Last of Us [PS4]

the fungus only infect body, not soul or spirit. with a bit of screaming and flashback it's controllable.

I think I remember wrong game
 
BoardBonobo said:
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.
Click to expand...

Denser bones does not a stronger person make... Ask any anatomy expert. It is in fact a myth. In fact denser bones would be a very bad thing, as bones themselves are porous structures allowing the diffusion of blood cells made in the marrow to flow into the blood stream, replenishing dead ones. Denser bones would make this process more difficult and such a person would end up with severe health problems. There are a few weird diseases and conditions that cause an increase in bone density, none of them make people stronger ;-)

Also, if that romanian family are stronger than the average bear, then it probably has more to do with their genes causing them to produce higher levels of testosterone, HGH or other such hormones which increase muscle mass and strength. Still however if from the age of ten they are power-lifting, I think that's a much more likely explanation to why they're stronger than the average person than anything else.

Mutation doesn't give people superhuman abilities overnight. Nobody is born with a physique like Arnie Swartznegger, and is able to lift 2 tonne weights with their fingertips. Being able to bench press above your BMI isn't superhuman, being able to push a tank over with a flick of the wrist is.
 
milk said:
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.
Click to expand...

Your entire basis for defining the likeliness or plausability of TLOU's plot is based on your assumptions about the level of consciousness, intelligence and lucidity of the games' infected.

What you're assuming, based on what you saw, is pure unverifiable conjecture. So how can you then from that try to say anything about the plausability of the game's fiction? So no I don't agree with your reasoning because its quite flawed.

Also, you're also making assumptions about the complexity and capability of chemicals signals a fungus might create to be able to effectively modify a human's behavoir. Your assumptions here are again quite flawed, as in reality it doesn't take much.

There are hundreds of different chemical compounds that have psychotrophic and behavior modifying effects that exist. Almost all are found in nature and created naturally by organisms to serve a specific purpose. There's abosolutely no reason why if a fungus that can create chemical signals to affect and manipulate the minds of ants, another can't do a similar thing creating chemicals to alter the state of a human mind. Hypnotists don't have a problem making people do whatever they desire for them to do, how much more an organism that can affect even the basic chemistry of the human brain. It's not hard...

Had we humans the complete understanding of every chemical process and compound at work in a human mind, there's absolutely no question that it would be possible and actually pretty easy for us to control people's brains, provided you have the means to synthesise the right chemicals. Nature through, DNA transcription and protein synthesis has always been much better than us at synthesising super complex chemicals. And organisms that can do so out of necessity (i.e. survival) rather than a desire to profit, are far far more adept at such than we could ever be on our own.
 
Prophecy2k said:
There are hundreds of different chemical compounds that have psychotrophic and behavior modifying effects that exist. Almost all are found in nature and created naturally by organisms to serve a specific purpose. There's abosolutely no reason why if a fungus that can create chemical signals to affect and manipulate the minds of ants, another can't do a similar thing creating chemicals to alter the state of a human mind. Hypnotists don't have a problem making people do whatever they desire for them to do, how much more an organism that can affect even the basic chemistry of the human brain. It's not hard...

Had we humans the complete understanding of every chemical process and compound at work in a human mind, there's absolutely no question that it would be possible and actually pretty easy for us to control people's brains, provided you have the means to synthesise the right chemicals. Nature through, DNA transcription and protein synthesis has always been much better than us at synthesising super complex chemicals. And organisms that can do so out of necessity (i.e. survival) rather than a desire to profit, are far far more adept at such than we could ever be on our own.
Click to expand...
MK Ultra

The CIA has been experimenting with these technologies and has been using them since probably the 60's, 70's ;)

Scary and sad but true
 
Nesh said:
MK Ultra

The CIA has been experimenting with these technologies and has been using them since probably the 60's, 70's ;)

Scary and sad but true
Click to expand...

Wouldn't be surprising to be honest. Human brains are very complex, however all it takes in a single engineered protein hormone to activate receptors in our neurons to modify our behavior in very specific and very effective ways. It's possible in theory to even create things like love potions, wherein through the administration of a certian chemical into the right parts of the brain you can cause a person to fall into a chemical-love induced stupour over another person.

Much of human behavior is driven by chemistry, is the sad truth. And these chemicals which have kept us alive through the centuries, helping us to survive the elements and rise to the top of the animal kingdom, will soon be exploited readily by powerful organisations to make us do things solely to serve their bidding.

*takes off tin foil hat.*
 
its called fungus there? not mushroom?
many of its kind are delicious to be cooked, steamed, fryed, served as a soup, or burned.

btw in TLOF we already see what ellie will say if Joel become uber violent, but does ellie will make any comment if we play Joel as too stealth, too good guy? even if that makes ellie/joel almost got beaten to death?

ah, now i really want to eat some mushrooms... too bad it;s already night :(
 
Prophecy2k said:
Your entire basis for defining the likeliness or plausability of TLOU's plot is based on your assumptions about the level of consciousness, intelligence and lucidity of the games' infected.
Click to expand...

Exactly. That's why mostly everything you said after that was a little unnecessary. I knonw that the human mind can be affected in a number of ways, I belive I made that point clear, and as you said, my basis for defining the likeliness of LoU's infenction's symptoms is based on my assumptions on the level of intelligence of the game's infected.
To sustain those assumptions I gave a very detailed description of the scenes of the first trailer from which they are coming from. In them the zombies are clearly roaming around in groups, with pretty agile movement, searching for people, feeding off of dead bodies and attacking live ones. That is what was shown in the trailer. I took this info a little further and assumed all zombies in the game will behave like that or at leas similarly to that. This is not 100% certain, but I think is a fair guess.
With that, I believe it is extremely unlikely a fungus could, in a couple of years evolve into a state it can cause such complex behavior changes into humans and with such consistency (trailer shows 3 zombies acting pretty similarly)
Sure you can say those few seconds from the trailer are not enough evidence. True. I'm making a bet. And the bet is that most zombies on the game will show that kind of behaviour I described: agility, some sort of environmental awareness, presence of some senses, violence, and no consciousness (this last one is a complete guess) And if those assumptions are correct, then my statement that the possibility of such fungus turning out on the real world is very small were reasonable. Those assumptions could be wrong, sure, but I am personally pretty confident on them. If they are wrong, then the zombies are not as stupid of a plot element as I thought and said they were, and I hope that's what happens as it will make the game a tiny bit better, though I don't think that will be the case. Any way, next year we'll know.
 
Prophecy2k said:
Denser bones does not a stronger person make... Ask any anatomy expert. It is in fact a myth. In fact denser bones would be a very bad thing, as bones themselves are porous structures allowing the diffusion of blood cells made in the marrow to flow into the blood stream, replenishing dead ones. Denser bones would make this process more difficult and such a person would end up with severe health problems. There are a few weird diseases and conditions that cause an increase in bone density, none of them make people stronger ;-)

Also, if that romanian family are stronger than the average bear, then it probably has more to do with their genes causing them to produce higher levels of testosterone, HGH or other such hormones which increase muscle mass and strength. Still however if from the age of ten they are power-lifting, I think that's a much more likely explanation to why they're stronger than the average person than anything else.

Mutation doesn't give people superhuman abilities overnight. Nobody is born with a physique like Arnie Swartznegger, and is able to lift 2 tonne weights with their fingertips. Being able to bench press above your BMI isn't superhuman, being able to push a tank over with a flick of the wrist is.
Click to expand...

There is that gross disease that means your bones never stop growing,some of the skeletons I have seen with that are pretty amazing. If a little bit Geiger...

But this is a specific, documented mutation that has been passed down through the mRNA line. But only affects the males in the family. They are born preternaturally strong. The dense bone structure allows them to support greater weights than a normal skeleton would.

But you are right in that pushing a tank over with a flick of the wrist may never happen. Mainly because at that point physics would take over and you'd probably end up sunk into the ground up to your waist before the tank moved... :D
 
 
BoardBonobo said:
There is that gross disease that means your bones never stop growing,some of the skeletons I have seen with that are pretty amazing. If a little bit Geiger...

But this is a specific, documented mutation that has been passed down through the mRNA line. But only affects the males in the family. They are born preternaturally strong. The dense bone structure allows them to support greater weights than a normal skeleton would.

But you are right in that pushing a tank over with a flick of the wrist may never happen. Mainly because at that point physics would take over and you'd probably end up sunk into the ground up to your waist before the tank moved... :D
Click to expand...

mRNA stands for "messenger-ribonucleic-acid". I may be wrong, but I don't think mRNA is passed down generation lines at all. mRNA is used during protein synthesis by ribosomes I believe. The only genetic material passed from parent to children exists in the Chromasomes as DNA, and also through mitochondrial DNA in the mitochondria that live within the two gamete cells. mRNA is synthesised in the body from DNA by transcription, I believe.

At the same time however, I now feel compelled to look at some pics of said freaky never-ending-bone-growth-people. :-O
 
 
Oh I get it!
Naughty's games always made me say "oh it's impossible the game really looks that good" until you play the game and you say "There must be some kind of cheating here, let me pay attention to this stuff" and then you carefully inspect the models and the rendering and you are like "Damn, now I realised it looks better then I initially noticed". I'm not the only one. There has always been rumors surroundings them like "they have access to super secret dev kits and libraries no-one else has" But It sudenly came to me how ND manages to squeeze so much out of these systems: they have a pact with the devil!
Look, Crash had those Australian voodooish heads doing all sorts of sorcery. Jak had dark eco. UC always had some bizarre supernatural thing at the end, and now LoU has zombies. Their employees have sold their souls to the devil in exchange for the ability to produce the best graphics of their generation. Andy Garvin and Rubin had to step out for a while "to get some fresh air". Yeah right, to pay your bill down in Hell that is! Now Rubin is out to get THQ out of its financial crisis, and if he succeeds its only further evidence of my theory.
 
pff, how dare you speak of our god ythguan as devil! Those human blood sacrifices all went straight to heaven.
 
Prophecy2k said:
mRNA stands for "messenger-ribonucleic-acid". I may be wrong, but I don't think mRNA is passed down generation lines at all. mRNA is used during protein synthesis by ribosomes I believe. The only genetic material passed from parent to children exists in the Chromasomes as DNA, and also through mitochondrial DNA in the mitochondria that live within the two gamete cells. mRNA is synthesised in the body from DNA by transcription, I believe.

At the same time however, I now feel compelled to look at some pics of said freaky never-ending-bone-growth-people. :-O
Click to expand...

By mRNA I meant mitochondrial DNA as passed through the female gamete, not the transcriptional phase. The 'eve' line as it is known.

Sorry for not being clear enough!
 
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