The Last of Us Video Game, Part 1

story of high stakes and near missics. Epic's newest season, Control Alt Destroy Stars fireflyes Summer Glau as a video game designer. She discovers that the game she created has been stolen as part of a top secret project and maybe the only thing keeping the world from plunging into wall. Nations are competing for real world resources within her video game, and Team USA hopes that bringing in the designer in

secret will give them the upper hand they need. This story is perfect for fans of wargames and Ready Player one and will draw you in even if you've never played RPGs. You can listen to Control Alt Destroy and all all the other stories of action adventure on Epic, available wherever you get your podcasts, or at Realm dot FM. Warning this podcast could take spoilers for the video game The Last of Us parts one and two, but mostly one, a minor spoiler for The Food by Cormack McCarthy, which

came out in two thousand and six. Get your get to your local library and read that, plus a potential spoiler for Ant Man and the Wasp Quantumnia that was revealed in the latest trailer Be careful. Hello, my name is Jason Concepcion and I'm Rosy Night, and welcome to x ray Vision, the Crooked media podcast where we dive deep into your favorite shows, movies, comics, and pop culture.

We're getting this from imdby Listen, here's I'm a mark. I don't know what to tell you. I thought this trailer looked great, and I'm very excited.

it looks like a classic costume. And then not only that, but it's this super weird Cosmic Tale and yeah, that pr The email they sent out was really interesting because it confirmed that William Jackson Harp is playing this character called Quas, which a lot of people are saying it's Quasar. Also, we got David Dashmalion who is gonna come back, but not as Kurt. He's playing character called Verb. I think we see Verb and Quas. And then this other character

that they announced called Gentra. I think we see them in the first trailer. They're three people that kind of stand there. Veb I think has this glowing head that's my guest. So you're getting really weird stuff. You're getting great returning cast members. And that's before we even get to Modoc, who you know, the mental organism designed only for killing. He's here and it looked like I thought for a minute, I was like, is that Paul shit,

But it wasn't. It was Corey Stall. It was Corey Stall's giant head.

IGN yesterday about it. I think that yellowjacket, as we saw at the end of ant Man, get sucked in and kind of mangled to this subatomic size, and I think that's likely why his head is this giant size. I think it might be part of one of the only parts of his body that's left. And we see him sitting in the famous Modoc chair, and then they get that shot that we'd kind of had teased from some toy leaks. Of course, the ultimate score location of Modoc in some kind of battle armor, which is very

interesting because that doesn't really exist in the comics. But yeah, this is this movie is going to be absolutely wild. It's going to be absolutely wild.

I need I wish I had that time back. I could have raised Cassie right, I could have done a better job by her. Then comes this message from the Quantum Realm. They get sucked in there, and my guess is Kang Kan just wants out. Kang has been trapped in there for this version of Kang, you know, the conqueror has been trapped in the Quantum Realm and can't get out and needs Scott's help getting out, and in return for him getting out, he will, I guess, returns Scott to a to a timeline happen.

of artifact. It could be connected to the Ten Rings, it could be a different version of them that it seems like Janet hid in the quantum realm while she was there. And we're going to see that classic ant man heist story coming in again, which is always the way every anamo you're going to do a heist, and I think it's very fun to imagine where that would go.

I I'm interested to see how they sell the emotional journey of Scott being willing to do something terrible to get this time back, because I don't know if it aligns with how I see him. But maybe that darker road that Cassi went down, maybe that's the thing that he wants to change, and that would be a believable arc.

But yeah, I mean, this thing looks bonn because and one of the weirdest things about it is they're pulling all these characters Jenra, Kryla, that Krayla had like one appearance, and they're pulling these characters from really weird, Incredible Hulk storylines. So I'm very interested to see if that's something that's gonna come up.

person the Hulk fell in love with. So it's very interesting to see them Yeah, Like, it's very interesting to see them pulling from this Microverse stuff, which is also like this very interesting controversial stuff because later on the Microverse would be connected to the Micronats, which Marvel no longer has the rights to, so it becomes this very kind of fun, weird, deep cut history moment. But I'm

interested to see. There is actually an issue during that Microverse arc in Hulk one hundred and fifty four where Hulk is Microverse size and he crosses over with ant Man and it has like a really cool cover where like he's like fighting a rat and Man's like flying over the top of him. So I do I look, Hulk, we saw you know, Mark Ruffalo loves this character. That's

so many cool things they could do with it. I don't necessarily know if we're going to get our Ulk cameo, but I do feel like he's one of the characters that they're really interested in placing into these stories, like they did with She Hulk, you know, like his role in Infinity War especially, So yeah, I'll be intrigued to see. But I love that they're taking from these weird kind

of eras. I wonder if that's Peyton read and Jeff Loveness too, because they're around our age, and I feel like the Microverse stuff, if you're just a little bit older than us or you're around our age and you were digging in the back issues, that is probably something that's like close to your heart. That's like a weird arc. So I'd be really interested to know if this was more of like a personal look back, kind of like how Jessica Gow was bringing a lot of the stuff

she loved from She Hulk to that story. Yeah, looks absolutely bonkers.

Hulk one forty to Hulk two o three. So great thing to check out, Like Jason said, if you have an unlimited account, or if you're just going through and doing some back issue digging, because trust me, those are some weird issues. I'm sure you can just still find them around and about.

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on PS three in June of twenty thirteen. Developed by Naughty Dog. This is there kind of like they had already made a name for themselves in the kind of like cinematic third person action space with the Uncharted series.

Absolutely wonderful story about in Indiana Jones knockoff who kills eight hundred guys in order to heist you know, various like gold objects from around the world, and then they come with the Last of Us, which just seemed to knit together, you know, a bunch of strands of things that were kind of like in the air at the time.

This is like post the banking collapse, still like you know, post nine to eleven era, this kind of post the Road, This kind of dystopian story about the middle aged guy and a teenage girl who he has to escort across the post apocalyptic wasteland and the kind of the troubles they get in and the relationship they have. It was written by and developed by Neil Truckman, who kind of led the development of game, that directed it and then

kind of designed the writing direction. And I remember this was one of I was an Xbox person and so this game was one of the reasons that I saved up money in order to get a PlayStation because I was watching you know, gameplay of it, and particularly the multiplayer gameplay, which I was very into at the time. I was like a big Call of Duty Black Ops person and it just looked it just looked absolutely mesmerizing. It was grittier and like more in air quotes realistic

than anything I'd seen before then. And then you know, playing it for the first time, you kind of never there's just it's an indelible experience. It's one of those games where kind of like Resident Evil but very different, where your care or the character whoever you're controlling, whether it's Jrol Er Ellie, feels so vulnerable, and that just affects the way that you play the game. It creates an enormous amount of tens just game I really love, and I think it's one of the best stories told

in a video game of all time. Was your experience?

those were like two big game changes for me. I'd always been predominantly into fighting games and platformers, and I really remember both of these games feeling like, oh, this is if a platform game was three D and had puzzles like tomb Raider, but was also a fighting game and you have to learn different combos and different ways to disarm people, and you can stealthily creep up on people, and it was kind of I think about The Last of Us a lot because it is this really interesting

cyclical thing, and as we cover this in the show, I'm going to be just talking about this all the time because it kind of blows my mind. So Last of Us is develop in two thousand and nine, which is six years after the Walking Dead comic comes out, and the influence of The Walking Dead on the kind of conception of this game and the tone of this game. When you think of the comics, it can't really be erased, you know, because it's such an unbelievable kind of change

in the way we approach zombie storytelling. But the thing that blows my mind is the game was in development a year before the Walking Dead TV show started, which to me is just so wild because this establishes so much of the tone and the vibe and the emotions that then would go on to become a big part of The Walking Dead. So I kind of see the Last of Us in The Walking Dead as this really interesting cyclical constantly inspiring each other and taking inspiration from each other.

that feels dangerous in that world. And I think the other thing that that really hit, you know, above and beyond the fact that you're talking about this you know, parent child kind of construction is, you know, in the road, there's a moment where they get cornered by you know, one of the cannibals that's that's roaming spoiler spoiler sorry, and the dad shoots the guy. He had one bullet in a revolver and then would carved to look like

bullets and painted black. That he so that he put in the barrel so it would look like he had a full barrel. And that kind of like lack of resources. We've only got one of these, I've only got one lighter and barely like it is is absolutely integral to the experience of playing The Last of Us, in which you're just scrounging around for every for like pieces of things to make knives, to make band aids out of it, to make health potions out of top grade.

let's recap the game. We're going to cover the prologue through the chapter the Cargo, and this game opens with I think one of the most effective cold open prologus ever in games, because it has to do several things. One nest to launch your characters, make you care about them, set up the world too. It has to teach you how to play the game on some level. It has to teach you how to move around, what the buttons do,

how to interact with objects. Has to teach you how you know, how you move, what the movement speed is, what the things you are going to interact with are, and it does all those things in a really pulse

pounding way. The year is twenty thirteen. We're in Austin, Texas. Joel, blue collar guy and a kind of like hobbyish guitar player, is at home fielding phone calls about work, talking about work, and it appears he's in the construction business and somehow some form of fashion, he's talking about a contractor that is either not doing what they're supposed to do or has some kind of gripe. Meanwhile, his daughter Sarah is asleep on the couch. It's just a regular night in that, Yeah.

can be using this watch all throughout the game. It's a new watch with like a military style field strap, a replacement for an old his older broken watch. And here we get some of the really wonderful voice acting and dialogue with Troy Baker playing Joel, Ashley Johnson playing Ellie Ashley Johnson. By the way, fun fact in Marvels The Avengers, she is the waitress during the Battle of New York YEP who runs out and is like, oh my god, are the Tatari you gonna kill us all? No,

Captain Eric is here, that is Ashley Johnson. Joel says, where'd you get the money for this? Drugs? I sell hardcore drugs. Oh good, you can start helping with the mortgage. Then funny shit. Then there is some plaintive acoustic guitar music, which we're gonna get a lot of over the course of this movie, and Sarah's fallen asleep. Joel carries her to bed. Much much later, dead of night, Sarah's awoken by the ringing telephone and it's Tommy and he sounds desperate.

He needs to talk to Joel, but before Sarah can get any kind of information in the line goes dead, and Sarah rises from bed really kind of groggy and confused. And it's at this moment that the player takes control. It's like it's a it's a pretty it's a jarring moment because I think you're not expecting. Yeah, you know, like you're you're hardwired at least I am that, like, oh, at some point I'm gonna playing Chowl.

hard job. It essentially has to teach you what you need to know about how to use the buttons, how to move, how to interact, but in a way that isn't an exposition dump and it doesn't have the it doesn't have the kind of get out of like a I remember with God of War. They'll just kind of be like hit this button, hit this button, hit this but y you can do it because you're like fighting a demogrgan or a Titan or something, so it doesn't

feel odd because you're in that fighting game mood. But here they're still building up to that big horrific reveal and that big kind of tragic cold open, so it's really interesting to kind of be walking around and they want you to explore the room. That's one of my favorite things about this game is it has that puzzle element to it, like, yeah, this time I definitely found

different things. There's all different things you can interact with, but this was the first time I think when I was replaying it for the for the pod, where in the bathroom there's a newspaper and when you pick up the newspaper, the newspaper talks about how all these people are getting sick and there's this bar, and you're like, oh, okay, so this is a world where something weird has been going on, but they never really saw it going this

way because you don't, right, we've lived it. Now it's like you think it's gonna be okay, and uh yeah. It's just such an immersive and interesting situation. And it's very smart foreshadowing because immedia, it is immediately like, oh, you won't just be playing as Joel. Get ready to play and see this world through a kid's eyes, because that's like a large pot of what you're going to need to do.

You're doing all the things. The last of us is not that you are on rails. You are making certain decisions in moments of action when you're taking on you know, or fireflies are infected about how to move through the world, about you know, like what to craft and how and whether to either kill an enemy or sneak by them. But Joel is going where he's going. Yeah, and you can do nothing about that.

to go. Even if you try and go in a different direction and explore something, you will end up back on the path that you need to be on because there is a story that the creators wanted to tell. And that might sound like it's constricting or you know, it keeps you from exploring the world, but that's not

how it feels at all. And also the reason that in this case I can definitely say that putting you on those rails is right is because the story that it tells is just so great and it has like one of the best payoffs kind of.

world for the first time. And then the first piece of this world that we can explore is Sarah's room, and it is a typical teenage girls room, posters, magazine covers, tacks to the wall as a boombox, lots of CDs, it is twenty thirteen, there's a little TV, there's a dresser with lots of little personal knickknacks and items and things, and on top of the dresser we see a triangle symbol draws us forward, and now all of a sudden we understand, Okay, this is how we read things in

this world, so you can press it to read it. And it's Sarah's birthday card for Joel, which she forgot to give him. She says, I forgot to give him this. And the cover is a green dinosaur, which is really wonderful in retrospect, as I was kind of replaying, because it's this first suggestion of one of the game's kind

of deep themes, which is extinction and life continuing. You know, here's this image of a dinosaur, this creature that ruled the earth for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of years and died out, and now life goes on,

but in a different form. And it almost leads you to wonder if Joel, you know, long after Joel and Ellie and Tommy and Marlene and everybody have died out, if the infected create some kind of world of their own, maybe, you know, maybe there will be something else, some kind of other thing that arises thousands and millions of years after this.

long time. Mike Kerry's an X Men writer, just a great guy, and that book basically takes that question and adds this lens of who gets to choose who lives and dies in those situations and what does it mean? And it's so profound and I just cannot recommend that book enough as a companion to the game and the show.

When you start watching it, and it's one of those it's like Deep Impact and and Volcano and Dante's Peak, but in this way, it happened with a video game in a book, and it's I love that you pointed out, because I think that's such a good get and kind of that interesting notion as well of dinosaurs were terrifying and they were all conquering, they ran the earth, and now years later they are on a birthday card.

do you do that? Heavy birthday pops? Love Sarah? Sarah, Now you can do you can linger in the room, you can do anything. But here we go into the darkened house and Sarah's looking for a dad. She's calling out for him as you move her through the through the empty house, you go into the bedroom. Jol's bedroom

is empty. But here and this game is so good at delivering exposition and little dribs and drabs, and at just the right time, here his TV is on and you get a local news report where the reporter is standing on a local street in Austin and is delivering terrifying news. There's some kind of infection on the loose. Those who are stricken are apparently, you know, overcome by aggressive and violent instincts. Behind the reporter, you see soldiers

patrolling scenes of destruction. There's buildings on fire behind them that Sarah clearly, you know, seems to recognize that place. She says, oh that, you know, I know where that is. And you see the time, it's one forty seven am. And then before anything else can happen, there's an explosion. The building behind them explodes, and the news cuts short.

All of a sudden, there's dogs barking outside, which perfectly leads you to turn Sarah towards the window, and you look out the window, which has this view of some woods and then the downtown Austin skyline behind it, and there's just starting to be fires blooming behind those trees somewhere in the city, and things are starting to get scary. At this point, if you're playing this for the first time,

the hair is on the back of your neck. They're just starting to stand up because this is a totally darkened house, and that feeling of vulnerability is one that this game will absolutely weaponize, and you're feeling it right now for sure, for the first time.

racing towards the house. There's a note on the fridge for Sarah on the stationary of Sarah's youth soccer team. It says, I'm going to be home late tonight. Go ahead and order fruit. See you in the morning, dad. Another nice character note. Just contrast the kind of like loving and warm writing style of Sarah with Joel's very utilitarian note here, no love, just see you in the morning, Dad, and it leads you to imagine the regret that Joel

surely feels. As the rest of this story picks up decades later, there's a light on in the study, and this game uses light so well because that draws our attention. Again, Sarah walks towards the light, which is again Joel's office, and you walk by these sliding doors and you hear there's like a strangled sound. I don't know how you would describe it. Yeah, but it's kind of like half a bark.

out of your own comfort zone. Everyone can remember being a kid and creeping around your house and oh there's a power cart, or you don't know where your parents are, if you're woken up after a nightmare, and this opening very much invokes that, so much so that I'm sure there were players who were like, oh, I don't want to play as a little girl. But I think by the time you get to this and you're creeping slowly

into that room and you've heard that noise. I think everyone at that point is in You're starting to feel the fear, so that.

another sliding guest glass door in there. It's open, and Joel comes running and he's fucking panicked and he's like, did anyone come in here? He's immediately goes over, gets his gun from the jor he's loading it. He's telling Sarah to stay away from the doors. Sarah's like, what's going on? Joel says, the neighbors, the Cooper's they're sick. Something's not right with them. And then before anything more can happen, and here is like a scene that feels

ripped from twenty eight days later. Jimmy, who we am me at? Who I believe to be Jimmy Cooper, that neighbor, but now infect it. Yeah, just crashes through the glass door and Joel has to shoot him. Joel has to shoot him dead. Now Sarah is in a state of absolute shock. Joel takes Sarah to the driveway. Tommy's there just in the nick of time. Everybody jumps in and

now it's a race. The idea is it seems to be take Highway seventy one kind of out of town because the army is setting up roadblocks in order to quarantine the area, probably wisely, so no one can get I don't want the infection to spread, but they want to be on the other side of that. But because clearly, like the infected, it's not like they're just sick in their bedrooms. They're running around doing really bad shit. This is haro. This is when you're just like, oh fuck.

blowing up. And when you're in the car, you can in the backseat as Sarah just constantly turn around and the look and I was getting so scared, like I would see something and I was sure that somebody was

going to come and get me. And you can really build up that tension as they're kind of leading you through like oh this is bad, but you're there and you can hear them talking, and you can really just be looking at the You see people packing up their cars, you see things like exploding in the background, you see things running across the road. It's wonderful.

are we sick? Is it us? And then Joel and you can feel his that that kind of like fatherly impulse to like shield his child from anything troubling or dangerous or worrying. He's like, no, no, no, no, we're fine. Uh, it's just the people in the city that are sick. Now we're fine.

And they're just immediately set upon by infected. It's horrific. They get out of there, Tommy accelerates, They take a turn and end up like on a on the streets of like a town that looks like like a a village, like on the outskirts of Austin somewhere. There's people running everywhere, and then they get t boned by another vehicle and everything goes black.

Like you said, it's a tunnel vision of protecting the people that he loves to the point where he's built up these walls towards everyone else, and everyone else, like you said, can just go get fucked. But yeah, they t boned. It's all going badly for them.

do it? And the answer for Joel, and you know it from the first minutes you play this game, before you even start playing, as in, what you're about to do is no. So after we wake up from this car crash, we're now Joel. We've the players taking control of Joel, and we crawl out of the wreck and are immediately attacked by an infected And here again comes the tutorial portion of this cold open. You're told you can hit the square button to kind of like get

the infected off you. You kind of like hammer that square button. This is another of like a thing that people who played the Uncharted games would be familiar with this kind of mechanic. And again I'll point out, like this is barely interactive. This is not you know, you're not like you're just like button mashing. This is like barely barely a game. And I mean that in the most complimentary way, because it just it keeps you invested by letting you do the most efficient and like simple thing.

So we realize now it's Pandemoni on the streets. Joel gets Sarah out of the car. She's hurt her legs probably broken. Joel gives Tommy the gun, picks up Sarah,

and now we're running. And at this point I don't know about you, Rosie, but at this point, as you're kind of maneuvering through danger and picking away through the crowds with Tommy covering us, and you're trying to kind of dodging infected and dodging other people, I'm this is when the first time I played I started to think, Oh, I think this is kind of what the game is going to be. Yeah, this is the game.

Joel to a wooded path. There's a bunch of crash cars here, and at the top of the path there is a soldier who helpfully mows down the infected that have been chasing you and Sarah. But something isn't and you could tell that something is right because the soldier is like, don't hold on, you stay right there, and then confers with someone over the radio to be like, Okay, what are we doing here, I've got like two people? Yeah, got it, and Joel knows what's coming. The soldier opens fire,

everybody falls down the hill. Tommy shoots the soldier, putting that thread out, but heartbreakingly, Joel crawls over to Sarah and she's hit in the stomach and she dies in really one of the most realistic video game deaths in the sense that there's no fucking music, there's no you know, there's no text on the screen. She doesn't even finish what she's saying. She just dies, and the voice acting is incredible. The graphics are just troublingly real, and it's a brutal moment.

so much. I think it's the strongest choice until the end, which has like one of my favorite kind of moral quandary endings that I love. But I think that the choice to have Sarah killed by the soldiers is like the smartest choice that this game makes because it would have been so easy for her to just die from being killed by one of the infected. That's the nature of zombie games. It gives them a reason to hate zombies. Or the infected. The clickers' is like, oh, this is

really terrible, but instead it's that horror of humanity. It's like, this is what people will do when they're put in this situation. They won't help you, they'll follow orders and they'll just kill a child. And it sets up how angry Joel is. And when you're killing many many soldiers as you do throughout the game, you're like, you know what they shot Sarah, You're like, this is okay.

the soldier, it's if this infection gets out, we're fucked. Like, it's terrible for all these people. I Like, I'm not saying it's this isn't horrible, but this infection can't get out.

a lot of people. And it's kind of unbelievably smart and surprisingly empathetic for a game like this, in like a post kind of Call of Juty world to begin with the death that is so emotionally hammering and then be like, oh, you have to kill a lot of people, and every time you kill someone, what the game really wants you to be doing is thinking about Sarah dying and how much that ruined you, and who would be ruined by these people's deaths that you're just so casually causing.

It's very smart storytelling, and it just sets up the kind of bleak tone, and obviously on a narrative level, it establishes like a really really great conflict and an arc for Joe that will go on, especially when he meets Ellie. But yeah, I just I think it's such a good, brave decision to have it be a soldier, a human who kills her. That's always the most heartbreaking version of these kind of things. There's a brilliant Walking Dead spin off show that was like a ya spin

off show. I think it was called Walking Dead World Beyond, but it has a very It definitely took a lot from this because there's a really great storyline about one of the kids coming to terms with killing a zombie killing walker, but the reality is that they killed a human and that's really what they're coming to terms within it. I just think that is the most interesting area to

explore in these zombie stories. Nobody. Look, we've seen so many zombie stories in our in our lifetime, but what really catches people about this about the Walking Dead, that nature of humanity and how it responds in that circumstance. That is the story that we want to see. And I think that's why The walk that's why The Last of Us was so affecting because of little choices like this.

We are the ones choosing to do that. The infect that are living out there in a very in a state of balance, not attacking each other. Certainly, X ray vision will be back. X ray Vision is brought to you by Smile Actives. Are you self conscious about your smile due to stains? Are your teeth aging you? Popular food and drinks are known to stain teeth. Beverages like coffee, which I drink by the gallon, and wine stain them over time. So what can you do to brighten your smile? Well,

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one free meals plus free shipping. Hello Fresh, America's number one meal kit. And we're back. We cut to twenty years later and we meet Joel. Now he's waking up. He is grayer, obviously hardened by the years that have passed and the loss that he has suffered. He wakes up at a secure safe quarantine zone in what is still called Boston, to pounding on the door, and the person at his door is Tess is hard drinking partner and smuggling and also lover. We can love that, evenly.

can get through it really easily. And it establishes and there are ways to get through with combat. You can be the badass, you can hit, you can pick, you can pick those things just really hard. But it's really hard. And I love that they kind of establish the rules of what you think the game are, Oh, you kill people because they're in our way and we need their things. But then they're like, oh, but actually, if you want to try not to kill people, maybe that will be easier.

Sometimes it's it's very interesting but yeah, they're after Robert, and that's going to go badly for Robert.

Joel's like, yeah, let's go on the way. We had some some of this again wonderfully delivered exposition where Tests is telling us that seems like more people from the quarantine zone have been getting infected by the cordyceps. Joel, I think rightly suggests that this is because people have been bringing quarantine people like Joel Adess have been sneaking out,

probably to get stuff. It is suggested, though never really laid out in any kind of detailed way, that that the quarantine zone authorities are like it's like a dictatorship, Like it's atalitarian dictatorship. There's it's hard to understand like what shape that takes. Certainly because like Test and Joel have no problems walking around and it seems like they have no problems getting fake IDs to move through checkpoints.

But you know, whatever shape that takes, life in the quarantine zone leaves people wanting, and certainly it drives people like Jol and Tests to you know, go outside the law in order to you know, get stuff, which leads me to think of, oh, I forget the name of the guy. He like is one of the philosophers who's responsible for the postmodernist of philosophy, but he said something like it's much easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism.

And that is on display here because obviously testan Joel are out here looking for ration cards, which are today's currency.

the economy within the zone of the quarantine area is a smuggling, bartering kind of culture which very much heavily leans into capitalism. And we get into those moments later on, especially and kind of just when we start to explore where there's these kind of brutal curfews and if you don't follow the curfew you're getting shot. So there's like we don't know at this point, like who is in charge? Why is this happening? But we it's not a good time to be alive.

Like they the suggestion and again not really laid out, but the suggestion is by their very existence is that the zone authorities are complacent, are happy enough to be ruling this little rump of civilization that's left over, whereas the Fireflies, you know, this ragtag collection of armed scientists and everyday people who just want to return to the world as it was, are actually interested in doing something in order to cure this fungus, to to stamp it out.

So they've just attacked and Joel and Tests end up having to go a different way. They go through, you know, a building that is part of the smuggling network. We're looking for Robert here. Now we start to arm and you start to pick up the stuff that Joel and later on Ellie you're going to use in order to you know, navigate through this world. And for Joel right now and for the player right now, that's just a knapsack to hold scavenged items and a nine millimeters pistol.

Eventually we end up outside the quarantine zone, where it is gorgeous. It's calls to mind Chernoyl. Yeah, you know this place where something horrendous has happened that has driven humanity away, but nature has reclaimed it. It's like beautiful greenery, destroyed buildings.

all that kind of stuff. Because yeah, it's this horrific quarantine zone and the cops are there and the army is there, and you can't go through without your ideas, and they're basically keeping people prisoner in this space, but they can't stop the plants from going, they can't stop

the ponds from bubbling up. That it's so beautiful and it is just such a nice change from the dark, darkly lit kind of tombs that we're used to in horror video games, and this does have some of that, like there is a lot of spoof and you've got and you've got a flashlight, and you're scenees of cool shit.

But it these moments of beauty and these flashes they will as you play through the game and as we go to talk about it in future episodes, they lead to some of the most kind of emotionally stunning moments in the game. And I love this choice and it makes me, It just makes me really happy. And the remastered version is even more beautiful than beautiful.

they're doing, okay, And if you'll fucked as we find out. Fuck, it'd be interesting to see, you know, when the show airs, how sciencey they make, because clearly, I think if you get the fungus, if you get the cordyceps on your fucking shirt and then you touch your shirt, you're gonna have to take it. Yeah, You're gonna have to like

decontaminate anyway. So we encounter the spores and you see the source of the spores, which is like this person who has been you know, uh it suffer an advanced infection. It's his body seems almost like torn open by the spores with these like tentacle like things coming off of them. It's almost like a melding of plant and person in this kind of like body horror kind of way, very body horror.

get Robert, and that means killing humans. That means that's that's the bleakness of what you have to do to survive and to get to the part of the story that is so important.

I don't know about you, but I put him out of his again, yeah, because like you know, it's not the other way. It's a terrible choice, but the other way is worse. And this gives you again of the taste of the kind of moral bleakness that you're going to be faced with as Joel. But Test is going to be faced with a similar choice later. And unlike Joel, who is us, she has no hesitation and does not think about it at all. She just does the kill

him thing. Eventually, Tests and Joel arrive at like some squalid camp, you know, bird into these like narrow city streets, and it is fucking bleak there. There's like there's like bare knuckle fighting.

is managing to accrue power. People are following him and you see that in this moment, and they're like, you can't go any further, YadA, YadA, YadA, what do you want? Test is like, oh really, and just shoots the first guy. Yeah, flat out, just like cold blooded executes the first guy. And now you get your first taste of real combat in this game.

over the head, whatever the case might be. But as you're moving through this world again with this great exposition, you're getting these little you're overhearing, these little snippets of conversation that paint you know what the world is. You hear, for instance, one of Robert's people talking about the fireflies, Yeah, and how they're seem to be gathering people to them as well, just in the same way that that Robert

are doing. And as you move through this world, the only thing that you are struck by is one how dangerous and how exposed you feel all the time. And the second is Tess is a fucking psycho. Yeah, she is a cycle.

with bricks. You can there's that you can get. You get a ship at this point, which is very dramatic, right, but Test will always shoot fast, not both to ask questions later.

voice acting. Robert realizes that because he's of no value anymore to Tests, he doesn't have the guns, he's probably gonna fucking die.

him in the head. He's done, uh tests, and Joel really more tests. But Joel's Joe Joel for the ride. Joel's along for the ride. Now this is interesting. So Test is like, I still want the guns, and Joel goes along with it. My read on this is Joel died twenty years ago and he doesn't care if he dies. Now. I think it's dangerous.

like yeah. So, as they're discussing having to meet up with the fireflies some way, somehow, you know, in a wonderful stroke of luck, the firefly leader in the quarantine zone, Marlene, who has been wounded in one of the fights that took place, you know, a couple of minutes ago, uh staggers up and she says, I can get you your guns back, but you have to do a job for me. And Tessa's like, okay, you know how many ration cars you need? What do you need moved? And she's like no, no, no, no,

a smuggling job. Mar He needs them apparently, tests and Joel, because one, all the people they were going to use they just killed. And two, despite the fact that the fireflies look pretty punchy in that recent attack on the checkpoint, they're getting ground down. At least in the quarantineszone. The

fireflies are you know, almost used up. She says that the zone authorities apparently needing a scapegoat for how shitty things are in the zone, Like they just want to take people's mind off of how shitty things are in the zone. And therefore they launched this attack on the Fireflies to just kind of like have an enemy that's out there that they can the people can blame things on. They initiated the hostilities against the fireflies, and the Fireflies

are on the losing end of this. We're trying to defend ourselves, Marlene says. So now it's Joel, Marlene and psychotests sneaking their way past very very heavily armed soldiers. And again that you're getting this. The game is introducing you to the various enemies in a really, really wonderful fashion to get to the firefight holdout base. Marlene is gutshot, she's barely on her feet, and she leads them and tests to it looks like a schoolroom or what do

you think? Yeah, I'm not sure what this is.

that you've met a character who cares about someone else. Yeah, in a way that is not toxic, a person that is not related to them, just a person just showing kind of like care for a person who's hurt, not a thing that Joel or test traffic in at all.

But that doesn't take away any of her empathy or compassion for Marlene. She's just trying to protect that. It's the opposite of what we've seen from Test and Joel, and it's a It's a really great moment where you kind of get to learn so much about this kid, and it opens up this intriguing mystery of how would they know each other, why would the cargo be a little girl? What's going on.

for Ellie to be on the streets. We will eventually find out why Ellie is so prized, but it's too dangerous a trip for her to make what we will go, You and I will go, and Joel you will stay with Ellie and watch over her. And Ellie's like and take her to the to the Fireflies. And Ellie's like that's crazy, Like she's I'm not.

a daughter, he'll care. I think it is. She probably hopes that's the case, but I think it's a more cynical approach of well, I know his loss, so perhaps this is like something I can explain it, I can exploit it, and maybe he'll do something good for a change because of it. I think I think Tommy told Marlene right.

something like that to her. Ellie, of course, is unsure, and we can understand from the way she talks and the way she's responding now that she's not scared of anything in a way that I think because of her age, you are like, that's dangerous for you to not be scared of anything like But she's fierce and very wisely she you know, she would say like, I don't know this fucking guy, Who the fuck is this guy? You're gonna send me off alone? With this fucking guy.

The game opens in a little girls room mind A level designer friend walked around the space, impressed first foremost by the convincingness of his character's sleepy head animation set. Then he began to point out art assets that seemed to him particularly well made that he said at one point is an amazing fucking bean bag. It's just, yeah,

it's just an incredibly immersive game. The New Yorker wrote a really cool piece about whether The Last of Us can become really the first high quality video game adaptation in history, in either film or the television space. I guess, you know, I don't know how people feel about, you know, the fucking Assassin's Creed or some of these other adaptations stay out there.

story and arc of the original game. I think you'll find some for those of you who end up reading the New York article, there's some cool tidbits in there about how Craig Mason, showrunner, kind of designed the shows episodes as kind of video game levels, where it's like you go to a place, you meet some characters, and then you go to another place in another episode, and you kind of leave those characters and places behind, fascinated to watch the show. I can't wait. Yeah.

enjoying this adaptation. I saw lots of kind of things that could have sounded hyperbolic, the idea that this is going to be the first smash hit of the year for HBO, but from people's responses, it really sounds like they've managed to capture something about the game that was so special while still making it accessible to people who haven't played it. So we could be getting this could be our first widely recognized prestige video game adaptation made

in America. So I'm very excited and i can't wait to talk to you about it more.

nerdiced the usual spots Den of Geek. I have a big Den of Geek cover story coming out soon I can't talk about, but it will be out soon. I did some cool coverage of Willow the final episode is out today. That's a lot of fun. So yeah, just all good stuff. And I love all bad video game movies, so I've written quite extensively about many of them.

or have not seen Everything Everywhere, All at Once. First point of order, watch Everything Everywhere, All at once if you haven't seen it, and then listen to our episode featuring an interview with the film's directors, the Daniels, because they are so creative and that movie is just really, really great.

And of course check out our discord to meet and hang out with a bunch of our rad listeners. We've got really great mods in there. It's just a ton of fun, and me and Jason are in there inactive too. Also. We love hearing your nerd outs. They're one of our favorite things. But we also know that you have a lot of great theories, so if you want to share them, nerd outs will now also be a place for you to share your theories favorite shows, movies, comic books, books,

any theory you've got, send them to us. Send your tinfoiliest fan theories in a two minute or less voice memode to x Ray at crooked dot com and we will discuss the ones that really spark our imagination on the show.

forward to listening every Friday. Jason and Rosie are the best, super knowledgeable on all on things us nerds love, but they're able to talk about it in a fun, personable and inclusive way. Thank you, Thank you much, My Refuge. That is what we try to do and we'll see you next week. X ray Vision is a Crooked Media production. The show is produced by Chris Lord and Soul Rubin. The show is executive produced by myself and Sandy rhard

Are Editing and sound designs by Vascillias Photopoulos. Dilon Villanueva and Matt de Group provide video production support. Alex Rella for handle social media. Thank you Brian Vesquez for a theme music, Goodbye Bye.