The last of us alternate ending. The Last of Us: why everything ended the way it should. The last of us

Hello comrades.

So I found myself in this thread, on this forum - for the first time, thanks to the wonderful game "The last of US"

I will not sing extra praises. Much has already been said here. Of course this game is an act of art in the world of video games, that's for sure.

It's not just a game - it's a story, it's an interactive drama that gives players the opportunity to participate as it develops in it.

And at the same time - for me personally, the value lies primarily in its philosophical message.

That is good games many, many masterpiece games. But the games for which I go to Google, type in the tag: "ending in the lst of us" and find a link in the first answer - there are only a few such games.

There really is something to think about.

The whole game, from beginning to end, the developers led us to the ending: This is a masterpiece of the plot, in the integrity and logic of the story. The whole game, as a person who sincerely empathizes, I was sure that at the end one of the GGs would die (Joel).

And of course the ending just blew my mind. After passing, I stupidly stared at the credits for a couple of minutes, there was some kind of unpleasant feeling in my stomach. I couldn't believe it ended like this.

This feeling... This feeling of emptiness... A feeling of emptiness. Actually, that's why I found this topic, and now I'm writing what I write. Because I was hoping to find an answer to the question I had: "Was Joel right in what he did?" Maybe I missed something? What didn't you notice?

In my opinion, the philosophical message laid down by the developers is quite simple: roughly speaking, it was formed by Dostoevsky in his "The Brothers Karamazov" - "the whole world is not worth a child's tear."

For developers, the answer is obvious - it's not worth it. Above, someone wrote that if for the sake of peace you need to sacrifice dear person Why is such a world needed?

This is the first philosophical moment in this game.

Now the second moment. The second moment of the developers does not clearly run like a red thread through the whole story. And many who unsubscribed here also did not bypass him: if the world and humanity are so cruel, so degraded - is it worth saving it? The developers and the majority of those who have unsubscribed here give an unequivocal answer - it's not worth it.

So, at the end, after passing, I received two unambiguous answers to rather difficult philosophical questions. There are also a couple of smaller questions, I will dwell on them below.

I shall tell so - did not expect SUCH uniqueness. So I decided to read the opinions of other people who have passed the game.

Opinions are quite one-sided:

Basically, everyone agrees that they themselves would do the same, that this is the real world, and in real world you need to score on everything, score on "abstract humanity" on the "unjust world". In the real world, you only need to take care of yourself, and at most about the people you love.

And the most interesting thing is that in the next paragraphs these same people: D in all seriousness claim that: "And in general, is it necessary to save such a world!, Where there are so many vile people, cannibals, murderers, robbers who strive to shoot you for loaf of bread, or even rape!!!??" At the same time, obviously, everyone who unsubscribed in this way identifies themselves with representatives of the best part of humanity, and would never do it - as the antagonists do in the game: D

And really, is it necessary? :D

Am I the only one who sees obvious contradictions in the two paragraphs I wrote above? After all, "murderers, rapists, cannibals, cannibals in the game" do exactly the same as Joel did (who is applauded by everyone here) - they do everything for themselves, spitting on the world. They act completely selfishly - instead of uniting and building a new society - they rob and kill each other, taking away the last hope from each other. And they slowly rot in their own egoism, sinking lower and lower - up to cannibalism, to eating their own kind.

Yes, even if Joel is still far from them (although he himself admits that he was on both sides of the barricades), he does not eat people. But isn't his deed worthy of the essence on a par with theirs deeds? Isn't what he did an ode to selfishness?

Yes, the world is imperfect, yes the world is cruel, yes people are bastards, yes Cicadas do not know how they will dispose of the serum. But that doesn't mean the world isn't even worth a chance.

Someone here reproached little Elia, who dreamed of sacrificing herself for the sake of saving the World throughout the game - "they say she is a child, unintelligent, does not understand, which means she cannot decide, she was hammered into her head, etc." But Ellie at least has purpose and meaning in life.

All of you put yourself in Joel's shoes and think, "Yes, I would have done exactly the same thing if my daughter were in Ellie's place!"

But none of you put yourself in the place of the WORLD. The world in which the story takes place. That dying reality that may have had the last 5% chance of life. None of you put yourself in Henry and Sam's shoes? They, and millions like them, could live, but they never will - because Joel is a selfish asshole.

Does anyone have relatives with cancer? I have. I'd give anything for medicine. Really. I see how they suffer, every day they cling to life, although there seems to be no point in living, because there is no cure.

Do you understand what it is like to be terminally ill and aware of it? I think no.

You say it's a good ending because it's realistic.

Yes - it is realistic, because it shows all the baseness of human egoism, all the baseness of human cowardice. But is it good?

Joel didn't save Ellie for Ellie, Joel saved Ellie for Joel.

95% of those who unsubscribed here, if they find themselves in a situation similar to the game, will themselves turn into "murderers, rapists and cannibals", because they put the principle of survival at any cost as an absolute. And if from the point of view of one particle it is logical - individualism, then from the point of view of the survival of the whole - this is death.

Civilization in the game died precisely for this reason, because instead of uniting, humanity broke up into small groups of worms driven by selfishness, incapable of ACTION.

It just so happened that humanity thinks in archetypes. Roughly speaking, we all still have the beginnings of a collective mind - common ideas about heroes, villains, wisdom, death, God ... The collective unconscious. " The collective unconscious contains all the spiritual heritage of human evolution, reborn in the structure of the brain of each individual", - so wrote the psychologist-analyst Carl Jung, the famous colleague of Sigmund Freud, who went further than his ideological inspirer. If Freud blamed problems with sexuality for all the problems of mankind, then Jung plunged in his research into the very depths of the human soul and came out from there knee-deep in myths, symbols and archetypes.

Exploring the plot TheLastofUs, following Jung, we also descend to the very bottom of the human soul. Beware, lots of spoilers!

"In the beginning was the Deed"

There are many parallel universes, did you know? But wait, twist your finger at your temple, scientific treatises have been written about this for several millennia. Each person lives in his own world and perceives the events taking place around him, exclusively in his own way. Parallel universes in one form or another can be found in Plato, Lem, Berkeley, Hawking, after all. The essence of each of us is our brain and our memory. We think, therefore we are. No memory - no man. Therefore, our soul is the totality of everything that we remember. The smell of hay in the grandmother’s village, the taste of an apple from the garden, the pain from the first fall from a bicycle, sadness for a loved one who has gone to another world - all this is our soul, the most valuable thing in each of us.

And each of us reacts to the events in our own way, according to the laws of our own universe. One in the store will choose apple juice because he remembers the same apple in the garden from childhood, the other will never buy a blue car because the blue car killed his beloved cat.

Having lost his beloved daughter at the very beginning, Joel instinctively closes himself off from Ellie, immediately uttering the key phrase: "I don't care about you at all." Thus, the unconscious tries to protect its carrier.

A lot of things in our life we ​​choose unconsciously. Hawking even argues that such a choice is not a choice at all, and everything is actually a foregone conclusion. " Each of us perceives abstract and general provisions individually, in the context of our own mind. The reason for this fluctuation (inconstancy of meaning) is that the general concept is perceived in an individual context and therefore understood and used individually.', Jung writes in his work ' Approach to the unconscious».

Symbols of the collective unconscious often come to us in dreams. It is often not clear to the layman where this or that image came from in a dream, but if you dig deeper into the history of mankind, the meaning appears.

Humanity

One of Jung's fundamental archetypes is the "Shadow", the unconscious manifestation of everything that we seek to hide under the mask ("Person", as the psychologist calls it) that we wear in society. The shadow is in each of us and is closest to the conscious. Roughly speaking, we are all schizophrenics. And when "the angels come to judge us for our sins" - they will meet with our Shadows.

But to the world The Last of Us the angels did not come. And the Shadows broke free in their most perverted forms.

Justified by ordinary survival, the remaining people succumb to the Shadow and do what they would never have done before. The society is destroyed, the masks are torn off.

Archetypes are nothing but our memories of the past of our ancestors. Just as a fetus in a woman's body goes through all the stages of human evolution, so our mind carries absolutely the entire cultural experience of mankind. Ever since primitive times, when we did not try to be aware of what we see, but simply took it on faith.

« As scientific understanding grows, our world is becoming more and more dehumanized. Jung writes. — Man feels isolated in space because he is now separated from nature, not organically included in it, and has lost his emotional "unconscious identity" with natural phenomena. Gradually they lose their symbolic involvement. Now thunder is not the voice of an angry God, and lightning is not his punishing arrow". But then presumptuous humanity, long ago lost touch with nature, finally found it. A persistent loach in the splash screen of The Last of Us sneaks through an open window into a man's dwelling. The best metaphor a video game could have.

Any good work carries archetypal motifs. Otherwise, passing through the filter of the consumer's mind, it will simply fall apart and remain incomprehensible.

Those “political reactions” about which Jung writes, in the world of “One of Us” nature itself carried out for an indecisive person. The shadows of the survivors immediately broke free: it was with their help that people understood how to maintain their humanity and survive. Someone began to eat their own kind, someone went for a vaccine on the corpses of children. It is unlikely that they would have done this in the ordinary world, but the world has changed. The unconscious saved them, while the conscious could do nothing. And Joel in this system is one of the last who did not succumb to the Shadow. First.

The last of us

« You will do what I say. It's clear?- Joel deals with Ellie on the beach. " Yes, you are in charge here.”, Ellie replies meekly. From the very beginning, it seems that Joel succumbed to the Shadow, like everyone else: along with Tess, a friend and probably lover, he goes over the corpses for personal gain, justifying this with survival. Cruel world - cruel inhabitants.

He is completely independent, his actions are unshakable, he is the main one in this world. But only until the Child appears in his life and plunges him into the Shadow even deeper.

At first, Ellie enjoys every little thing: sunny forest, chirping cicadas... but winter will fix everything. And then, when she first sees giraffes, she will no longer be able to rejoice like a carefree child.

The archetype "Child" in the collective unconscious of mankind has always played an important role. It is present in every third myth, is the basis of many religions, and literary works important for culture often begin or end with the birth of a baby. In his work The Divine Child, Jung characterizes this archetype with a voluminous " less small and more big". This image has become so deeply ingrained in the unconscious that the symbolism of birth has become a cliché: if a child is born in a movie or video game, then most likely main character is about to admit his infantilism, stop winding snot around his fist and take up saving the world. The closest example is Beyond:TwoSouls, 90% consisting of this kind of cliché, which, however, do not connect into a single story.

With all this, the Child is often abandoned and not needed: best examples- the myth of Romulus and the tale of Mowgli. " Nature, the instinctive world itself, takes care of the child: he is fed and protected by animals. "Child" means something growing into independence. It cannot take place without rejection from the origins. Therefore, abandonment is not only a concomitant, but simply a necessary condition.', writes Jung.

The world in which Ellie and Joel live is empty and therefore very contrasting. In the void, it is much easier to highlight some details and motives.

Like all of us, Joel lives in his own personal universe. And in this universe, he is the Hero, and Ellie is the Child, who only emphasizes the image he invented himself and takes Joel further and further away from the essence of his psychological problems, into the Shadow. At first, Joel rejects her, but then he gets used to it and begins to see her as his daughter. Instead of finally letting go of the memories of his daughter, the old man just replaces her Ellie, thereby muffling the pain of loss.

Bill, a homosexual and a psychopath, only after the end of the world, when people no longer cared about God, was able to find himself in the church. For Joel, Ellie was that church.

While Ellie mentally grows rapidly and in the eyes of the player herself turns into a Hero, Joel only degrades, sticking out his ego more and more. He could have forgotten about his tragedy, but his subconscious replays the death of his only daughter over and over again before his eyes, and Joel simply does not know how to deal with it. He succumbs to the Shadow - everything that he previously hid in the depths of the subconscious. And even after Ellie saves his life and proves that she has grown up, Joel, devoured by his inner demons, deceives his companion, saying the most important phrase in the game: “ I swear". In his universe, Ellie is still a Child and he is a Hero. And it's really scary.

The story of the last of us ends with a catastrophic deceit, a terrible human tragedy.

Death. No one can accept it, because no one can understand. But at least someone is trying. Joel - does not try, but only deceives himself.

The Last of Us is the story of a broken man. The story of a man who could not overcome his psychological problem. Scared to accept the pain. The Last of Us is not a hero story at all. This is the story of a coward. And except for "I swear" such a story could not end in anything. The ending is perfect, and most games are far from that.

But maybe things will get better. Not without reason, after all, after passing through, Ellie's knife appears on the windowsill from the splash screen, with which, as it were, you can cut the loach that is making its way into the room. If Joel is lost to humanity, then she is his last hope. Divine child. It's not over yet.

* * *

That's the beauty of The Last of Us. Any good story woven from archetypal images and motifs, but only really brilliant things do not roll into a farce. Joel is not a Hero at all, and Ellie is not a Child. They are not ready to sacrifice their world for the sake of others. They - ordinary people with a complex, often incomprehensible psyche, like all of us. They - one of us. Therefore, to some extent, the Russian-language name is even more successful than the original one.

I AM passed The Last of Us has been around for a long time, but I still think about it often. Yes, her well-developed world, deep characters, visual and sound design deserve all the praise. But I don't think about that; I remember the difficult feelings that The Last of Us left me with.

We gamers are used to games ending on a happy note. We save the princess and the world, defeat the forces of evil and reach the goal. Even thoughtful games like Journey or Spec Ops: The Line end in catharsis. But The Last of Us was different for me. The plot received its denouement, but the same clarity was not found in the experiences. I've never felt this way at the end of a campaign before, and I really like it.

I think the great thing about The Last of Us is that in the end you don't get to decide whether to save Ellie or (potentially) humanity. The denouement is brutally reminiscent: you play as Joel, but you are not Joel; you go through the game and have some influence within it, but this game is Naughty Dog, not yours. This may sound like a criticism, but in general, this approach seems to me very strong.

In all story games there is a conflict between the interactivity of the format and the inflexibility of the narrative. Most developers deal with it by offering the player characters they can empathize with and project themselves onto; those whose goals coincide with the goals of the player. And the player wants to develop, level up, explore the space, find and pass new tests of their abilities. These motifs often overlap with the hero's motifs.

Crystal Dynamics, for example, made Lara more human in the reboot, so the player wants to protect her. The heroine's self-preservation instinct resonates with the player's desire to protect her and help her go all the way. The genius of The Last of Us is that at first Joel's journey looks the same - the player wants to protect Ellie and get to the goal.

But at the end of the game, this changes, and the conflict between interactivity and narrative comes to the surface. Joel's goals and decisions no longer match mine. Someone is sure to be able to justify his act, but not me. The variety of reactions to the game's ending is particularly clear on the success of Naughty Dog's move.

On the way to the Fireflies, Ellie tells Joel that she doesn't want all their suffering to be meaningless. When I later learned that saving humanity was worth her life, it hurt, but I resigned myself - because she herself wanted it. But when she is taken away, Joel turns from prey to hunter - into a cold-blooded killer, ready to plow through many waves of "villains" in order to save his named daughter. But, of course, it's not Joel doing it - I'm doing it (against my will). The fights looked familiar, but the context had changed.

My feelings reached a breaking point when Joel found Ellie in the operating room surrounded by doctors. I froze, not wanting to kill innocent people. A minute later it dawned on me that there was no other way to go through the game. It was an expressive and harrowing moment, cleverly exploiting the difference between interactivity and linear storytelling.

In the epilogue, Joel's reluctance to tell Ellie the truth further turned me away from the hero I had been for twelve hours straight. If a QTE popped up there, allowing Ellie to dump everything as it is, I would do it - and at the same time I'm glad that I was not given such a choice. Interactivity would devalue the story Naughty Dog wanted to tell.

As it appears, reverse side this conflict is typified by games like mass effect. Yes, you are playing Shepard, but your Shepard. AT The Walking Dead you are not just Lee Everett, you are your version of Lee Everett. The point of these shows is that you can play as virtuous or as bad as you want. Your choice matters. The trouble is that, in the end, this freedom is false. It seems to you that you are free - but only within the framework that the developers have given you. In the case of Mass Effect, BioWare seems to have failed to combine the promised freedom with a concrete story. This led to the series finale being a disappointment to many.

Naughty Dog seems to see this dilemma, accept it, and use it to close its "interactive" story with a deep and exceptional ending. The choice of the player is important, but in this case, the power of influence was ensured precisely by its absence. Sometimes we are not changed by the choice we made, but by those moments when there was no choice at all.