Last of Us [PS4]
- Thread starter messyman
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Are we really going into this much discussion about story reality-checks? Has there ever been a sci-fi story that was even remotely plausible? Let's take a time-out here to recap the stories from Uncharted's 1 through 3, and then return to LoU. Clearly LoU has taken a far more plausible approach to the crazy zombie apocalypse scenario than ND cared with their other stories. It's sufficient enough to support the tense survival scenario. Without them, how do you get to situation of total world collapse with a ravaging foe? It's just a plot point. If you can't accept the mild break with reality here, how can you stomach any computer games at all?!
DoctorFouad
Newcomer
good point,
last of us, is really the last most realistic game Naughty Dog ever created (be it for its graphics, gore, animations, AI, gameplay, story setting....etc). Continuing this direction, Naughty dog could be well in their way to create a new Shenmue-like game in the future, from Carsh Bandicoot to Last of Us
what an evolution...and for people saying video games arent realistic, well, ALL MOVIES are also unrealistic too, and ALL NOVELS too for that matter....if someone wants something realistic he should really look far away from the entertainment industry (be it movies, novels, music, video games...) and turn to TV News, TV documentaries and academic history books (and even these things could be biased by the authors vision of reality...)
I'm not saying LoU is less realistic then other games. I made a point that from all the story elements talked about so far of LoU story, the zombies is by far the dumbest, and that the fungus doesn't make it much less dumb.
And it's a shame a game that is striving for a more grounded, realistic and grity story (completely different to uncharted) has such a cheap element to it.
There could be thousands of ways to create a recent post-apocalyptic scenario without resorting to the classical game/b-movie/bad-science-fiction clichès of zombies, or bio-weapons, or aliens and so on. Ubisoft's I Am Alive did just that, too bad everything else about the game was total crap.
The zombie plot point gives them a foe, but from the looks of it, the non zombie humans already make for pretty good enemies already.
When I play games, I have my expectations way down low for story and I enjoy them for what they are, and I will still do the same for LoU. One thing I have to admit is recent games have evolved A LOT in the quality of their scripts, and acting. So the story-telling has improved, bu the plots are still very cheap, and LoU is not gonna change that.
The entertainment industry is plagued with unnecessary and offputting fantasy, yet not "ALL MOVIES" are Hollywood blockbusters nor are "ALL NOVELS" fantasy best sellers. If you can't think of examples of great literature without wizards, zombies, robots, cop chases, conspiracy theories, or any other of those repetitive themes, you have just been reading the wrong books.
Back to Last of Us, I simply believe zombies cheapen out the whole game. Even if they went with a massive epidemic of a fungus infection as a plot point. Would't the game be much more interesting and thought provoking if it didn't completely incapacitate the minds of the hosts? Imagine if it only killed them slowly, but made them into medicine addicted maniacs who would anything to get some more pills to aliveate their pain. Still a quite silly and childish mindsed, and doesn't require much creativity to think of it, and yet is less silly than Unconscious-half-dead zombies.
I don't blame Naughty though, is just that games as a medium still has a pretty low bar, and gamers still need simple black and white stories. I am actually happy by how good they are right now compared to what they were 10 years ago.
What I meant was that they are both dead and parasite infected. Thats the idea I got from 6
DoctorFouad
Newcomer
If you believe that some movies and some novels are or could be described as realistic than you should have no problem with last of us
seriously though, the objective of the entertainment industry is to entertain people, one important way to do so is to stimulate the imagination of the public by creating and depicting UNREALISTIC situations....so YES ALL MOVIES and ALL NOVELS are in a way or another unrealistic, they all depict imaginative stories, or else they wont be called Movies, they would be called documentaries, and they wont be called Novels, they would be called Historical books.... anyway, unless your definition is very broad, your meaning of realistic = could happen, and unrealistic = couldnt happen, than you are right, some movies and novels could be realistic.....but if thats what you mean than you should know that 99% of video games, Movies, Novels, Music clips...are unrealistic, but whhats your problem with that ?
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If you believe that some movies and some novels are or could be described as realistic than you should have no problem with last of us
anyway, unless your definition is very broad, your meaning of realistic = could happen, and unrealistic = couldnt happen, than you are right, some movies and novels could be realistic.....
Some people will go as far to say that reality is boring.
DoctorFouad
Newcomer
and I agree with them, lol, thats exactly the reason why the entertainment industry depict unrealistic stories and situations (perfect heroes, improbable events...) because people want to be released from their ordinary boring predictable or sometimes sad lives...they want something different to what happens to them....
That's not entirely true. Stories are typically grounded in reality and follow our understanding. If they deviate too far, it jars with the viewers. Human relationships have to be realistic, as governed by the same natural laws. One area Hollywood et al take severe liberties is with science, knowing much of their audience is suitably clueless, so we ahve exploding cars etc. despite that being totally unrealistic (truth is most writers are clueless about such matter anyhow). I'm one of those awful people who's forever grumbling about unrealistic writing in films etc. eg. Recently watched Lost on Lovefilm and they have a problem on how to destroy a plane. With dynamite they are powerless, despite the fact it's full of aviation fuel, or just trashing the control systems would be enough to ground it forever...If you believe that some movies and some novels are or could be described as realistic than you should have no problem with last of us
But when it comes to plots, serious liberties are taken. Giant radioactive ants, aliens that can put on thousands of pounds of body mass without eating anything, super powers dervied from ingesting toxins - theses need to happen or else stories would be very boring. I regard Milk as being very wrong in saying there are lots of alternatives. "I am alive" is a natural apocalypse event. What other options are there, especially if you want more than just angry humans to fight against? The moment you want anything more than evil people, you have to reach beyond normal science to the realms of psychotic creatures, cats developing sentience, trees coming alive to have their revenge, cuddly toys coming to life, deadly viruses, blah blah. LoU is bar far one fo the most reasonable plotlines to explain the introduction of a totally unrealistic scenario. Ergo LoU is more realistic, if not truly realistic, which is all I've seen people saying here.
Unrealistic =/= Fictional. Something can be Fictional yet, realistic.
I was indeed using the term loosely, yet if you want to be precise, Realism is an artistic style that Attempts (this word is important) to depict its object (fictional or not) on a plausible fashion, as devoid as possible from romantizations and exaggerations.
I also have nothing against fantasy. There are great novels that make use of fantasy to tell interesting stories. What I'm against is stupid clichès, childish plot points, and things that are plain gamey. Actually, I am not against those either, as long as they fit their universe and the purpose of the story. And again, I don't think the story of LoU is bad. It is probably going to be better than at least 90% of the games out there plus some 80% of the top selling books and movies ( that have a tendency to be stupid ). Now with that said, the story won't be perfect, for sure. And so I think that from what we've seen so far, it seems the zombies part is the weakest element of that story. The rest of the world seems to be pretty plausible, and the game is touching into some very serious subjects, and trying to depict human emotion with a fairly detailed and grounded style. The zombies do dumbify it a little. Come on, that is not so hard to see.
I don't think these games are anything close to being real. The pace of them are just too much like a movie for them to be considered real. A real person would avoid dangerous places as much as possible and would not go Macgyver at every chance they get. Minecraft is probably the most realistic game I have played this generation - you see a big hole in the ground you avoid it. A real game allows you to go around a building instead of funnelling you down a tunnel in order to tell you some kinda plot story that may or may not be of any use to you. Gaming is still in its infancy but we are pretty advanced in terms of shooting things.
SedentaryJourney
Regular
In their current form videogames are probably the least fit medium for realism. Even if your plot approaches believability, unrealistic gameplay conventions are still a limitation. If anything, fantasy and sci-fi narratives at least allow for the near miraculous stuff we're used to doing in gameplay. Master Chief's ability to absorb bullets and heal himself are much more plausible within a narrative context than Joel's from TLOU.
A game that goes for realism is usually going to be at odds with itself, unless you make drastic changes to game design. This is possible too, but currently no one is stepping up to the challenge. I assume many game designers are afraid of abandoning traditional "gamey" mechanics for fear of producing stuff that simply isn't fun.
There's also the question of whether or not realism is worth chasing. By now it's a common mindset that true realism in art is formally impossible. Realism as a style is pervasive and probably commands a dominant position in pop culture, and IMO it's a worthwhile challenge to make a realistic game just for the sake of doing it. Whether or not realism is an aesthetic virtue is debatable as these things are highly driven by taste, and that changes all the time.
A game that goes for realism is usually going to be at odds with itself, unless you make drastic changes to game design. This is possible too, but currently no one is stepping up to the challenge. I assume many game designers are afraid of abandoning traditional "gamey" mechanics for fear of producing stuff that simply isn't fun.
There's also the question of whether or not realism is worth chasing. By now it's a common mindset that true realism in art is formally impossible. Realism as a style is pervasive and probably commands a dominant position in pop culture, and IMO it's a worthwhile challenge to make a realistic game just for the sake of doing it. Whether or not realism is an aesthetic virtue is debatable as these things are highly driven by taste, and that changes all the time.
I won´t denny that. I hope games keep evolving so eventually there is enough public for games with reasonably good production and deep stories without the need for guns, fist fights, car chases or other action oriented gameplay types.
For LoU, a certain level of disconection with reality would inevitably be necessary, and I am aware of that. To my opinon, any post-apocalyptic story is already unrealistic simply because of the post-apocalyptic theme, as it is quite unlikely that the entire civilization - specialy in US - would sundenly degenerate into a couple ruins.
Now there isn´t a binary realistic vs. unrealistic classification. There are levels of realism. And compared to most games out there, LoU seems to be going for a much more realistic vibe than most. Not totally plausible, but quite a bit there. And that extends to its gameplay. Even the more action oriented playthroughs we´ve seen so far, show encounters that are far less gamey. Enemies are more conservative, they are fearfull, comunicate with each other, and plead for their lives.
I remember in some interview, a developer said the girl was usually freaking out about the brutallity of Joel´s actions more than usual during those playtrhoughs, because they were being played in a more agressive and reckless manner than what the game is expected to be played. If anything that shows the game has a more reasonable depiction of violence than most others.
From that perspective, the zombies end up standing out as much less mature plot/gameplay device, than basically everything else. (I insist, that is only based on the information available so far, this is after all very speculative actually)
I am super exited for the game, and I understand why there are zombies in there, and I don´t think they completely break the story by anny means (well, they might, we haven´t seen the game) I just think they are a little tiny weeny bit more fantastic than the rest of the game, not something most people would notice even. And in my speculative opinion, the game could have been more impactfull if they either did away with the zombies all together, or made them into something less absurd. That´s all.
Prophecy2k
Veteran
You fail to see the plausability of the fiction TLOU presents because you're too narrow-minded in terms of what you believe to be a possible symptom of an infection by a biological human pathogen. The truth is, your latter statement, "now the game is talking about a thing that puts a human being completely and permanently out his faculties, while still keeping him alive, and agressive", which you deem improbable or plausable, is in fact pretty much an accurate description of what happens when a human is infected with rabbies. The truth is, given the chemical nature or human cognition, character, intelligence, behaviour etc, there's no reason why a hypothetical pathogenic entitiy cannot have evolved (or even been engineered) to do pretty much whatever it likes to an infected host. As long as said pathogenic entity can produce the right protiens, hormones, chemical receptors, DNA/RNA inhibitors etc, it can cause a human host to do whatever bidding and display whatever characteristics or behaviors that is possible for a human to display. When it comes to biology on the cellular level, pretty much anything goes. So its really your definition of what is realistic or plausable that is flawed, not that anything presented in the fiction of games like TLOU or other such media is inherently "obsurd".
I think your restricted view comes more from the fact that you associate anything appearing zombie-like with the most agreeably obsurd archetypical and traditional zombie. It's not bad that you do that, since we are all human, and we tend to process things by associating them with what we know and is familiar. However, the fiction presented in this game isn't inherently any more unrealistic than what appears in most fiction, and is in fact actually more realistic than most. It's simply "science-fiction", in that it takes what is science and writes a fiction around what could be possible within the realms of that science. It's what makes this game more appealing to me over most non-thoughtout, non-explained zombie games (which I also tend to enjoy anyway).
In fairness this is all completely your conjecture. As of now we know nothing more of the beaviour or capabilities of the infected in TLOU than what has been shown in the trailers, and even then non of what has been shown indicates what you suggest above (aside from their appearance, which is clearly based on what happens when a real cordyceps bursts from its host in the real setting). We don't even know whether they're flesh eaters, or whether they have some other equally as violent and grissly means of spreading their infection. At the same time however, what you suggest above is in now way unrealistic or impossible, even given the fact that a person or animal infected with rabbies can be aggressive and still retain senses sufficient to chase down and bite an uninfected animal in order to further spread the virus. Many have proposed that the whole "zombie" idea in teh beginning came off the back of stories of people infected with rabbies.
And yet the real-life cordyceps is unique. As are many other different fungi, viruses and bacterial infections that you proabably haven't ever heard of. TLOU's cordyceps-like fungus is nothing like a "killer flu that turns people into mindless snot monsters", as one is a piece of silly fantasy that would break the laws of nature, chemistry and phsyics, and another merely takes what is a real-life fungus and imagines a version that can affect humans in a slightly more radical way.
Bingo.. now you're getting it ;-)
Lol, again not true. You should go and read up more about what rabbies actually does ;-). Where do you think the zombie fiction came from in the first place.
Bullshit... we're not talking macro-organisms. Micro-organisms like viruses, bacteria and fungus can evolve very very rapidly. Again you need to do more reading, as making statements like that only prove how little you know about the subject.
Because humanity has found a cure many of the deadly pathogens that consistently plague us? The reality is, when it comes to pathogens, a new killer cold virus could just as easily come out of no-where and wipe out the entire human race in a matter of weeks. Without anyone having the antibodies to ward off the desease. Such pathogens have in fact been artifically synthesized in labs, for the purpose of study, and exist today under the strictest of controls today. You have no idea my friend ;-)
:-S You lost me here, as the only mutation in the fiction in question is that which caused the fungus to come into being. Mutation in macro-organisms is a painfully slow process and its far less likely for a fully grown macro-organism as a human to exhibit a mutation that causes anything other than cancer. Mutations in human gametes cause genetic disorders like down-syndrome. A fully grown human with a mutation will contract a cancer, plain and simple. I've never heard of humans becoming super-humans through mutation. That's not real.. it's obsurd... dunno where you've heard that from. So no, TLOU is nothing like X-men (lol WTF?).
RenegadeRocks
Legend
Did this thread get infected by some fungus too?!?!?!?
This topic has lasted more than I thought it would, and I thought I made myself clear by this point. So I'll repeat the most important part, all games have stupidish stories, LoU is not worse, its actually probably gonna be better, but to me personally the zombies are the less clever part.
Now my next points are going to be about me trying to clarify to Prophecy why I think the fungus of LoU is little plausible, and why I think those implausibilities are exaclty the kind of convenient disconnections with reality present in cheap fiction.
In the very first trailer of LoU, we see zombies running into a room - not idiotically, but pretty intelligently - they stop as they notice the dead bodies ( human enemies Joel just killed ) they either felt their smell, or saw them, or both. Two get off camera, suposedly to eat the flesh of the bodies, one of them is seen getting on his knees right next to body and bending over it, as the camera cuts it off we hear sounds of them eating their flesh. One of them then comes to Joel, he tries to lunge over him, but he holds it by its arms, and the creature does fight against him, it looks like it is attempting to bite him. So the only thing I really guessed is that they are totally unconscious - they could after all still have conscience, past memories and ego, though I am willing to bet whatever you want this is not going to be the case in the game ( ok, not really, just trying to be hyperbolic haha. Actually I hope I'm wrong about that one as that would make the game far more interesting )
Now, I know it is biologically possible for a fungus to cause those symptoms, but it is statistically less likelly than the same person betting on the right numbers on the federal lotery 5 times in a row just by luck (also a possible scenario, just very unlikely)
Why? Because humans are not as simple as you seem to think they are. Can a bunch of hormones affect the behaviour of a person? COMPLETELY, now to affect to affect them in a way as specific as they are in this game, you need a pretty complex combination of what hormones, what areas of the brain to attack, in what order, when, how, and so many other factors. As I said, its ok for a disease to cause random hallucinations, anxiety, violent behaviour, stress etc. Now to generate specific patterns like "develop a special taste human flesh, don't forget how to run, keep your balance, move about, scout for humans and fight against them if necessary, oh and do that in groups, but for everything else be completely unconscious" That is not some trivial behaviour you can obtain by one or two chemicals in a person's brain, that is a convenient Game/movie/comic-book making plot device, but not a likely outcome of a couple mutations of a fungus that at its current form does nothing more then grow its spores inside an ant and trigger some funny reaction on it to make it go up. There is no "make me into a zombie" switch you can just turn-on on a human head, that would take hundreds of very specific, organized, and well administered interventions to the brain. I think you can agree with me on that.
With a behaviour as complex as a fungus would need to develop to create such a complex mind controlling capability over humans, we are not really talking about such a simple micro-organism anymore. That is why Rabies is a good example. It makes peaple agressive, but pretty stupidly so, on a way that is very to what LoU is depicting.
My point about humanity having time to develop a cure was not really a focus, and this is a pretty dificult topic to analyse. What I was saying, was that its not very easy for a disease to completely obliterate civilization to the point that the game is depicting. We've had some pretty fucked up epidemics hit europe during the dark ages, where medicine and society itself were much more rudimentary, and it didn't have as drastic results as what we see in LoU. It left europe with a third of its population, but by the looks of whole big cities completely empty of the trailers, the american populations has been reduced much more than that in the game. Still, this is not the most improbable plot point. It could be made into something justifiable with insightfull writing, but it is not that easy.
And by the way, if their explanation is that it comes from military experiments ( which I also have a feeling that is not the case ) that would be pretty unlikely too. Our ability to conjure up micro-organisms with specific tasks, while pretty advanced compared to decades ago, is not capable enough of creating this kind of thing either. Some might say, but they came from a super secret underground facility which kept most of its discoveries secret... Do I need to say why that hypothesis is unrealistic too?
Of course many elements of LoU's fiction kind of make sense and kind of could happen, thats what writers do. The find convincing explanations to things, but they take pretty big poetic liberties.
And finally, to clarify the X-Men part. I just used X-Men to give an example of another work of fiction that takes real scientific phenomena and exaggerates them to create a fantastic loosely plausible universe. What I was trying to say was: there are mutants in the real world just like in the X-Men, that doesn't mean its very likely we will ever see a real life Wolverine anytime soon. In the same note, there are diseases that can affect the mind, and fungus that make little ants behave a little weird, but a fungus that turns humans into strategically ( from the point of view of making interesting gameplay ) intelligent killing machines is a stretch. I hope we can agree with my reasoning. Which certainly is nitpicky for a game's plot, but I'm doing it for fun, and I think all thise has very little influence on the actual quality of the game.
PS: I hope we the threat can move on to other subjects related to the game without us delving much more into this whole thing I kind of helped create.
Now my next points are going to be about me trying to clarify to Prophecy why I think the fungus of LoU is little plausible, and why I think those implausibilities are exaclty the kind of convenient disconnections with reality present in cheap fiction.
In the very first trailer of LoU, we see zombies running into a room - not idiotically, but pretty intelligently - they stop as they notice the dead bodies ( human enemies Joel just killed ) they either felt their smell, or saw them, or both. Two get off camera, suposedly to eat the flesh of the bodies, one of them is seen getting on his knees right next to body and bending over it, as the camera cuts it off we hear sounds of them eating their flesh. One of them then comes to Joel, he tries to lunge over him, but he holds it by its arms, and the creature does fight against him, it looks like it is attempting to bite him. So the only thing I really guessed is that they are totally unconscious - they could after all still have conscience, past memories and ego, though I am willing to bet whatever you want this is not going to be the case in the game ( ok, not really, just trying to be hyperbolic haha. Actually I hope I'm wrong about that one as that would make the game far more interesting )
Now, I know it is biologically possible for a fungus to cause those symptoms, but it is statistically less likelly than the same person betting on the right numbers on the federal lotery 5 times in a row just by luck (also a possible scenario, just very unlikely)
Why? Because humans are not as simple as you seem to think they are. Can a bunch of hormones affect the behaviour of a person? COMPLETELY, now to affect to affect them in a way as specific as they are in this game, you need a pretty complex combination of what hormones, what areas of the brain to attack, in what order, when, how, and so many other factors. As I said, its ok for a disease to cause random hallucinations, anxiety, violent behaviour, stress etc. Now to generate specific patterns like "develop a special taste human flesh, don't forget how to run, keep your balance, move about, scout for humans and fight against them if necessary, oh and do that in groups, but for everything else be completely unconscious" That is not some trivial behaviour you can obtain by one or two chemicals in a person's brain, that is a convenient Game/movie/comic-book making plot device, but not a likely outcome of a couple mutations of a fungus that at its current form does nothing more then grow its spores inside an ant and trigger some funny reaction on it to make it go up. There is no "make me into a zombie" switch you can just turn-on on a human head, that would take hundreds of very specific, organized, and well administered interventions to the brain. I think you can agree with me on that.
With a behaviour as complex as a fungus would need to develop to create such a complex mind controlling capability over humans, we are not really talking about such a simple micro-organism anymore. That is why Rabies is a good example. It makes peaple agressive, but pretty stupidly so, on a way that is very to what LoU is depicting.
My point about humanity having time to develop a cure was not really a focus, and this is a pretty dificult topic to analyse. What I was saying, was that its not very easy for a disease to completely obliterate civilization to the point that the game is depicting. We've had some pretty fucked up epidemics hit europe during the dark ages, where medicine and society itself were much more rudimentary, and it didn't have as drastic results as what we see in LoU. It left europe with a third of its population, but by the looks of whole big cities completely empty of the trailers, the american populations has been reduced much more than that in the game. Still, this is not the most improbable plot point. It could be made into something justifiable with insightfull writing, but it is not that easy.
And by the way, if their explanation is that it comes from military experiments ( which I also have a feeling that is not the case ) that would be pretty unlikely too. Our ability to conjure up micro-organisms with specific tasks, while pretty advanced compared to decades ago, is not capable enough of creating this kind of thing either. Some might say, but they came from a super secret underground facility which kept most of its discoveries secret... Do I need to say why that hypothesis is unrealistic too?
Of course many elements of LoU's fiction kind of make sense and kind of could happen, thats what writers do. The find convincing explanations to things, but they take pretty big poetic liberties.
And finally, to clarify the X-Men part. I just used X-Men to give an example of another work of fiction that takes real scientific phenomena and exaggerates them to create a fantastic loosely plausible universe. What I was trying to say was: there are mutants in the real world just like in the X-Men, that doesn't mean its very likely we will ever see a real life Wolverine anytime soon. In the same note, there are diseases that can affect the mind, and fungus that make little ants behave a little weird, but a fungus that turns humans into strategically ( from the point of view of making interesting gameplay ) intelligent killing machines is a stretch. I hope we can agree with my reasoning. Which certainly is nitpicky for a game's plot, but I'm doing it for fun, and I think all thise has very little influence on the actual quality of the game.
PS: I hope we the threat can move on to other subjects related to the game without us delving much more into this whole thing I kind of helped create.
Stage Three - Often, as the growth of Candida yeast becomes more and more serious, behavioral and mental problems develop. This would include having a hard time with concentration, experiencing mood swings or depression, becoming forgetful, and even noticing confusion. At this time, the individual will begin to feel out of control, wondering if he or she is losing the mind.
In serious cases of Candida yeast overgrowth, the person might go into a severe depression, leading to thoughts of suicide, irrational fears, panic attacks, phobias, epileptic seizures, and even violence. Obviously, this is a horrific situation, meaning the individual is now dealing with health problems, as well as mental impairments. Again, psychiatric care that would involve antidepressants, lithium, and perhaps hospitalization only treats the symptoms but not the underlying cause of Candida yeast overgrowth.
Its a video game of which most involve stories that step outside of reality. Its called creative freedom. I'd bet 99% of video games involve story lines that are about as theoretical possible as the world being taken over and humanity enslaved by living breathing talking burritos.
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Actually there is a family, Romanian I think, that all share a mutation that makes them super strong with a skeletal structure that is much denser than normal. They are as close as we have to super humans, physiologically that is.
I remember reading about the youngest son who at the age of ten or so was power lifting some absurdly huge weights.
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