{"id":24375,"date":"2014-09-17T21:43:02","date_gmt":"2014-09-18T02:43:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=24375"},"modified":"2014-09-17T21:43:02","modified_gmt":"2014-09-18T02:43:02","slug":"last-of-us-ep1-at-the-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=24375","title":{"rendered":"Last Of Us EP1: At The Movies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><table class='nomargin' cellspacing='0' width='100%' cellpadding='0' align='center' border='0'><tr><td><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/DYC6v1C3oA4\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen class=\"embed\"><\/iframe><br\/><small><a href='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=DYC6v1C3oA4'>Link (YouTube)<\/a><\/small><\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m always saying that games shouldn&#8217;t be so concerned about trying to be movies. A good game should tell its story in the flow of gameplay, and anytime the player can put down the controller and continue to proceed should be looked at as a possible failure of the game to do its job<span class='snote' title='1'>The are exceptions. TECHNICALLY you can put the controller down when Sam Fisher is hiding from The Bad Guys, but that&#8217;s not the same thing.<\/span>.  And no, throwing gotcha quicktime events over a cutscene doesn&#8217;t solve this problem, it makes it worse. Now I&#8217;m playing a really terrible videogame that&#8217;s distracting me from the [marginally] more interesting movie. Gameplay ought to have some degree of human decision-making in it, and &#8220;Press X to Not Die&#8221; isn&#8217;t that. I mean, when you&#8217;re watching a movie you&#8217;re choosing NOT to pause it, but that doesn&#8217;t make it a game.<\/p>\n<p>HOWEVER!<\/p>\n<p>If you <em>are<\/em> going to use a game as a delivery vehicle for a movie, then this is how you need to do it: You need to make a proper movie. I am irritated to the point of intolerance with games that interrupt our playtime for movies that are bad, poorly-paced, cliche-ridden, ham-fisted, utterly predictable, filled with glaring plot holes, tonally confused, boringly shot, and completely tedious<span class='snote' title='2'>The Resident Evil series comes to mind. And Fallout 3. And Assassin&#8217;s Creed 2. And Dead Island. And Thief 2014. And Watch_Dogs. And Far Cry 3. And Mass Effect 3. And&#8230; now that I think of it, this list might be too long for a footnote.<\/span>.  The reflexive defense is, &#8220;It&#8217;s just a game, you&#8217;re not supposed to worry about the story!&#8221; Which is kind of my point: If the story doesn&#8217;t matter, then why are you wasting my time with it? Why did you waste money making this crappy thing that you didn&#8217;t want to make and I don&#8217;t want to watch?<\/p>\n<p>Spoiler: I don&#8217;t think The Last of Us is <strong>that<\/strong> great of a movie. It&#8217;s leagues ahead of most videogame stories. It&#8217;s got solid cinematography, great environments, expressive models, and a decent story to tell. But if this was in the theaters it wouldn&#8217;t be a blockbuster or anything. It would be something like World War Z (the movie) or Daybreakers: Competently executed and entertaining, but otherwise unremarkable disposable entertainment. <\/p>\n<p>Like Chris said: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=bAzqDgKYfiM\" title=\"Errant Signal: Last of Us\">Last of Us is the best possible version of a fundamentally flawed design<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Also, BioWare: Watch this to understand everything you did wrong with your &#8220;some kid died&#8221; move<span class='snote' title='3'>Spoiler: Everything. You did everything wrong.<\/span>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Link (YouTube) I&#8217;m always saying that games shouldn&#8217;t be so concerned about trying to be movies. A good game should tell its story in the flow of gameplay, and anytime the player can put down the controller and continue to proceed should be looked at as a possible failure of the game to do its [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[188],"tags":[439],"class_list":["post-24375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spoilerwarning","tag-the-last-of-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24375\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}