Ellie's death animations when you were playing as her? I can't remember a game off of the top of my head where children died, and let alone so brutally. I'm glad N.D. didn't shy away from showing how cruel their world could be to kids.

Not to cut down your thread at the knees but...

Kids have died in games before. That said I would have found it more irritating if they treated her death differently from Joel's.

What does actually happen?

I always sneaked past everyone and the only animation I can remember is when David buries his machete into her shoulder.

@raineko:

She gets killed similarly to how Joel is killed. So imagine Joel's deaths with Ellie.

I was very shocked, I thought they would handle it differently because of her age, glad they didn't though.

@jasonr86: I'm not doubting you, but could you give some examples?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but there wasn't a bloater in the Ellie sequence, was there? That bloater death animation is brutal, so seeing that happen to Ellie would have been rough. Regardless, I'm glad Naughty Dog kept them in there. If they had shied away from that, it would have affected the sense of role-reversal that sequence involved, with Ellie taking Joel's role of the guardian.

Engh.

Naughty Dog did a great job in many ways to give you the impression that Ellie was a kid, but in the end I felt it never quite went far enough to give me that impression. She talks, behaves moves, and reasons like a grown woman. Maybe the world she lives in is so divorced from the world we live in that the concept of "teenager" has lost all meaning for someone looking in on it, but I just saw her as another adult.

Also, maybe I'm just around teenagers of her age way too much, but that fact that she didn't grow physically over the time spent in the game world detached me from it, some, as well.

I'm glad they put that in there. It's a M-rated video game after all.

I don't think they can really make her grow physically. The problem is that Ashley Johnson has really the size of Ellie and they can't really make her bigger.

That's also why I think they don't know how to make a sequel because they could only do a sequel with her right after the first game where she still has the same height.

Does anyone remember the controversy in the original Deus Ex? You could actually, kill, children there. I remember that being a big deal.

@cbk486:

The first one that comes to mind is the Walking Dead game. Though I'm blanking on others. I just find it less impactful because game stories have matured to a point that things like kids dying have less of an impact because I would expect a fucked story in a fucked up world to dive into such issues.

You guys realize female puberty can complete by 14 right? She's murdered countless hunters, I'd say that makes her a woman in my book. There must be a trail of thousands of dead bodies between Pittsburgh and Wyoming.

There is, but a bloater death animation for Ellie is just her getting punched in the face.

Shit, I just realised I close my eyes every time Joel or Ellie get's killed. . . This game is bringing out some weird tendencies in me.

@jasonr86: Oh, I remember in the Walking Dead that the only children killed had already been zombiefied. I guess there were some killed that hadn't turned, so I'll take your word for it.

Fallout 1 and 2

@fancysoapsman: I haven't played any of the fallout series before three...I really should look into them.

Get out of here David!

I'm no 3d animator, but all motion capture/performance capture measures is information. Math, essentially. I think they could just map the different points to whatever size model they wanted to use. This is how they would do it for monsters, and whatnot (Hulk, Gollum, etc.).

not a bit. was a bit shocked with the whole henry blowing his own brains out after capping his little bro... felt kinda odd in the next segment as its been a few months for them and i was still like WTF. I think if your actually playing the char it doesnt equal to actually seeing or even killing the kid. I mean then you got to look at how many games you play as a kid, and can die!

The problem is that the actors do the mocap scenes in which they interact with each other. So I wouldn't really know how they would make that work.