The trailer above was revealed this past Saturday during Spike's annual Video Game Awards. While it finally show us the mysterious identity of the new survival horror title from Sony and the talented team at Naughty Dog, it really only gives the audience more questions. First and foremost is who are these people that are the obvious protagonists of the game. According to the official press release from Sony, the older bearded male is named Joel, who is pegged as a "brutal survivor" and the younger girl is named Ellie, who is "wise beyond her years." While these details are vague, this post apocalyptic world which they live could serve to really flush out the characters. The two seem to be loaners killing those they need to survive whether that be these "creatures" or other humans. This type of thing has be done over and over again in gaming though. You are a brainless avatar that lets the player simply shoot as many bullets as they can into bullet sponge zombies or humans until the credits role. In fact a similar concept has already been explored by the former Sony exclusive developer Insomniac with the Resistance series. The biggest issues that I had with that series is that it never really figured out what it wanted to be. One minute your in a futuristic shooter and invincible with regenerating health. The next your in a cut scene where your character is a simple human weeping about his family. I never felt anguish and despair like I felt you should when you are suppose to be experiencing the end of the world. While I've never felt like this in a video game, I have in a variety of movies, TV shows, and books. Most recently, my guts were wrenched by the mid season finale of AMC's "The Walking Dead". This write up is not about how awesome "The Walking Dead" is, it delivers the emotions of hopelessness and anguish that I feel are necessary for a game like this to be something more then just another game. I don't need excuses to kill zombies or to unload bullets to make a game good, I need to care what happens when I run out of bullets. This is where the original teaser trailer comes in.
This type of hopelessness, this type of somber self awareness that everything is over, this is what is missing from games. This tone is also carried over from the eerie soundless ant trailer also shown on the website.
This is actaully an excerpt from the BBC documentary "Planet Earth" and while the tone and topic of the game may sound dark, the reality of what creates the "creatures" of "The Last of Us" is something more real than we may care to believe.
The appearance of the creatures heads makes much more sense now as well as why they are no longer human but something else entirely. This all could fit very well into created one of the most memorable and creative stories for a game in recent years. My only hesitance with the game comes in the description of the game as traveling across the US. Take it slow, the pacing is also just as important to me as the tone. If you have 5 levels that flash forward across the US over an 8 hour period I feel like the story will also loose a lot of it's power. I'm not a game designer by any means but this is huge for me. Make a 5 part game and release it every 2 years, but tell the whole story and make me care about this tale of survival. Well there it is, The Last of US laid bare with what we know for now. Any ideas? Conspiracies? Lay them out in the comments. Invite your friends to join the Fan Boy Nation!