So, on this, our day of Valentine, we are presented story DLC for The Last of Us. Ellie returns, and we get to see what she was up to before her backpacking trip with Joel. No father/daughter bonding this time. Instead we get introduced to her former gal bud Riley, and follow them as they go for one last night on the town.
From a narrative standpoint The Last of Us was pretty much perfect in what it set out to do; It established Joel and Ellie's relationship over the course of the game as it grows from insufferable to inseperable. And ended with a dubious thump, the ripples of which would linger in your mind for atleast the next couple of days.
Any attempt to revisit these characters with a different relationship focus would therefore need to be handled with great care... or should just be left well enough alone.
Anyway, if the title didn't already give it away, I played it and I didn't like it. It starts off okay, and has a few neat moments and fun nods to the main game. But ultimately it's filling in blanks that were best left to the imagination, and pulls a few bonehead attempts at drama.
The game splits itself into two sections; The first one is Ellie and Riley hanging out and yucking it up in the ruins of a shopping mall. The second is Ellie during Winter finding suture materials for the recently impaled Joel in another shopping mall, this time in Colorado. Yep, that's right, we get to see what happens inbetween Joel tumbling off Callus, and Ellie murdering that fluffy bunny. And it's nothing more but an excuse to include some rather meaningless action. The real meat is in the Ellie/Riley section, since it has actual narrative. Unfortunately there's really not much to chew on in that regard either.
The main game prided itself on the character bonding and it had ample time to do so. Two hours or so (nearly half of which is spent in Winter) to build a relationship from scratch is bound to fail, even with our connection to Ellie. You see, the few times Ellie mentions Riley in the main game made me feel more of a connection between them then actually seeing them together. I'd grown to care for Ellie by that point, and if she says she had a close friend I'll take her word for it and let my imagination fill in the blanks. By seeing them together hot off the heels of the main game, Riley just comes across as an invader. It gets even worse though when Ellie reveals herself to being sorta kinda in love with Riley, having Ellie steal a kiss in the heat of the moment. This to me, beyond the typical "awesome girl + lesbian = more awesome girl", smacked of desperation from Naughty Dog's end by forcing an emotional bond between Ellie and Riley that the DLC obviously didn't have time enough to let grow naturally. Now the arguement could be made that Ellie being a confused teenager simply mistook the fear of being abandoned with feelings of infatuation, but in this particular case I fear Naughty Dog went for some new and interesting reveal and stumbled in the process. So now we know why this got released on February 14.
Beyond that, we don't even get to see Riley's death scene, which was really the expected pay-off right from the start; Getting to see that moment where Riley dies and Ellie is Left Behind. It then ends with some sappy monologe about surviving just to spent one more day with the people you care about, going completely against the very dour message of the main game. Though maybe that was the point. It feel flat on its ass for me though.
I got more to say on the matter, but this post is already getting too long, so for now I pass the mic to you; What did you think?
From a narrative standpoint The Last of Us was pretty much perfect in what it set out to do; It established Joel and Ellie's relationship over the course of the game as it grows from insufferable to inseperable. And ended with a dubious thump, the ripples of which would linger in your mind for atleast the next couple of days.
Any attempt to revisit these characters with a different relationship focus would therefore need to be handled with great care... or should just be left well enough alone.
Anyway, if the title didn't already give it away, I played it and I didn't like it. It starts off okay, and has a few neat moments and fun nods to the main game. But ultimately it's filling in blanks that were best left to the imagination, and pulls a few bonehead attempts at drama.
The game splits itself into two sections; The first one is Ellie and Riley hanging out and yucking it up in the ruins of a shopping mall. The second is Ellie during Winter finding suture materials for the recently impaled Joel in another shopping mall, this time in Colorado. Yep, that's right, we get to see what happens inbetween Joel tumbling off Callus, and Ellie murdering that fluffy bunny. And it's nothing more but an excuse to include some rather meaningless action. The real meat is in the Ellie/Riley section, since it has actual narrative. Unfortunately there's really not much to chew on in that regard either.
The main game prided itself on the character bonding and it had ample time to do so. Two hours or so (nearly half of which is spent in Winter) to build a relationship from scratch is bound to fail, even with our connection to Ellie. You see, the few times Ellie mentions Riley in the main game made me feel more of a connection between them then actually seeing them together. I'd grown to care for Ellie by that point, and if she says she had a close friend I'll take her word for it and let my imagination fill in the blanks. By seeing them together hot off the heels of the main game, Riley just comes across as an invader. It gets even worse though when Ellie reveals herself to being sorta kinda in love with Riley, having Ellie steal a kiss in the heat of the moment. This to me, beyond the typical "awesome girl + lesbian = more awesome girl", smacked of desperation from Naughty Dog's end by forcing an emotional bond between Ellie and Riley that the DLC obviously didn't have time enough to let grow naturally. Now the arguement could be made that Ellie being a confused teenager simply mistook the fear of being abandoned with feelings of infatuation, but in this particular case I fear Naughty Dog went for some new and interesting reveal and stumbled in the process. So now we know why this got released on February 14.
Beyond that, we don't even get to see Riley's death scene, which was really the expected pay-off right from the start; Getting to see that moment where Riley dies and Ellie is Left Behind. It then ends with some sappy monologe about surviving just to spent one more day with the people you care about, going completely against the very dour message of the main game. Though maybe that was the point. It feel flat on its ass for me though.
I got more to say on the matter, but this post is already getting too long, so for now I pass the mic to you; What did you think?