[CorsiHockeyLeague]

The Godfather vs Age of Ultron isn't really a great comparison, I was just trying to capture the difference between film as a really fun, enjoyable, entertaining and well made romp that has broad appeal (and that some people might actually prefer to sitting and watching The Godfather) to film as an art medium.

A better comparison might be if you picture a world where all of the comic books ever published have been the usual serialized pulp-paper superhero comics that were popular in the late 1970s and early 1980s. There were varying degrees of quality still - a series like the Phoenix / Dark Phoenix saga is still remembered fondly even now, for example. But then someone comes along and writes Maus, and it just takes the medium to somewhere it's never been before.

That's what Last of Us does, and that's why there isn't really an argument for saying "but I prefer games that X". That's fine, whatever floats your boat, but one thing is just not comparable to the other, and if we're trying to critically compare these products, well, one is just in a different league. That's not to say it can't be topped, because the acting could be better, or someone could tell a better story, but it just hasn't been done so far.

Just for example, take the farmhouse scene (which I use as an example both because it's well done and easy to explain). The plot at this point - and for most of the game, really - is that Joel and Ellie have to get to the Fireflies' lab out west and how they should go about that. But that's barely even on the radar, because what's important is that Joel is trying to unload Ellie onto his brother Tommy to take her instead, because he's starting to care about her and he's being motivated by fear of allowing himself to care and losing another loved one, and guilt, because he thinks that if he cares about Ellie, he's somehow betraying the memory of his daughter. Those motivations clash with Ellie's fear that she's being isolated and abandoned yet again, and believable, understandable conflict results, and boom, you get this scene.



The entire scenario is about who those characters are and how they're growing as people and interacting with each other, rather than what happens to them or the particular challenge that's being put before the player, whereas in any other video game - even great ones - things happen to the characters and then there is gameplay where you take control of the characters and attempt to overcome the things that are happening to them, and that's basically what's driving the whole narrative.

If anyone hasn't seen this, they should.