The Last Of Us Introduces Next-Gen Emotional Storytelling
I've been playing video games since the eighties. Pretty early on I developed a personal preference for games that were telling a story, trying to achieve a cinematic experience, and let you care for the in-game characters. Unfortunately, almost every game I've played always had some kind of uncanny valley vibe going on, or it would break the immersion with a janky video game mechanic, poor performance of the voice actors or bad storytelling. I didn't play one game that did all of those things right, until now.
I'm trying to remember if any of the games I played in the past had an emotional impact on me and the only thing that comes to mind is a certain section in Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption. However, after finishing The Last Of Us about a week ago I was so emotionally drained and cared so much for the main characters that I realised this was the very first game in 25 years that has ever achieved something like that. It really had an impact on me. The days after finishing the game I was still thinking about the journey, about Joel and Ellie and what they'd been through.
The only thing I can do at this point is applaud Naughty Dog and thank them for letting me experience such an immersive and emotional game first hand. It gives me hope for the next generation platforms and makes me curious on what could be achieved there in terms of these kind of games.
Of course, the game has its small issues, mainly technical, but I think part of that is also due to the lack of power of the current gen hardware. For me, this game has one big flaw; I can't bring myself to play any other game in the same genre at this moment as it suddenly feels so incredible shallow, simple and full of cliché's. No matter what game I play. But I guess at the same time that's the biggest compliment I can give to a developer.
