Everyone has that one game. It doesn\u2019t always make sense why it reaches into your brain and pokes the dopamine button so easily. It just does.<\/p>\n
Mine is \u2018Last of Us\u2019. Though the reason why isn\u2019t hard to figure out.<\/p>\n
Shamus and I disagreed with the game in almost every way. It’s easily the game which we varied the most drastically. He wasn\u2019t as much of a fan because he disliked Joel so much. Couldn\u2019t wrap his head around that guy, disliked playing a character he felt was so foreign. Illogical. Almost every decision Joel makes is pretty much the opposite of what he would have done, so the entire game was just running red lights.<\/p>\n
For me, I\u2019ve never identified with any game character more completely. I \u201cget\u201d Joel. Nothing he did seemed unreasonable. Well\u2026 ok\u2026 I probably wouldn\u2019t have killed EVERYONE in the fireflies hospital. Only the ones in my way. So, only most of them.<\/p>\n
In full disclosure, for those of you who might not know, before you judge me too harshly\u2026. I lost a daughter. I\u2019ve lost a child. But we\u2019re not here to discuss that.<\/p>\n
Point is, Joel means something profoundly more to me than anyone else who hasn\u2019t endured that particular kind of agony. Anyone who has ever had the joy of having a child knows it irrevocably changes you, usually for the better. Losing one does the same, sometimes not for the better.<\/p>\n
Joel did nothing unacceptable to me. I don\u2019t think what he did was \u2018good\u2019 or \u2018moral\u2019 or anything so objective. Considering the state of the planet (in game) those concepts are somewhat luxuries, anyway. I\u2019m not going to try and make the case that murder is acceptable. It\u2019s not what was right or wrong, but what was necessary. Like everything else in the game, it was a matter of survival. Not of his body, but his heart and mind. Losing another daughter, which is obviously how he came to view Elle, was unfathomable. The mind can only take so much.<\/p>\n
To me\u2026. Joel was broken. As much as the world he inhabited. I think he knew it. He never rationalized what he did, never intellectualized it as some \u201cgreater good\u201d sacrifice like the Fireflies. He was broken and did what he needed to do to see tomorrow\u2019s sunrise. The alternatives were shown everywhere he went. Bill chose exile. Bill\u2019s partner, like Henry, couldn\u2019t adapt, couldn\u2019t adjust. They chose suicide. We all like to believe that if we face tragedy, horror or trauma we would behave rationally, perhaps heroically, and come out the other side a better person. When people are broken, they don\u2019t get to decide how the pieces look. The brain doesn\u2019t always operate predictably.<\/p>\n
I never played LoU2. I didn\u2019t have the heart at first. Then, when I heard the rumors about how Joel was treated\u2026. I didn\u2019t want to. Couldn\u2019t do it.<\/p>\n
I downloaded it last night. I\u2019ll let you know how it goes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Everyone has that one game. It doesn\u2019t always make sense why it reaches into your brain and pokes the dopamine button so easily. It just does. Mine is \u2018Last of Us\u2019. Though the reason why isn\u2019t hard to figure out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[618,641,4,612,120],"tags":[446],"class_list":["post-60869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-epilogue","category-patrick","category-general","category-retrospectives","category-videogames","tag-last-of-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60869","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\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=60869"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60869\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60875,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60869\/revisions\/60875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}