{"id":24905,"date":"2014-11-05T23:20:05","date_gmt":"2014-11-06T04:20:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=24905"},"modified":"2014-11-05T23:21:10","modified_gmt":"2014-11-06T04:21:10","slug":"the-last-of-us-ep16-butt-parchment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=24905","title":{"rendered":"The Last of Us EP16: Butt Parchment"},"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\/_a5E5SjU6WA\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen class=\"embed\"><\/iframe><br\/><small><a href='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=_a5E5SjU6WA'>Link (YouTube)<\/a><\/small><\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n<p>So I guess now we&#8217;re duty-bound to come up with more euphemisms for toilet paper. Do your best! <\/p>\n<p>The game improves so much the moment we rejoin Ellie. I think one of the reasons that I can tolerate Joel being a heel is that we aren&#8217;t given any agency at all over his actions. If the game gave you a BioWare \/ TellTale style dialog choice once in a while, or offered you a &#8220;Press X to punch Bill in the face, square to give him a high-five&#8221;, then we&#8217;d resent all the other occasions where the game didn&#8217;t give us a choice. Being offered meaningless choices is more annoying than having no choices at all. <\/p>\n<p>I suppose it also helps that we have a character-based reason for Joel&#8217;s behavior. We can see he&#8217;s wrong, but he&#8217;s wrong because of personal problems that are central to his character. He&#8217;s not just denying her a gun because the game designers didn&#8217;t think it would work from a gameplay perspective. <\/p>\n<p>If I can bring up Mass Effect 2 without opening old wounds<span class='snote' title='1'>Actually, those wounds never closed. But whatever.<\/span> then it provides a good contrast. Shepard makes TONS of galaxy-changing decisions, so us not being able to refuse to work with The Illusive Man<span class='snote' title='2'>There are some who call him&#8230; TIM?<\/span> feels really out of place. Worse, he doesn&#8217;t have a reason that works for us<span class='snote' title='3'>Okay, it works for some players.<\/span>. He&#8217;s enslaved by the plot, which means <em>we&#8217;re<\/em> enslaved by the plot, which means all those other little choices feel frustrating and condescending. Like, I can&#8217;t refuse to work with this crazy terrorist moron, but I&#8217;m allowed to be a dick to Veetor for no reason. <\/p>\n<p>Because of this difference, Joel&#8217;s reluctance to give Ellie a firearm feels like narrative tension and not railroading. And when he finally breaks down and trusts her to protect him, we understand he&#8217;s taking a huge step. It&#8217;s entirely possible this is the first positive step he&#8217;s taken in 20 years to cope with his daughter&#8217;s murder.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Link (YouTube) So I guess now we&#8217;re duty-bound to come up with more euphemisms for toilet paper. Do your best! The game improves so much the moment we rejoin Ellie. I think one of the reasons that I can tolerate Joel being a heel is that we aren&#8217;t given any agency at all over his [&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-24905","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\/24905","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=24905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24905\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}