Has a game ever made you feel so anxious you had to turn your console off?
At one point playing The Last of Us 2 did that. Which is amazing, as on a moment-by-moment level it is truly a great game. Scenes are well written, and the atmosphere is overflowing with dread.
But that’s not why we’re here.
It has an early twist that’s pretty much turned fans rampant, I’m here to go into why it didn’t work, and how they could’ve made it work.
*Spoilers are coming*
You’ve had your warning.
So Joel’s death has fans outraged, but why?
In no particular order, these are the reasons I could see.
No set up/foreshadowing
Not so much as a prophetic dream! Twists are essentially a huge payoff to a set up we didn’t realise was there. So when you’re delivering a twist to your audience, what makes them okay with it is it’s inevitability is that they can say “Oh shit, no wait, actually that makes sense.”
If we’d heard that Joel was in a particularly dangerous place, or that he nearly died last year, or anything at all to help set this up, then when he died we’d have gone “Damn, that checks out.”
They tried to do this with our intro to Abbey. It’s not explicitly stated, but it’s very obvious she’s going after Joel. But this doesn’t work because Joel’s killed everyone else who’s tried to take him out. There’s no clear sign post to the audience that this time would be any different.
So when he died it never felt inevitable, just disappointing.
Joel doesn’t make a decision that leads to his death.
For an audience, a character needs to die for a reason. They have to make a “bad” decision that causes their death. It could be as heinous as regicide, as in Macbeth, or not marrying an inbred chick, as in Game of Thrones. His death should feel like a surprising, yet inevitable outcome of his decisions. Alas, past the prologue Joel makes one onscreen decision before his death, that’s to go to the mansion rather than stay and die.
Not much of a decision.
Even if we just played as Joel before that final Abby bit, and saw him make the decision to save her, despite Tommy warning of the dangers, that’d be enough. Yet we don’t get that, we never get a casual choice for his death, which is a big part of why it feels so unsatisfying.
There’s an argument to be made that his death is the outcome of his huge decision at the end of the first game. That’s bullshit, it’s a different game and it was 4 years before his death. It’s fine to have that as the killer’s motivation, but it’s not satisfying for the audience to say that made his death inevitable as it is currently written. You could rewrite it so it kinda works, but it’d be pretty lame to have the start of 2 be a huge shadow from 1, especially when getting rid of Joel is largely about stepping away from 1 anywho.
Cheap twist over drawn out tension
You know who’s forgotten more about story than I’ll ever know? Hitchcock. let’s quote him:
In the first case [an unexpected explosion] we have given the public fifteen seconds of surprise at the moment of the explosion. In the second [an expected explosion] we have provided them with fifteen minutes of suspense. The conclusion is that whenever possible the public must be informed.
Let’s apply this here, what if we started with a shot of Ellie at Joel’s grave? Then flashed back. It wouldn’t be perfect, for a myriad of reasons, but it’d mean that the scene with Abbey would be stomach turning, having to play it whilst knowing she’d kill him. That’d be worth more than the twist alone. Seeing that same prologue scene knowing he’d die would make it so much more bittersweet, which the later flashback scenes are great at.
I really think if they wanted to kill him at this point which, as I’ll explain in a second, is an awful choice anyway, then this was the best way to do it. Set it up at the start so we’re emotionally ready, force us to participate in his death, which we would hate, but if it’s well written enough we’d do it. Let us see that it’s the inevitable outcome of a decision he makes in this game.
*GoT, Jaws and Stars Wars spoilers below*
Structurally awful place.
Eddard Stark, the victims of the Red Wedding and Quint from Jaws. What do they all have in common? They all died near the end.
Why? Because that’s the darkest moment in the plot, that’s when things go truly wrong and you’re allowed to kill off main characters. If Joel had died then, with appropriate foreshadowing, we’d have understood. We’d still be upset, but we’d have understood. It’d feel like a hefty price, but combined with the corrections I posted above it’d make the whole thing more enjoyable; we’d embrace every second with him.
You know who dies as the catalyst for the story? Luke’s parents. Not Obi Wan. These are the nice characters who you don’t really care about, but the protag does. Their death is motivation for the protagonist. Obviously, the writers of the game tried to engage us with the story by having someone we genuinely care for die. Which is a brave choice, perhaps it’d have worked better if they’d set it up and established that tension, but I doubt it.
That’d be like Infinity War starting out with Captain America’s death. Maybe I’m wrong here though, Can anyone give me an example in the comments of a beloved character dying at the start of something and fans embracing it, I’d love to see some.
Prologue promises relationship between Joel/Ellie
I think this is probably the 2nd biggest reason it fell so hard on it’s face. Our first scene with the game tells us what the story is all about. In Last of Us we live through the death of someone treasured and grief it with Joel, we know it’s a story about a broken man trying to heal in a heartless world.
In 2, we get a scene of Joel talking to Ellie, their relationship is a bit stretched. He sings a song about not wanting to lose her. It’s sweet. What does this tell us? That the story is about their relationship, that’s going to be the forefront. In a way it’s about her loss of Joel, but really, it’s a story about revenge. The genre of the from Ellie’s perspective story is clearly “revenge thriller”.
This completely wrong foots us in terms of our expectations going forwards. I know as a player I spent most of the initial act wondering when I’d see Joel and why he’s not with Ellie yet.
No doubt, this is the biggest reason. It’s a slap in the face to fans. I waited 7 years to spent 5 mins of game time as Joel. Maybe 15 minutes with him, before he dies. If he’d died before the game started off screen and was just there in flashbacks, I’d be alright with it. It’s a dangerous world, we knew Ellie was going to be the lead.
But instead we just get blueballed, then someone we actually cared about was snatched away from us. We literally committed an atrocity with his hands, and forgave him for it. That’s how well they wrote the 1st game, how much they made us care. Then taking him away so early in the 2nd is punishing us for that same caring.
You never want to punish your fans for caring.
If his death was set up well, and happened late in the game, it could’ve worked. But so early, you essentially made us feel towards the writers the same way that Ellie felt towards Abby. People are returning the game en masse because of it, and review bombing the game, it’s not even like the fanbase is a little split as it was with Last Jedi either. Almost everyone hates it.
Conclusion
How do you avoid doing a Last of Us 2?
Foreshadow deaths, use tension instead of twists, create decision points that lead to character deaths, ensure beloved characters die at the end and pay attention to the promises of your prologue.
And most importantly of all. Don’t ever punish your audience for caring; they’ll never trust you again.
The Fellowship Of Ink 