune. No faking here. (They don't do anything to really make us as players skeptical of her claim, so this more proves to Joel than anyone.) Visibility tends to be a bit weird here. With the poor lighting and spores, it's kind of hard to see. That's pretty rad level design, to be honest. In small portions, that idea is great! What can be a bit frustrating though is that you can't really take advantage of that, as the enemies seem to have no problem whatsoever seeing you across the spore-filled room.
Either way, it's not tough. There are just two guards and even if they spot you, it's pretty easy to take them out. We then continue down the subway, poor lights, spores, and all. It's a really creepy atmosphere and one of my favorite mini-sections of the game. The first time you play it, you can't know there are no infected here, but they sure make it seem like there must be clickers somewhere! After all, we were just in the subway an hour earlier and it was crawling with them! We've also come to associate spores with infected. Most players probably make their way through this section on their toes and staying alert. We've avoided the military now, but we're not in the quarantine zone anymore. This is infected territory!
In actuality, there's nothing here. There are no enemies after those first two soldiers. It's basically one big psych out. What does come back is the fact that Ellie can't swim. Now we have to deal with that, as a chunk of the subway is flooded pretty badly. This is our introduction to palettes and ferrying Ellie from Place A to Place B. Like the whole plank thing, this is a rather weak attempt at introducing "puzzle elements" to the game. It's not really very puzzling, first off. Nor is it at all a challenge in any way. It's more just occasionally time consuming and choppy. Planks and ferrying are probably the weakest parts of gameplay and level design in the game, but they also only come up every once in a while. It's not a super common thing.
As an aside, you can find a corpse with a note about meeting a smuggler. Apparently, this person was supposed to meet a man named Frank to trade supplies with, but Frank never showed up. This comes up later, actually. These little things are really interesting and appealing about the game.
We conclude the section back at daylight. The soldiers are gone, and we get one more cutscene to highlight what a grump Joel is (although, understandably so). He seems really annoyed to be involved in this at all - which is how he felt from the get-go - but we also understand that he will keep his word to Tess. She was right that there was enough between them for Joel to feel an obligation to her. Ellie is pretty much the more traditional heroic character in the game, so she tries to offer her condolences about Tess. Joel shuts her up and tells her to keep their histories to themselves.
This is the moment where Joel is really in charge. Up to this point, Tess had been leading, or Tommy before that. Now, Joel is finally taking point in the game. And he's a lot more stern and cold. Now that Tess isn't there to provide some relatively normal human interactions, Joel will pretty much do whatever he can to keep his distance.
No comments:
Post a Comment