The Last of Us 2, the theme of violence
An aestheticization of violence which, in our opinion, cannot relate to the work of Naughty Dog, where although present in large quantities, it constitutes more a key component of the narrative context of the game than a mere spectacle of the brutal.
A violent world As Margaret Bruder, professor of cinema at the University of Indiana and author of "Aestheticizing Violence, or How To Do Things with Style", says a distinction between the works that "linger abundantly on firearms, blood and explosions", exploiting the staging to deliberately create a certain "show effect", from those that instead use violence to represent the veracity of an act and support a narrative sequence. The Last of Us II deals with strong themes, those generally considered uncomfortable, trying to dig in certain cases into the deepest and meanest ego of mankind through the deeds and actions of its protagonists.
These move and act within a world that is bleak, brutal, and ruthless. A world where there are no more rules, and where not you can live without compromise, without fit. Where each action, even the most barbarous and atrocious is considered "normal". Even kill the weaker, and, in extreme cases, even divorarne the meat, if this can serve to live yet another day. Because that is the "new world" that humanity has "been able to" build, with selfishness and hatred. A world where darwin's theories on natural selection have found a home. Where the morality, law and civilization, have left the place to the most brutal primal instincts of the human being. With the starving people and the necessities of life more and more scarce, willy-nilly, each survived the pandemic, sooner or later must reckon with the violence, as victim or perpetrator.
Halley Gross , one of the authors of the screenplay of The Last of Us II, has said that Naughty Dog has worked on violence with the intent to represent the cyclical trend. Basically the idea you intend to convey is that violence is not the face that generate further violence. The author has stated that in this case the lived experiences of Ellie, take on a connotation traumatic: "it Is a theme that interests us a lot and I think it's a good thing that people discuss". In The Last of Us II, the concepts of "good" and "evil" are rather abstract, and it could not be otherwise, again, given the context. While playing, the user asks frequently about when an action ceases to be correct to become wrong, if the characters are good or bad. And can almost never establish it in a definitive way, because the line that separates the good from the bad is not clear but extremely thin.
The end justifies the means ? A kind of grey area where even the most mild-mannered of individuals, driven by despair, terror, or fury can have behaviors, "ambiguous", in contrast with that which is its nature. The writer Primo Levi, deported to the concentration camp of Auschwitz, in 1943, defined it precisely in an intermediate area between the white and the black, between the victims and the executioners, within which "normal" people had the tendency to carry out actions in contrast with their character or with the status of subject or even a victim.
In The Last of Us II, as in the predecessor, Naughty Dog has had the courage to dare, to propose the characters of natural, complex and morally ambiguous, whose actions, for causes of force majeure are constantly torn between what is licit and what is illicit. And this makes them unique in some ways. The violence that permeates some of the junctures of the game becomes so believable and is never free: if in other titles you kill often for fun or to get a score, in The Last of Us II is a more or less painful for the player. Functional and raw, but almost always "justified" by the events.
So, when Ellie to a certain point in the story, eliminates one after another in a group of attackers in a flurry of shouts and blood, then deliver the coup de grace to the leader, on his knees before her, defeated and helpless, mozzandogli the head with two shots in the net machete, all appears "natural". As a result of a complex set of abnormal situations, and the synergy of various factors, and to kill becomes, in that context, a necessary act. Necessary, but not morally less painful for those who are forced to do so by events. The Last of Us II does not use the extreme violence as if it were a mere amusement. On the contrary, the goal is to create some very engaging which keep the players glued to the screen and make them reflect on certain issues.
Act of contrition To increase empathy and give proper "weight" to the brutality present in the game, Naughty Dog has developed enemies as if they were so many individuals. The "people" that have a name and social relationships, instead of anonymous phantoms without face. For the player it then becomes impossible to remain completely indifferent to what is represented on the screen, "enjoy" being able to do something that in reality is not granted, because so much "those who die are not real people, then shooting him is not doing anyone any harm".
Put the user in front of the characters "humanized", visibly real, with emotional ties and goals, means to immerse fully in the story of hatred and revenge that characterize the game, but also "traumatizzarlo" in some ways, to push him to ask questions, to feel remorse for acts of violence needed, not ends in themselves, but morally and humanly wrong. In the game the enemies are called by name, they react to the loss of a friend with details that leave one to ponder what spent, they cry and wail, showing feelings as they are about to die. And their voices, their suffering faces, are a burden with which having to live in the course of the adventure, as well as a topic on which to reflect even after the console is turned off.
As we wrote a few years ago in another editorial on the topic, a video game is not only made of the mechanical, and what we call the gameplay comes not only from the sum between the functions of the game and representation, but also by the projection of the values of the player on the fabric playful the same and, accordingly, the sharing of the values expressed by the characters represented. "In the end, this is a story about the cycle of violence," explained Halley Gross, "but in addition to this, it is also an object of discussion on the effects that trauma routine can have on their soul."
