How “The Last of Us” Uses Cinematics on Storytelling
No Matter What, You Keep Finding Something To Fight For. — Joel
TL;DR — This is an essay for first term’s “Understanding Gaming Experience” unit. I chose the award-winning game “The Last of Us” as my research subject. I will try to find how the developer Naughty Dog uses cinematics on this game for storytelling.
This article contains SPOILERS!
✍︎ Outline of this article:
✍︎ Introduction
✍︎ Terminology: Film vs Video Game
✍︎ Case Studies: How are Cinematics used in The Last of Us
✍︎ Discussion and Character Development in The Last of Us
✍︎ Conclusion
✍︎ ReferencesIntroduction
The Last of Us is a third person action-adventure game released in 2013 and is developed by Naughty Dog. The story focuses on the two characters: a smuggler Joel has to escort a teenage girl Ellie across a post-apocalyptic America to extract the vaccine from her, who is the only person known to be immune to a deadly fungus that wiped out 60 percent of the world population. They are heading to a militia group called Fireflies, who are one of the only few groups that are still looking for a vaccine.
The Last of Us has been recognised as the game of the year by many medias (“The Last of Us — Awards”, n.d.), most of them praised its storytelling, acting, music, and the pacing. Among the techniques Naughty Dog use, I believe that the cinematic is crucial to the storytelling. Here I will use some examples in the game to explain why the cinematic in The Last of Us is brilliant, and try to find out how each sequence makes players believe the story.
Terminology: Film vs Video Game
Before we dive into the examples, let us figure out what is a movie, what is a video game, and what are the differences between them? They are both mediums that want to make their audience feel empathy. A movie relies heavily on the shots, viewers are passively given information, and they observe the events through the lens of the camera. Through observation, viewers feel what the characters feel, thus making the connections, therefore creating the empathy.
A video game may also have cinematic shots or so-called “cutscenes” where the gameplay stops and players observe a sequence, much like a movie, but other than cutscenes, player are also given controls over the characters. Players can make actions that lead to consequences, whether they are players’ or the characters’ intentions. The mindset between a player and a character can be very different, but through playing, the player grows empathy over the character, meaning they can feel the emotions, and the connection is made, ultimately lead to players feeling themselves as if they have become the character (Lessons from Screenplay, 2019).
Case Studies: How are Cinematics used in The Last of Us
The length of all cutscenes is about 92 minutes, whereas the whole play time, estimated by Naughty Dog, is between 12 to 16 hours (Mark, 2013), making the cutscenes about 10–12% of the total play time. The cinematics in The Last of Us can be categorised in two situations: in gameplay sessions and in cutscenes.
Most of the cutscenes in The Last of Us are pre-rendered, meaning they have no interactiveness, but the immersion does not break. They cut in and out gameplay sessions with black screens showing in brief. Cutscenes let the player sit back, reflect, and see the consequences of their actions. The use of cutscenes is crucial as well, for it is important for game developers to decided when and where should they put a cutscene. A cutscene is often used when the emotion or the pacing changes, and in scenarios where the context of the story requires actor performances and particular angles of shots.
The Last of Us also uses cinematic techniques in gameplay as well. Since the game heavily depends on combats and actions, Naughty Dog crafted a context-based camera system. In a GDC presentation by Naughty Dogs’ Antony Newman, he explained how they framed combat sequences to the player (GDC, 2017). There are systemic melee camera, animated camera and cut cameras.
A systemic melee camera tries to frame the attacker and the defender into the same frame by trying to find the midpoint between them and interpolates camera movements sublimely to smooth the actions. An animated camera is used for special moves like finishers or grapples.
Cut cameras are often used only in deaths. Deaths in The Last of Us are shocking, players deaths are often shown in close-ups, and although cut cameras can be disoriented in gameplays, it does not matter since the player is dead. This is followed by a cut to black screen.
Notable Cutscenes in The Last of Us
In addition to gameplay, the story arcs and character developments heavily rely on cutscenes in The Last of Us. They often mark great change on a character or when the scenario is changed. In the following section I will talk about some of the crucial cutscenes that are perfect examples of why cutscenes are crucial in storytelling of The Last of Us.
1. Prologue
The first cutscene example happens very early in the game. In prologue, which happens 20 years before Joel meets Ellie, and when the outbreak had just started, Joel’s daughter Sarah was taken away by his father Joel and Joel’s brother Tommy by car for evacuation. At this point the player takes over control of Sarah, and in this long continuous real time sequence, Sarah can move around inside the car. This gives the player an opportunity to establish how this world the players is participating is like, it basically uses environmental storytelling. This technique is also used in a 2019 game Death Stranding, where the player is also seeing through the character’s perspective while on a locomotion in an early part of the game.
Later in the end of the prologue, Sarah was killed by a soldier right in Joel’s arms. We witnessed her death and feel how it traumatised Joel, and in the rest of the game we live through this nightmare with him and sees how it impacts his decision later. This scene is also followed by a proper title sequence, marking the end of the prologue. This is also the first Naughty Dog game to have featured a title sequence as well.
2. Ellie Speaks Her Mind
Passing through the mid-point of the game, we have Joel taking Ellie to his brother Tommy’s village, where Ellie steals a horse and runs away after realising Joel is trying to hand her over Tommy. Later on when Joel finally finds her, she refers to him as “wanted to get rid of her the whole time” because he is afraid that Ellie may die eventually like Sarah, but she argues that she is totally able to take care of herself. Joel was triggered by Ellie mentioning Sarah, whose death has been haunting him for past 20 years. Replying to Joels “You have no idea what loss is,” Ellie said everyone she had cared had either died or left her, except for Joel. In reply, Joel said “You’re right, you’re not my daughter, and I sure as hell ain’t your dad.” Then the conversation then was interrupted by intruding bandits.
From this scene we can see how both character’s backstories and motivations affect their thoughts and decisions. Joel, who was not able to save her daughter that died right in his arms, subconsciously choose to let Ellie hate him because he cannot afford to see someone who is about her daughter’s age die in front of him again and not being able to protect her. Ellie, on the other hand, has trusted Joel very much. Her friend Riley, Tess, Sam, Henry, and many more people she loved or trusted had died. The only person she feels safe with is Joel, and she feels betrayed that he is going to hand her to Tommy, especially after knowing that Joel is making this decision because of Sarah’s death. After an encounter with the bandits though, Joel decides to leave with Ellie, leaving Tommy’s village behind, and continues their journey. After this separation, they now realise that they cannot leave each other behind anymore, and this change of the emotions makes this scene especially profound and critical to the characters’ development.
3. Ellie Kills David
Towards the ending of the winter segment of the game, there was a boss fight where Ellie confronts David, the leader of a group of cannibalistic survivors. After few attacks, they both fell on to the ground, where David had an upper hand. As he started to choke Ellie, players were given a prompt to press triangle, triggering a cutscene.
In this cutscene, Ellie brutally slashes a machete into David’s head, and does not stop hacking his face even though he was already dead. We lose control of Ellie’s character. Then we see a cut, switching to close up of Ellie’s killing. Joel then grabs Ellie from the back. Ellie struggles before dropping the weapon, then she turns to Joel. Cut to an over shoulder shot from Joel, we see a terrified Ellie before he hugs her. Then here comes the most emotional shot, where Joel starting to comfort Ellie, but his dialogues are inaudible, and we cannot see his eyes. We feel from Ellie’s perspective: traumatised, and unable to hear anything. We feel the vulnerability of human lives, the cruelty of survival in this world, which the game has been constantly reminding us. Joel and Ellie leave, leaving David behind. Another layer that adds to this scene is that David’s corpse was never shown, only the handle of the machete covered in blood that hacks into his face was briefly seen. In this case, not showing the body graphically makes the scene more powerful, as we can only imagine how bad the injuries were. The story then cuts to few months later, the spring season.
Ellie is no longer the innocent girl before. She has become more quiet, does not tell jokes anymore, and driven by fear, starts to know what killing really is. All the killings she made had started to have an impact on her. Joel, on the other hand, pulls her off from David, holds her and calls her baby girl, the phrase he used to call Sarah.
4. Ending
Toward the ending of the game, we have Joel and Ellie finally reach the Fireflies. But after knowing that in order to reverse-engineer the vaccine, Ellie has to undergo a surgery that will kill her, Joel refuses. And after being threatened by an armed member of Fireflies, he kills him, and starts to hunt down the rest of the Fireflies in the hospital. When he reaches the surgery room, he takes away an unconscious Ellie, and makes an escape out of the hospital. This is not a pre-rendered cutscene but the gameplay is minimal and straightforward. From this part of the game we are been reminded of the beginning of the game as well: Joel took an injured Sarah 20 years ago to escape from the infected, but now he takes Ellie to escape from uninfected people. In both scenarios Joel is armless and can only run away. In both scenes we see Joel’s desperation, fear, and most of all his unconditional love.
This is when we arrive the final scene of the game. Ellie asks Joel what happened at the hospital, in which he lied that Fireflies have given up finding a vaccine as well. With Tommy’s village in line of sight, she asks Joel to swear that everything he said about the Fireflies is true. Joel lies again, saying he swears. We have a close-up shot to Ellie’s reaction, then after saying OK, the screen cuts to black, then the credits roll.
Discussion and Character Developments in The Last of Us
The character developments are very well crafted. Joel started from feeling numb for this world to care for his companion and willing to do anything for her. Ellie was an ignorant and innocent teenager at the beginning, but after suffering from all the encounters, she has grown up to protect her self but not as joyful as before. At the end, we do not even know if there is any kindness left in her.
The arc for Joel’s storyline is complete for now, and Ellie’s backstory is later completed in a expansion story Left Behind, released on 2014. In 2016, Naughty Dog announced a sequel to The Last of Us, titled The Last of Us Part II. The Last of Us is all about surviving and making decisions to survive. From the ending of the first game we know there is a big lie told by Joel that serves as a cliffhanger. How will this be resolved is currently unknown, but there will be consequences to this decision, and we will only know when The Last of Us Part II comes out in May 2020. But one things can be for sure, on a 2016 PSX panel, creative director Neil Druckmann said that the first game was about love, and the second game will be about hate (Ethan, 2016).
Conclusion
The Last of Us uses cinematics brilliantly and has proved that video games can be a medium to tell great stories. Balancing cutscenes and gameplay, and players can be both entertained and also involved into the story. Naughty Dog uses the tools they have to craft a unique experience that is equally fun and emotional.
References
- The Last of Us — Awards. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2140553/awards
- Lessons from Screenplay. (2019). The Last of Us (feat. Writer & Creative Director Neil Druckmann). Retrieved from https://youtu.be/4FGlIGYcBos
- Mark Langshaw. (2013). ‘The Last of Us’ is between 12 and 16 hours long, Naughty Dog reveals. Retrieved from https://www.digitalspy.com/videogames/a466272/the-last-of-us-is-between-12-and-16-hours-long-naughty-dog-reveals/
- GDC. (2017). Unsynced: The Last of Us Melee System. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/Ox2H3kUQByo
- Ethan Gach. (2016). The Last of Us Part II Will Be A Game ‘About Hate’. Retrieved from https://kotaku.com/the-last-of-us-2-will-be-a-game-about-hate-1789662506
