C3PS Talks About The Last of Us (Was cruel to homosexual character)

Just JEDITED the title and hijacked my own The Last of Us thread so that I can have a place to talk about The Last of Us.

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This rather pointless thread contains early game spoilers for the PS3 game The Last of Us. If you haven't played at least through the fourth chapter of the game, then minor spoilers follow.

So, The Last of Us is about a smuggler and a fourteen year old girl who have to travel across the post-apocalyptic cordycep infected United States together. At one point in the game you require a car and the main character decides to cash in a favor with an old acquaintance of his. The acquaintance is reluctant to help but is eventually guilted and pressured into the task. This man, Bill, is a crotchety middle aged asshole, and is a complete dick to both your characters as he helps you trek across dangerous neighborhoods filled with deadly infected on your way to acquiring a working car battery. But I imagine if I lived outside the quarantine zone and had to deal with cordycep infected humans at all hours of everyday, I'd be a bit of a grump too.

After a long and daunting journey across this treacherous neighborhood, you enter a house and discover a dead man hanging by the neck from the ceiling. This seems to really upset Bill, and when you ask him he admits that the man was his "partner". A note from Bill's dead lover is discovered that basically says he is sick of Bill and can't stand to be around him anymore and was going to steal the functioning car battery and run away, but was bit by the infected and had to kill himself. Ouch. Soon you part ways with the very distressed Bill, and after you get a ways down the road you discover the 14 year old girl stole a comic book, a cassette tape, and a beefcake magazine from Bill's home. After taking a peak and the centerfold, cracking some jokes about how Bill is going to be missing it tonight, she tosses it out the moving vehicle's window.

So after all Bill did to help our protagonists, he gets to wander the long and dangerous journey back home, this time all by himself with no one to cover his back, while grief stricken and heartbroken from learning of his loved one's demise and true feelings. Assuming he eventually makes it home alive, the poor guy is going to attempt to turn to his gay porn mag for a little relief, and discover it is missing, just because some silly girl wanted a giggle at it before tossing it on the roadside. I am sure porn mags have got to be a hot commodity in the post apocalyptic world, with no more free internet porn out there, the things must be treasured like gold. Gay porn mags are probably an even bigger rarity. Poor Bill may never stumble across another in his lifetime.

What is up with Naughty Dog choosing to knock this poor guy down and then kick him repeatedly? The guy was kind of a dick the whole time, but having the main characters steal his porn and have a laugh about it after the extremely sort of shitty day he had just had seems like a bit much.

I can't decide what to do with this thread.

This thread is mostly just me being playful and bored, but I did find myself feeling sorry for him.

We don't know he is gay until he tells us the dead guy was his lover, which is just before you part ways. So the character has been well established as kind of a dick and unlikeable long before you discover his sexual preference. So I'd say they treat him that way and he is gay. So I am sure the writers intended the reveal that the girl stole items from him to be his comeuppance, jerk got what he deserved. But the scene where the girl revealed she stole his nudey magazine,  laughed at the idea of him missing it at night, then unceremoniously tossed it out the window just made me annoyed at the girl. Yeah, he was a grumpy grump and a jerk, but he still risked his life to help her and then discovered the loss of someone important to him in the worst kind of way.

Stealing something that might be important to someone else just to destroy it for amusement, is cruel behavior and is only done to hurt someone. Stealing the comic book because she wanted to read it, or stealing weapons, food, or useful items is far more justifiable, even though it is selfishly motivated, at least it is serving a purpose. Taking something just to take something away from this person so that they don't have it anymore is far worse than selfish.  

Everything done by this character prior to this point has gone toward liking the character and finding her somewhat endearing. I feel the writers took a misstep here. They probably intended this scene to be endearing as well, since the guy was an asshole. But they already gave this asshole character a gut wrenchingly bad day, then they have the protagonist do something shitty to him on top of it all, even though she should be grateful. He gave them guns from his private gun stash, risked his life, and sacrificed the only functioning car battery he knows of which could have been of great use to him, and all for their sakes.

CP3S said:

....grumpy grump....

Yes!  I won him over!

In all seriousness, that does seem like a pretty tasteless thing to do.  I may have religious proscriptions against homosexuality, but it really causes me pain to see people insult or belittle someone just for being gay.

Ronnie Kray was gay, that doesn't make him less/more of a mindless gangster than if he wasn't. I don't think the developers were making a statement against someone who's gay. Stupid question. Stupid thread. 

Hey, it's me. said:

Stupid question. Stupid thread. 

You can't see it through the screen, but I just waved my index and middle finger at you.

I never suggested the developers were making any kind of a statement about homosexuals. Clearly you didn't read my second post in this thread, and possibly not the first post either. Some of you all take everything too seriously.

I am being even more cruel to homosexuals by taking this thread from them and making it only about The Last of Us from now on. This thread is now officially the place where I talk about The Last of Us.

Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg play the opening of The Last of Us.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tT9U_sXsKAg

I really don't get into Rogen's or Goldberg's type of humor, so I am not much of a fan. But I found this video fun to watch. The opening of the game is pretty dark and intense, so it was interesting to watch them try to make jokes about it.

Since they rag on it being a zombie game a bit, I kind of wished they played it long enough to have an encounter with a clicker, but that is probably almost an hour, maybe a littler longer even, into the game.

Yes!  It's C3PX.

Yeah, ehen did that change take place? I thought you chose your screen name and then that was it, no going back?

Gaffer Tape said:

You spelled your own name wrong.

Oops, not surprising though, anytime I log in I usually get it wrong the first time too. It just feels more natural to put the 3 after the C. 

Hey, it's me. said:

Yeah, ehen did that change take place? I thought you chose your screen name and then that was it, no going back?

Uh, ehat are you talking about?

;)

I beat The Last of Us.

Wow. I'd been looking forward to this game since it's announcement, but it had always been the nifty visuals and the post apocalyptic environment that drew me in. I really wasn't expecting much more out of it than that. I wasn't expecting it to be anywhere near as amazing as it was, or for the story line to be that good.

This one ranks up there with the original Bioshock and the Half-Life series for me, my top two all time favorite story driven games. So many games that come out you play and they are a lot of fun, but you know they are nothing special (Bioshock Infinite, and almost every game I've purchased over the last three years), people aren't going to be talking about them on short lists of greatest games from the last decade. The Last of Us is something special, it is one of those games that still will be mentioned ten years from now, it is one of those games that set the bar just a little bit higher.

The game play is solid, but not unlike anything you've ever played before. Pretty standard third person stealth and shooting, very simple, nothing revolutionary. It is the visuals, the atmosphere, the acting, and the story that are absolutely outstanding. This game is just about as much fun to watch someone else play as it is to play yourself.

Picked up TLOU. I've played through a bit - I'm in the school with Bill. 

It's about as i'd expected so far - having played Uncharted games in the past. It kinda feels like a mashup of those and The Walking Dead [game].

I find the guns to be a bit awkward and clumsy but that is probably more to do with the controller in general. The melee combat is fine and I usually rely heavily on that when not sneaking. 

Re: Bill - Yeah Ellie was a jerk to him but I find her to be a jerk in general. Maybe she is meant to just be a product of her environment - a child without proper discipline or role models.

As for the theft, I don't think things like posession would carry the same weight in a world like that - you'd get used to taking what you need and hoarding what you can use. 

She took his things even after he [Bill] told her not to but she probably just wouldn't see anything wrong with what she did. Joel goes through houses raiding whatever he feels like.

Yay! Really glad someone else on these boards is playing this. Once you finish it, you'll have to tell me what you thought of the whole story.

I've found it really interesting hearing different people's takes on Ellie. I found her extremely likeable throughout the game, and felt like Naughty Dog was trying really hard to make the things she did endearing. If they were, it worked on me. Maybe that is why that one thing she did that I found really distasteful stood out so much to me. However, I've heard others mention how unlikable they find her, or as you said, some found her to be a jerk in general.

As far as raiding houses and the nature of possession in the post outbreak world, yeah, things have kind of degraded to a cut throat take what you need survival mentality.
<<<MINOR SPOILERS BELOW>>>

At one point Joel casually admits to having done some pretty awful things in those 20 years since the outbreak began. I thought the game did a great job of completely mudding the waters of what right and wrong is in some ways.

I finished it last night and really enjoyed it start to finish.  The music and voice acting was especially great, Amazon gave me the soundtrack for free and ive been meaning to listen to it.  I feel my only complaint is that it didnt feel as smooth as the uncharted games.  

You can start a new game with all of your perks and I plan to just rip through to keep the pace and story as tight as possible. I spent so much time sniffing around for stuff that I lost the sense of urgency that most of the sequences should have.  Not yet though, as great as it was it was pretty heavy and I need some time away from it.  time for a simple platformer or something.  

SPOILERS

I thought I knew how it would end when I reached the last sequence but was pleasantly surprised they didnt go that route.  That said, I also regretted Ellie wasnt given the choice because you know she would have gone through with it, I think any of us would have.  Joel was pretty damn wrong....he just wasn't capable of letting her go.  The game was just too dark to go that route.  

The gay porn thing didnt bother me, It rang pretty true to her character after the way Bill treated her, and to the way teenagers act in general.  I like to think that if Bill had been halfway decent to her she wouldnt have stolen the mag from him.  I realize it was implied that Bill was gay but I didnt really know until after the magazine reveal and I think that was the point of the sequence.

It's an interesting discussion, I like that Bill was gay, it wasn't necessary for the plot but it made his character much more 3 dimensional to me.  Sadly, gay people are the butt of easy jokes all the time in the real world, why not for characters in the last of us as well? 

stossmo said:

You can start a new game with all of your perks and I plan to just rip through to keep the pace and story as tight as possible. I spent so much time sniffing around for stuff that I lost the sense of urgency that most of the sequences should have.

I decided long ago that for games I am interested in primarily for the story, that I am not going to bother with collectables. So I didn't spend much time sniffing around for comics and dog tags. I'd raid houses for useful supplies, and occasionally stumble across a collectable or two, but I kept the sense of urgency to the game.

I plan on replaying it and finding everything, eventually.

It would kind of take you out of the game when your health was extremely low, you were sneaking around trying to avoid several guys who were searching the area for you, and you'd pick up a comic and hear Joel yell out, "Hey, Ellie! I found another one of those comics you like!"

MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW!!!!

SPOILERS

I thought I knew how it would end when I reached the last sequence but was pleasantly surprised they didnt go that route.  That said, I also regretted Ellie wasnt given the choice because you know she would have gone through with it, I think any of us would have.  Joel was pretty damn wrong....he just wasn't capable of letting her go.  The game was just too dark to go that route.  

I loved the ending. I became really fond of Ellie, and I didn't want her to die. For me, that whole ending sequence was agonizing, because I knew that if they could get the cure from her, then they were doing the right thing. One life for all of humanity is a very inexpensive trade off. 

But still, I wanted to pull out a gun, kill everyone of those guys, and take her away. And felt a grim satisfaction when that was exactly what the game let me do. When I got to that point, it was exactly how I wanted the game to end, but not at all how I expected that it would. I kept thinking Joel is going to get there and it will be too late, or he is going to have a change of heart once he gets into the OR, or after the encounter in the garage. The car scene was brilliant. Seeing Joel driving in silence. I held my breath thinking, What did he do? He better not have left her behind! And when he lies to her, it kind of stings. Because you know her character would have gladly given her life for humanity, and is likely something she had already considered carefully during that year long journey.

Joel didn't save her for her, he saved her for himself. He chose to let all of humanity eventually parish, rather than lose someone close to him again. I love that. It is really dark, but somehow feels just in a way. Take a look at humanity in that game. How much was it really worth saving?

Also I felt some strange sense of entitlement. Ellie and Joel could have died any number of times on that journey. They faced insane odds, and by this time the Fireflies must have given them up for dead long ago. Humanity was the primary antagonist preventing them from getting to their goal again and again throughout that year. If they had died, which they were on the brink of many times, the end result would have been the same. Only now they get to enjoy a quiet life with Joel's brother and their group. Even when the Fireflies found them at the end, a man trying to preform CPR on a dying girl, they treated them with hostility, despite Joel's pleas, and gave him a rifle butt to the head.

He fought with everything he had to get her there, and then they take her from him and prepare to dissect her. That wasn't what he had in mind when he killed countless people and sacrificed so much blood and effort to get her to them. 

The gay porn thing didnt bother me, It rang pretty true to her character after the way Bill treated her, and to the way teenagers act in general.  I like to think that if Bill had been halfway decent to her she wouldnt have stolen the mag from him.  I realize it was implied that Bill was gay but I didnt really know until after the magazine reveal and I think that was the point of the sequence.

You didn't really know, even after he said that the dead man was his partner, and read the dead man's letter written to Bill? It was pretty explicit.

It's an interesting discussion, I like that Bill was gay, it wasn't necessary for the plot but it made his character much more 3 dimensional to me.  Sadly, gay people are the butt of easy jokes all the time in the real world, why not for characters in the last of us as well? 

I guess I just feel we should be beyond a day and age when gay people are the butt of jokes.

I thought this thread was going to be C3PX talking about Ziggy Stardust.

Bingowings said:

I thought this thread was going to be C3PX talking about Ziggy Stardust.

Reference to Ziggy's sig. Nice!

Mrebo said:

Thoughts?

I've not seriously played console games since controllers had about 8 buttons and a single directional pad, but it's a sort of game I'd be interested in trying.

It is a really great game. I loved every second of it, as I've probably stated a dozen times in this thread already.

I got out of playing video games during my college years. But I have always been a huge fan of the art of story telling in general. I mean, who isn't? It is something we have done for all of recorded history... it's how we started recording history!

There are all sorts of ways to tell a story, and a lot of them shine in their own ways.

I got out of playing video games because I deemed them a waste of time, and felt I could gain nothing from them. I probably still can't. They probably are a total waste of time, as are so many things we enjoy.

Sometime after college, I hit a rough spot and started playing games again as a way to waste time and stop my mind from dwelling on painful things I couldn't change. I don't play games much anymore, but this reintroduction to games made me realize what a great vehicle for storytelling they really could be.

Far from the imagination inspiring games of my youth, where the story was delivered in two pages of the instruction manual and the rest was left for you to fill in the gaps, modern games can really get you invested in a world and its characters, making the story all the more powerful.

I still prefer books over TV and film, and maybe that is why. A week or two invested in a novel and wondering what will happen next in the story while you are away at work, for me, makes the end result of the story a lot more powerful than it is watching it unfold over the course of the better part of two hours, or in forty five minute, often drug out, and hyperexpanded segments of a TV show. I think video games have this same sort of power, but with a potentially higher degree of immersion.

Half-Life 2, Bioshock, and plenty of others to lesser degrees have left me with that same sort of feeling I get after finishing a really good book. The Last of Us most definitely did this for me as well.

I find the guy in your article a bit silly in how he continually reiterates how baffled he is that The Last of Us can be called a game, and how he argues that it isn't. And calls the whole concept of games like The Last of Us a "problem".

It is kind of like arguing that Pac-Man is a game, because the difficulty increases and you earn a score at the end, while Super Mario Bros. isn't a game, because you don't have any choices in it that impact the outcome and all players who make it to the end will eventually get the same ending. What??

You can finish the "game", of course, and get the ending that all players will inevitably get, but there's no real skill involved. Even the clumsiest, slowest, dumbest gamer -- me -- will eventually get there. There is no way to "lose" this game other than to choose not to finish it.

This describes almost every "game" that has been called a "game" since video games were a thing.

I kind of get the impression this fellow hasn't even played The Last of Us, as it isn't super easy, or even really that easy. I died in the game. A lot. Yeah, you don't have three extra lives that when gone force you to start over at the beginning. But what game does that anymore? That is a gaming aspect of the past. Nobody would play a game like Bioshock or The Last of Us if they had to start at the beginning again after dying a few times. That sort of "forgiving" game play began with the likes of The Legend of Zelda. I played TLoU on normal difficulty, and found its challenge on par with most modern games, and I have heard that survival mode is downright brutal. It got a bit tricky at times, and sometimes you had to figure out little "puzzles". How is that anything but a game?

What is this guy even arguing anyway? The more I stop and reflect on what he is saying, the sillier he sounds. It is totally linear, and it is totally story driven, but you still play it, you still shoot enemies, set traps, figure out puzzles, get killed and have to restart at your last autosave like any other modern game. He seems to be dogging it for being linear, and that every player who plays it all the way through will have had pretty much the same experience.

For most of video gaming history, games have been a linear experience. From Super Mario Brothers, to Metroid, to The Legend of Zelda, to Doom, to Tomb Raider, to pretty much any game ever that had a storyline, by the end, you've experienced the same things all your fellow players had. Multiple endings, moral descisions that shape the game, main stream open-world play-however-the-heck-you-want games are a fairly new development in gaming.

The Last of Us is in every sense, and by every definition, a game. Only it is one of those damn good ones that manage to be thought provoking, as well as emotionally engaging.