T w e n t y S i d e d

I like that we get the dark spooky basement fight here on Halloween.

I kind of feel like this basement section would have been stronger if Ellie’s fate was in doubt. If she made a scared noise and vanished, then we’d feel like we needed to escape and help her. But Chris is right, this does feel very videogame-y. Ellie is taken from you in a cutscene and you’re dropped into a new environment. The game makes it clear that she’s okay. There’s nobody to talk to, so the story and character development stop so you can have a shootout in the basement. (Or if you’re Josh, a zombie punch-up. For whatever reason.)

I can see why this section is here. The hotel was getting old. We needed a shift in gameplay. And it’s bad for the setting to spend too much time shootin’ dudes and not enough time fighting zombies. But this is a really clear example of the oil-and-water properties of story and gameplay. Still, it would have been a little more interesting with a good story hook to pull us along. “Is Ellie okay?” would be an obvious one, but I’m sure you could devise others. We just need something more than “Shoot the zombies so you can get back to where you left off.”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

I feel pretty silly after praising the game for the little moment where Ellie shielded her eyes from the sun. In this episode she does that calm walk down the steps, right through the crossfire… twice. It’s the most ridiculous, derpy, immersion-breaking moment in the game for me so far.

But Chris is right: AI is hard, and companion AI is harder. You could tweak Ellie’s behavior for ages and still find edge-cases where the AI just isn’t equipped to deal with the current world state in a believable way. And the smarter the AI is – the more convincing her actions are – the more ridiculous it seems when the system fails. It’s a tough problem. I’m glad it’s not my job to fix it.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

I love at the five minute mark when Joel and Ellie walk outside and she covers her eyes in the bright sunlight. There are so many small touches like this. Again, it happens naturally with live actors, but it all takes time and effot and attention to detail in videogame world.

Like Rutskarn says: This post-apocalyptic economy is suspect!

If we ever do have an apocalypse, I’ll probably end up captured by bandits by Thursday. I’ll be sitting in the cannibal pot, slowly boiling alive while saying things like, “This is totally unrealistic! No way should you guys be out of canned food by now. This is not a viable long-term survival strategy! Where did all the women and children go? Why are you living in a squalid warehouse when there are presumably comfortable homes available? Why is your warehouse so squalid, anyway? Where did you get this giant pot capable of holding an adult human? THIS IS BULLSHIT!”

And then it turns out they weren’t even cannibals. They just really hate nitpickers.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.