Neil Druckmann Needs To Stop Confirming Things About The Last Of Us

One of the defining characteristics of The Last of Us is moral ambiguity. It’s full of characters who do horrible things to each other, every one of them justifying their actions to themselves and others through tenuous moral arguments.

Each character is put into situations where control is taken away from them, and they reassert it through violence. Joel massacres a hospital full of innocents because they want to kill Ellie in order to create a cure for the Infection that tore the world apart. Abby murders Joel because he killed her father in said massacre. Ellie chases Abby and murders her friends because they killed Joel.

The Debate Is The Draw For Many Fans

Every one of these choices is a point of debate for fans of the series. Was Ellie justified in her eye-for-an-eye ethos? Was Abby justified for avenging the destruction of the Fireflies and her father? Was Joel justified in stopping the surgery, potentially dooming the world? People have been arguing about this for over a decade, and it’s this moral ambiguity that has made the series so pivotal as both a story and as a part of video game history.

Unfortunately, Neil Druckmann seems to be making it his life’s mission to eliminate as many of these points of contention as possible. He’s been happy in the past to tell fans that he believes Joel was right to kill innocents and destroy any hope of the world going back to normal, and he’s now confirmed that the Fireflies indeed could have made a cure if they’d been allowed to operate on Ellie.

As far as arguments in Joel’s favour go, the Fireflies potentially not having the ability to make a cure is quite a weak one. Many have said that Ellie’s life would have gone to waste had the Fireflies not been able to effectively formulate and distribute a cure, therefore making Joel’s actions morally excusable. I’ve always found it difficult to imagine that Joel acted with this in mind, though – it’s pretty clear he was working out of a fear of loss and not out of scepticism of the Fireflies’ logistical capabilities.

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Moral Ambiguity Matters

Druckmann believes that this confirmation “makes it a more interesting philosophical question for what Joel does”. It does not. It takes away the weakest avenue of justifying Joel’s actions – which, again, Druckmann himself has done – and it makes for a more interesting moral debate, yes, but it doesn’t make for a more interesting story.

It removes reasons to find the story worth debating. The point of these games is that human beings do bad things, and while the actions may not be excusable, they’re understandable. You can put yourselves in the shoes of these characters, with all their baggage and trauma, and see why they do the things they do. I’m pretty tired of hearing Druckmann weigh in on these debates, considering that all they really do is serve to cement what a correct, canonical response to the events of the two games should be.

This is something that’s really bothered me about HBO’s adaptation, particularly in its second season, which tackles the first half of The Last of Us Part 2. The showrunners have written in huge amounts of exposition that essentially tell the audience how they’re supposed to feel and how each character is motivated, instead of letting them decide for themselves.

The most egregious moment is when Gail, a therapist in Jackson, outright tells Tommy at one point that violence is in Ellie’s nature. This conversation was the clearest example of the show dictating how we’re supposed to feel, settling debates for us there and then about right and wrong instead of letting us argue about it on Reddit. Gail implies that Ellie was always going to follow a path of violence because she can’t see any other way to handle things – it’s part of who she is. It’s a far less interesting story than the one told by the games, largely because it removes ambiguity and the character’s moral grayness.

I don’t want to hear the creator’s opinions on the work anymore, because The Last of Us already has so many interesting things to say on its own. It doesn’t matter if the Fireflies could have made a cure or not. But more than that, I don’t want to see more debates being ‘settled’. The fact that we still argue about these things over ten years since the first game is a testament to how its nuanced portrayals make it as interesting as it is. Why should Druckmann take that away now?

The Last of Us

Systems

Released

June 14, 2013

ESRB

M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Sexual Themes, Strong Language

Engine

Proprietary (overall), Havok (physics)