Keith McNally - The Last Of Us: Surviving The Super Apocalypse

The Last Of Us:Surviving The Super Apocalypse

by KeithMcNally

Copyright 2017Keith McNally

SmashwordsEdition

What if thecordyceps pandemic was so severe that there were no weapons oritems left for Joel to pick up? Author Keith McNally uses thisbizarrely difficult playthrough to discuss the mechanics andstorytelling of 2013's The Last Of Us.

Table ofContents

Introduction

So here it is:A book where a guy plays through The Last Of Us without picking upany items. It's the book that everyone has been clamoring for! Thevalue of such a thing... just incalculable. But if you had tocalculate it, I guess itd probably be a few dollars. If there areany sections of this book that you enjoy, feel free to post themwherever you like. You can even rewrite segments to make me looklike a crazed bigot, if you really feel like it.

Wait -- Mylegal team (estranged Aunt) is saying that I shouldn't suggestpeople slander me. She says a Creative Commons license would bemore appropriate. But what does she know about comedy? If it'sfunny enough, I could be into some slander. Libel, whatever.There's no need to take the idea off the table, is all I'msaying.

Again, my legalcounsel is shaking her head. I dunno, it's not like I can stopthese people. It's the internet! They're gonna do whatever theywant, so fuck it! Fuck everything! Sorry, language. Look, we'lltalk about it later, okay? Jesus. Sorry.

Sidebars

When reading abook, a person sometimes thinks, "I don't want this book to end."But with other books, they think, "I wish this book would end."I've tried to accommodate both types of readers.

Sidebarscomprise about half of this book, and some of them get prettyesoteric. So the sections which are directly about my playthroughof The Last Of Us are titled in bold. The sidebars aretitled in italics.

We're all gonnadie some day; there's no need to be reading some boring book whileyou're waiting for death to kiss you shyly on the genitals. If youfind that you don't like even the mainline sections, this book ispresented in a convenient digital format, which can be easilydeleted.

You may noticethat all the segments in this introduction are titled in italics.So if you wanna get straight to reading about The Last Of Us, thisis the stuff you'll wanna skip. But lemme tell you, you'll bemissing out on some good stuff! Some good, self-indulgentstuff.

About TheAuthor

Hi, my name'sKeith! I'm in my thirties, I'm Canadian, and I love talking aboutvideo games. Do you have an estranged relationship with someone? Noproblem! Just talk with them about video games! Is there someoneyou talk to every day? No problem! Talk to them about video games!Video games are the best. I feel about gaming the same way thatdumb religious people feel about The Bible: Waaaayyy into it!

[note: considerchanging that]

I heard that aguy wrote a whole book about Spec Ops: The Line, and that seemedpretty neat. Not neat enough for me to read it, but neat inconcept. Then I learned about Ben Abraham's Far Cry 2 book,where he chronicled a single permadeath run of that psychoticallydifficult game.

Soon afterthat, I discovered eight-hundred-thousand other books written aboutvideo games. The facts were clear: People were writing book-lengthdiscussions about specific video games. That was a real thing thatreal people were really doing.

So I placed myhand on my roommate's PlayStation 3, and solemnly vowed to join theranks of these goddamn nerds. For choice of subject, I turned tothe game I had been playing and re-playing compulsively since itsrelease: The Last Of Us.

The Last Of Usis a goddamn masterpiece. I'm fascinated by people's differentinterpretations of its story, and also really like its mechanics. Iwanted to try rattling that cage a bit, so I devised a playthroughwhere I would pick up absolutely no items. I wanted to see if TheLast Of Us could stand up to some fuckery.

I'll describehow I came up with that absurd idea once we get into the bookproper. For now, let's kick off with a round of highly-entertainingbookkeeping!

The Cover

My buddy Joelmade the cover for this book. Playing The Last Of Us must haveseemed weird to him, what with all the characters saying his nameall the time. I'll have to wait until the gritty reboot of KeithCourage In Alpha Zones [5.5/10 - IGN.com] for a similarexperience.

Joel is agraphic design wizard, so if you'd like to pitch him some work, youcan contact him at:

info@squidpod.com

Sources

I'm not gonnacite sources in this book. It's not that I don't want to, it's thatmy memory is garbage. I've read a lot of articles, and listened toa mountain of podcasts about The Last Of Us. But I don't rememberthe source of anything I've heard in my entire life, let alonethose.

So there'll bea lot of "Somebody on a podcast said this" or "I read somewherethat"; if I knew I was gonna write a book about The Last Of Us, Iprobably would have taken some notes. But in a way, I like pullingstrictly from memory. For a piece of information to have stayed inmy head means it must have been pretty interesting. I just won't beable to tell you specifically where it came from.

What can I say?Journalism's dead. It's fucking dead. Future generations aregonna laugh at the very idea. But if I say something particularlywacky, and Google isn't able to verify it, just assume I was toldit by a ghost, and take it as you would any mere ghost opinion.

Spoilers!

This book isobviously full of Last Of Us spoilers. Tess dies! Marlene dies!Fuck! It's all spoiled! But I'm also gonna spoil any other gamethat I want, at any time, with no warning whatsoever. If that fillsyou with anxiety, then I guess you better get the fuck out ofhere.

If someone hasan early copy of a game, then of course they should keep plotdetails to themselves. But once a game is in general release, allbets are off. People who crow about spoilers make me wanna barfinto some other barf, then eat the resulting mega-barf so that Idouble-barf. If you care so much about spoilers, then play thefrigging games, or shut your yap.

To me, one ofthe most interesting and instructive things about art is to discussits meaning. It frustrates me to see those kinds of discussionsconstantly curtailed, for fear of "spoilers".

And let's beclear: When game nerds talk about spoilers, all they're reallyinterested in is the body count. "Who lives and who dies" is notthe point of a story. If a single sentence can ruin your experiencewith a game, then you're really not approaching art in the rightway. That's a judgment call, and I'm making it.

So in summary:If you've ever complained about spoilers for an older game, thentake a fucking hike, dicky. Also, best wishes.

PositiveSpoilers

I've actuallybecome kind of a fan of spoilers. We truly do live in a media flood-- There are more games, movies, tv shows, books and comics than wecould ever hope to absorb in a hundred lifetimes. Three hundredhours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute -- Theriverbanks have eroded, and the flood's not gonna stop until ourwhole society outright collapses.

So when someonesays, "You should play this game, but I can't tell you anythingabout it", chances are I'm not gonna play it. I'm drowning in art,and I don't know if you're throwing me a life raft or a rock. Ineed more information.

I recentlyplayed Her Story and Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons, both afterlistening to spoiler discussions about them. I was intrigued bywhat I'd heard, and knowing some of the plot details did notmeaningfully detract from those games. More importantly, thosediscussions helped guide me toward ever playing those games atall.

I know theSpoiler Guard think they're justified in their constant censorshipof game discussions, but I think they've way overplayed their hand.At this point, they're basically just annoying shits.