When I think back to 2013s The Last of Us, its not the stealth segments that stick in my mind.
It isnt the gunplay, or the platforming, or even the blind, shambling Clickers determined to chomp on your neck.
Like most fans, I remember the storythe touching, often harrowing moments protagonists Joel and Ellie share.
I remember the silent looks, the tears, and the hopeless decisions they faced.It was, and remains, a masterpiece of storytelling.
Its still both gripping and polished enough to blast through in a handful of sittings, as I did the first time I played it.But how did Naughty Dog make its characters so believable How did it make you want to push on despite the oppressive world And how did it make you care so much about Joel and Ellies fateI replayed it to find out, and spoke to a pair of developers of other narrative-led games to hear their take.Less is moreNaughty Dog establish the tone in the first fifteen minutes.
Its Joels birthday, and his daughter, Sarah, has saved up to buy him a watch.
They sit on the sofa making jokes (Joel: Where did you get the money for this Sarah: I sell hardcore drugs.) and this brief glimpse into their lives raises the stakes for the impending disaster.A parasitic fungus has swept across the US, turning humans into aggressive, shambling monsters.
You see it happen from Sarahs perspective, first as she timidly searches for her father at home, and then as she rides in the back of Joels jeep, searching for an escape route.As they reach the edge of town, a soldier tasked with containing the situation opens fire.
Joel survives but Sarah, her face twisted in agony, dies in her fathers arms as he tries in vain to pressure her wound.
Its an emotional moment, and one I wasnt prepared for when I first played it.Its far more subtle than most death scenes, too.
You dont see Sarah as she passes awaythe camera pans from Joel scrabbling to save her, to his brother, who is watching on, and then when it comes back to Sarah, shes already dead.
Naughty Dog shows similar restraint throughout, with long stretches of silence or off-screen action, leaving it up to your imagination to fill in the gaps.Jon McKellan, creative director of Stories Untold developer NoCode, tells me Sarahs death scene knocked him back, too.
It totally stuck with me, he says.Im a dad, and when you become a dad and see films and games that deal with children dying, it hits you a lot harder.
It really took me by surprise, and set the tone for the entire game in a way that I wasnt expecting.Plenty of games have dark plots in which youre battling the odds with almost no chance of surviving, which can feel overwhelming, and put some players off.
But The Last of Us keeps you hooked by offering hope.
Ellie, who you soon meet, is a potential source of a cure for the infection, and its your job to protect her.
Its like Children of Men, one of my favourite movies: its a really grim world that theyre in, but theres a glimmer of hope, and that stops it feeling like all is lost, McKellan says.It's not about youStill, The Last of Us is far from the only game thats ever tasked you with finding a cure for an apocalyptic disease.
So what sets it apart Unlike in most games, youre not focused on your own survivalits all about Ellie, which changes everything for McKellan.He believes that the contrast between the grim world and Ellies innocenceshes constantly making jokes, and shows no sign she understands how dire the situation ismakes you feel a duty to keep her alive.
Shes a companion with you for 99% of the game, and shes quipping, and you build a relationship with her, so youre being constantly reminded of the goal, he says.Every time you interact with something youll get a comment from her, shell pick up a comic book and make an off-the-cuff comment, and it adds up to something deeper than I expected.He also thinks that by giving you vague objectivesmore often keep moving than find power supply and turn it onThe Last of Us never makes promises it later fails to deliver on, and so you have more motivation to push on.
He draws a contrast with Dead Space, which plays out as a series of tasks the player fails at.I love Dead Space, but as soon as someone gives you a mission, you know its not going to work, he says.
In The Last of Us, you werent being given missions.
It was vague in the minute-to-minute direction, and I think thats a really good way of not teasing the player too much, and just letting them slowly get there themselves.Naughty Dog needed players to care about the relationship between Joel and Ellie, and so the duo are always shown relying on each other.
Joel is the protector, but Ellie saves his life more than once.When Joel is near-fatally impaled by a metal rod, Ellie is forced to provide for them, hunting in the woods and fending off would-be raiders until Joel recovers.
In other words, they can only survive as a pair, and when Ellie tries to run off at one point, it nearly ruins everything.Nobody's perfectIndividually, Joel and Ellie are complicated, and flawed, which makes them more believable.
Joel is particularly complex.
Players might not like some of his choicessuch as trying to palm Ellie off onto his brother later in the gamebut the investment Naughty Dog makes in his internal struggles helps you empathise.For example, when he tells Ellie, seemingly spitefully, Youre not my daughter.
And I sure as hell aint your dad, you understand the subtext.
Hes not just saying it to be meanhes battling with his own uneasiness at being given a second shot at fatherhood.Its not hard to imagine how torn hes feeling: he wants to protect Ellie, but doesnt want to replace his real daughter in any way.
We only feel his pain because of whats happened earlier, especially in the first 20 minutes.The sequence when Joel is injured and Ellie goes hunting also shows just how tight a grip Naughty Dog has on the pace of the story.
As soon as Joel is hurt we cut to a shot of a rabbit getting pierced by an arrow in the snowy woods.
We dont know what has happened to Joel, and the relatively mundane action lets the players mind wander and worry about his fate, building tension.It puts me in mind of the section towards the end of Red Dead Redemption when John Marston returns to his ranch to carry out simple chores.
The languid pace emphasises the action in the sequences sandwiching it.But whats a perfectly-paced story without a great ending Joel ultimately abandons the whole mission in order to save Ellie, condemning mankind because of his own needs.
Again, its a flawed decision, but one players understand.
Greg Kasavin, creative director of Bastion and Pyre developer Supergiant Games, found it particularly memorable.The raw intensity and fury and selfishness and despair fuelling Joels decision to get Ellie out of the Firefly headquarters at the end made for such a spectacular climactic sequence, he says.In the end, it was all about the people, and the Clickers and stuff no longer mattered.
The final scene between Joel and Ellie is just such a great bit of writing, relying so much on body language and packing so much meaning into so few words.The trailer for The Last Of Us Part II focuses on Ellie, five years after the previous game's conclusion.Tying it all togetherIts not just the ending either where the acting elevates the story.
The motion capture tech was cutting-edge at the time, and even now, the characters feel like real people, with believable gestures and facial expressions.The writing is purposeful and voice acting exemplarybut The Last of Uss cast brings scenes together in ways few game casts can.
Its key scenes, such as its ending, relied on real acting between its principal characters to convey a depth of character that couldnt come through in writing alone, Kasavin says.McKellan puts it down to the way the acting is captured in the first place.
He likens the way some games capture voiceover to radio adverts, where actors turn up on the day and are given two hours to record all their lines.Clearly with the Last of Us, those scenes had been rehearsed and refined, and it wasnt just good writing and dialogue, theyd developed a good scene, he says.
The approach they took was way beyond what youd normally get in a game.Going above and beyond is a clear theme for the development of The Last of Us.
Individually, the writing, acting, character development, plot, pacing and tone are some of the best weve seenand Naughty Dog had them all pulling in the same direction.I dont know if it can repeat the feat in The Last of Us Part II but, after replaying the first game five years later, I cant wait to see them give it a go.If you want to relive it, you dont have to play through it all over againyou can just watch a movie made up of its cutscenes.
Find that below, or take a look at the extended version with some story-relevant action sequences (Id recommend it if you have the time).sz7sR5mYuDkEmR3eJmqRUb.jpg#