THE LAST OF US PS4 SERIES
We live in an endless present, where every movie, album and TV series ever loved is becoming instantly available through digital distribution. The likes of the Phantom Menace and Prometheus have shown us that you can't go back, that addition so often becomes subtraction. That impish revelation will hit the forums and news sites like a religious proclamation. At an event to celebrate the launch of the Last of Us Remastered this week, the game's director, Neil Druckmann hinted that there is a secret ending to the game, picking up the story four years later.
THE LAST OF US PS4 MOVIE
Even if a successful series, game or movie ends, every festival or conference appearance is an opportunity to seed expectation. Modern creators are taught to propogate doubt to hint, to tease, to suggest there is more. "It's OK, it's not over, we found some more footage." But now it is a global entertainment business plan. We don't want things to end – that's natural. In these synthetic archeological artifacts, fans of old media – the movies produced before the age of the franchise – get to re-experience favourite narratives, get to kid themselves that a few deleted scenes will spark the story back to life for them, that it will reanimate dormant plot strands. Really, the Last of Us: Remastered is very much the gaming equiavelent of a DVD or Blu-Ray "collectors edition", those bulky confections filled with documentaries that most people will never watch and audio commentaries that most will never hear. To make fresh discoveries to keep the story alive. They've done the narrative, now it's time to really dig in and "be" the Last of Us. It is an invitation to veterans to really inhabit this world, to explore and document it like tourists. This last feature, though seemingly modest, is hugely telling.
Vitally, too, it provides a photo mode that lets you pause the action and take snaps from any angle. It adds the wonderful Left Behind downloadable content, which expands the back-story of co-protagonist Ellie, it adds new multiplayer maps, and a "director's commentary". Nevertheless, this is also a release for completists.
THE LAST OF US PS4 PS4
UPDATE: However, as one reader points out in the comments section below, it's true that the PS4 has attracted a large amount of Xbox owners who have deserted the Microsoft camp and genuinely are discovering this title for the first time.
THE LAST OF US PS4 PS3
But the idea that this is somehow The Last of Us for people who missed the PS3 version is slightly disingenuous – it sold 6m copies, after all. Converted from PlayStation 3 to PlayStation 4, with upscaled visual fidelity and an improved frame rate, the commercial objective is obvious – Sony needs bandstanding releases for its new console, and while developers are still working on showcase titles, here is one we made earlier. But it was an ending.Īnd yet now we have The Last of Us: Remastered. The ending that came was harrowing, it was controversial, it was as bleak as the deserted urban landscapes that formed the game's haunting backdrops. Its two protagonists, the world-weary and remorseful Joel, the young and determined Ellie, reached conclusions that were logical to the themes of the game. Naughty Dog's apocalyptic masterpiece, in which humanity is struck down by a parasitic fungal infection, had an ending. Modern popular culture is not very good at endings because endings are anathema to the franchise process that we have embraced. Late in the 20th century, multinational corporations found that they had to bet billions on entertainment brands and then endlessly stretch out the rare successes to maximise profitability. Nowadays fans rely on continuity not closure they want to keep talking, and whether its Harry Potter or Towie, the primary narrative is only ever a kicking off point for community conjecture and debate. Of course, epic novelists have managed complex narratives for hundreds of years, but they did so before the endless discursive whirl of social media. And by God, those viewers get angry about it. Writers find them difficult, fans find them unsatisfying – from Lost to the Sopranos, our episodic fiction is so expansive and all-consuming these days, so labyrinthine with sub-plots and character arcs, that it is almost impossible to end everything gracefully at least to the satisfaction of most viewers. M odern popular culture is not very good at endings.