So, Witchblade...

So, Witchblade...

  Why Witchblade? Becuase I know jack squat about Top Cow's property save for disjointed summaries I've read online that make it seem like Alien had sex with Spriggan and its baby grew up to have sex with Spawn, who then walked out on the resulting baby (YES, WTF?). It had a tv show at some point but got cancelled -- the girl from Hard Target was in it.

See? Hard Target!

  This is about issues 1-8: here we go... Oh! Here Be Spolers, people. Of course.   I should, in theory, be falling into this thing with a beginner's mind, and I'm gonna be making it up as I go. Honest.
  The thing feels like a strange nineties comic.

  To open things up proper (just past the beginning) we are welcomed by noirish [sic] monologuing beat cop Sara Pezzini (or "Pez" to the guys) tackling an undercover bust while dressed as a "slut" for no apparent reason... and that is all you need to know about this comic's initial approach to aesthetics: pretty girl, big plump breasts, round butt, tiny waist. She is a brunette bombshell of a woman, just so you know, guys. The proud owner of long, shapely legs, brown long hair, and a pink thong under that red hooker dress -- you know all this before you even see her face.

  She's also a hothead with a strong sense of justice who knows how to carry herself in a fight, but you only find about this later, after the comic has showcased her assets for a good while.
  Part of me thinks this whole insane sprint right out of the gate was meant to capture audience attention as fast as possible, because the story about Sara getting into insane situation after insane situation -- her partner dying, she mortally wounded but rescued by a weird-ass globe (Witchblade!), murdering a bunch of people before losing consciousness, taken to the hospital, getting out of the hospital, grabbing the glove, trying to revive her dead parner and zombifying him and freaking the fuck out and getting rid of the glove, going on an angry workout and looking hot, getting abducted, getting shot, wearing the globe again, burning some more people with it, and getting her ass kicked by a long haired weirdo she found attractive (because she likes "bad boys"), ETC. -- all happens at so fucking slow a pace that, maybe, they just felt like they HAD to fall on the tittays and booty just enough to warrant going into the long haul and make more issues.

  I assume. Because, again, the thing is really, really weird. The script has groan inducing lines like "The pistol is like part of my hand and I'm a super-hero... blasting the badguys with my fireballs of justice," as narrated by Sara when she shooting a poor bastard's kneecap in the opening moments of her character's intro -- all mid a gymnastics tumble, legs spread, ass raised...

Yeah. That looks so functional... wonder where she learned that.

  Ok? Ok... but all that comes after she's done relaying the audience a story about her childhood and how she ended up becoming a cop and why. Not uninteresting stuff. Just jarring, considering the visuals.

  Furthermore, the thing is extremely fond of the big no-no in illustrated storytelling known as MASSIVE. WALLS. OF. TEXT, as if it wanted real bad to be a novel but settled for what it ended up as.

  The more you know: The comic book adaptation of Phillip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by BOOM! Studios many years later does share a similar look, though the latter was made with the specific intention of adapting prose and images. No shit. Coincidence? Who knows. 

  Michael Turner's art is able for what it is trying to do yet when looking at everything put together it is easy to tell each page is cluttered as fuck and quite the eyesore.

  Boobs and letters, I call it.

  Though the girls are real pretty to look at... in an insane sort of way -- a live girl would quickly find her ass wholly incapacitated due to severe back pain if she were to attempt but one of Sara's numerous poses, and same goes for any of the other females for that matter; the guys are your usual shade of grimacing, slack-jawed 90's roided musclemen who, like the women, all tend to look kind of same-ish.

  So it isn't that much of a stretch to say that Witchblade sought to rely on a very particular audience demographic for support: adolescent young males nearing adulthood with coin to spare... so, *girlies*, this was not, from the very outset, meant to cater to your tastes without quite frequently annoying you -- not visually at least.

  That is not necessarily a bad thing so long as the source material is clear about where its aims lie.

  But Witchblade is anything but clear in that department.

  On one end it constantly parades a presumptively perfectly assembled object (of many) for men to project their lustful wants and gawk at -- on the other lies the developing story of a confused, angry person holding on to her life by a thread as it's turned upside down and pummeled into shit because someone, somewhere is obsessed with some ugly-ass sentient glove. And shit is earnest.

  To further confuse matters, sprinkled across Sara's conflict with creep-fest Kenneth Irons (or, as I call him: Asshole Magic Batman) are disses at men's sexist pseudo protective behavior towards females, issues of women in the workplace, jabs at the fashion industry, and some mockery aimed at scientology thrown in for good measure.

  As it urns out, the sentient glove in question, the Witchblade of the title, is an item of "great power" and yadda-yadda -- it has been worn by many women through the ages and now Sara is the current wearer. If this sounds like Buffy to you then you are correct but, despite the similarities, Sara Pezzini came *first* as a fully featured character -- not accounting for the silly movie, of course. And her budding adventure isn't wholly nonsensical: things happen organically and the characters are not complete and utter morons which is a surprise (because nineties).

  Right from the very start, somewhere between all the boobanies and flexing, this comic aims to be so much more than mere escapism. Because in the world of over-muscled, over-sexed super heroes of 1995, someone seemingly wanted to throw a story about a self-sufficient woman in there. She goes through harsh-shit with no easy path in sight and pulled into every other direction save the right one... she suffers unwanted homicidal attention, gets stalked by a manipulative older man who, making the best of her vulnerable state of mind, butters her up with sweet words and lavish gifts, turning her into a docile, less assertive, poutier version of herself... and manages to make her feel *GOOD* about it... kinda like Twilight...

He even bought her a dress, because that oughta melt bitches right up, don't it? Uh-huh...

  But, lo and behold, Sara Pezzini overcomes the asshole's ploys, and then she overcomes HIM by going back to what really defined her in the beginning (thematically at least) and making the right choices, starting with trusting herself and asserting her independence and self reliance. She even learns a valuable life lesson along the way: his pearl necklace wasn't for her! Wait, wha... is that subtext hiding somewhere in there?? I dunno, maybe? She was still half naked when going through her epiphany thingie so, yeah... guess I'm confused about it.
  There is a female empowerment message running through all eight issues, but it is kinda awkward to guess where, exactly, it comes from when your powerful, assertive heroine tends to look like this whenever she has to power the fuck up:

Feelin' empowered, girl? Or maybe just cold, I dunno...

  And that is why things revert back to the plain weird so often because the plot, obviously, does not come from a malicious place -- it is just too damn complicated for it to be a throw away joke.
  So far the comic feels like a disjointed mess, both visually and thematically, and a PAIN in the eyes to read, but it does enough things right that it holds my continued attention. Maybe it improves? We'll see.

Moar on the Witchblade at a later time... twats.

Words to take to heart: "...It is not wise to remove a fly from a friend's foreheead with a hatchet!!"

Tai Chi This...

  Turns out Keanu Reeves is a good director... excellent, even... okay, bad pun. But he's good at it, for realsies.

  The story is about a fellow named Tiger Chen (because why the fuck not) who does Tai Chi -- but not your grandma's kind of calisthenics and rather the wet dream of wuxia aficuonados everywhere. And he does it for peanuts too.

  What? Yes, dude is dirt poor because an old fat bastard in his pj's (his "master") somehow convinced him that it is "not honorable" to make an honest living out of his talents and so poor tiger has to work a frustrating dead end job as a courier for the Chinese version of Fed Ex (I guess... did I mention I watched this thing with no subtitles on?) and so is forced to get his fighting fix by partaking in pussified amateur bouts for no monies against the kung fu equivalents of redshirts. And there's a love story angle with a cute girl somewhere in there but it doesn't really matter... because manly and breaking things (peole, really).

  Kinda sucks to be the guy, really.

  But not all is lost for him. His ability does get noticed by Keanu Reeves's shady businessman in DONAKA MARK (because fuck yeah?) who offers him a lucrative "job" beating fools inside a small room in what he calls... REAL FIGHTING (or just 'real fighting' because Keanu Reeves is emotionless).

  Homie takes him up in his offer because fuckit, he wants some coin to make ends meet. Keanu smirks about this and many other things -- but mostly because he's, like, so evil and likes to troll the cops and secretly fuck with Tiger's life.

  Dramaz happen. There's a cop subplot, too.

  It's actually a really decent flick if you're into this kind of stuff, more akin to what would resemble a character study of a classic protagonist in these kinds of movies than it is about the nominal macho fare that permeates the genre (it's not an accident that the main character looks like a really, really ugly woman... what?), yet it respects its roots... and that is its problem.

  Fight scenes are the standard flashy, stylized stuff you've come to expect, and they are very well directed BUT... sadly I suffer from the ailment I have termed "faitfanitis," which means, basically, that I like to watch full-contact sports.

  But who cares about any of that? I do, becuase the ailment has ruined my appreciation of these kinds of flicks. No longer can I enjoy movies like this one without finding them extremely silly. It is all just so... lame. Especially this one, because its whole narrative rests over the absurd conceit that there are people out there who would pay to see people fight "for real," which is absolutely true -- but the problem is that this is normal and already happens (see UFC, PRIDE, K-1, etc.). In boxing, MMA (mixed martial arts), or kickboxing.

  In the magic world of this movie there are no injuries (unless they are magical!) or need for proper training regimens like sparring, dieting, etc. People get kicked in the head over and over again, not one needs to preserve his cardio, or put weight on their punches.

  Everyone, and I mean everyone, waifs around at the plot's discretion, screaming like dancing little girls on a steady diet of nothing but sugar and cocaine. And I won't even get started with the unsettling undercurrent of validation of the already-proven-obsolete concept of the "Martial Arts Master" because I will shit a large, square brick.

  But keanu Reeves menacingly hisses at the camera sometime during the movie, which is awesome. But then he pulls a somewhat polt twisty-twist out of his ass near the end which had me kinda scratching my head and totally turned my outrage on its head.
  Yay, I guess.

  Now, bias aside, this movie is definitely not shit. It boasts an honest attempt at decent character development, an assured hand when it comes to shooting action, and a genuine intention at being more than just about said action -- which may well be enough.

If anyone is interested in watching a somewhat short flick that has jack squat in common with real fighting but an earnest heart, they could do way worse than giving this one a spin.

Into the Wonder of Boy Wonder.

Brought to you by Michael Morrisey. Yeah, I have no clue of who he is, but netflix.

A few keywords 'bout it:

Weird an contemplative.
Disturbed child.
Dead mommy.
This is Batman.
No money.
No ninja.
A whole lotta balls.


Michael Morrissey, the director, is doing Batman, on a budget. He even spared some for throwing Gordon in there! He's a she, now, but whatever.

Our Batman, or Boy Wonder... okay, his name is Sean. He's gonne to the school of hard knocks so he's turned into slow burned, angry super nerd. Who does some justicin' [sic] come night time. Like Buffy, but without the super powers.

This kid has done away with ol' Bats' crusade dedicated to the constant punching of the underclasses and taken a step towards employing more, um, more permanent, messy means of solving his problems where he gets his shit kicked in. A lot.


"That guy...saved my life. Sent out by god to save me," says one of his, well, charity cases, to Gordonette.

 Homie does murderin' for in the name of da lord, which is a-ok, I guess. On bat-moralizing to be found, here.

She also tells Gordonette that she's not gonna help them arrest him (forgot to say: she's a witness on one of our young hero's night outs, so she oughta know something) and it doesn't nab him an obstruction of justice charge at the least.

It all comes together to form a pretty sweet setup that makes sense for the movie, actually.  Though it does feel like the Crow, at times. Or, Batman as a serial killer hooked on painkillers.

Like other movies of the genre, it also asks us to, for the millionth time, give some leeway onto believing that the cops we know, who have, in some way, interacted with the main character before, are gonna get tangled in the mess he creates. Because there's nothing else to do, obviously.

Though, the film chooses to go down the Batman chest of implausible wonders with the inclusion of "Triceleron." The resident magic Mcguffin substance with plot related properties.

In moar Batman parallels, Sean gets called a detective, and to conform it he delivers the appallingly awkward line that sort of goes like "There's a sadness in your eyes... blah-blah-blah. I are so smart. I pay attention. Let's talk about your sob story, but mostly about mine. And look at me, I speak Chinese--the hardest language in the world--and am unbalanced like the real Batman, the one with money and better hair. Fuck him and his hair. I'm sullen. I don't like due pricess either."

This is a fun, engaging flick so far but, darn, if it isn't prone to mind farting at the weirdest of times--okay, okay, that was not the actual line, but bear with me, I'm writing this as I'm watching it and am all over the place so, yeah...let's see if the Joker makes an appearance down the line.

Now Gordonette is looking for angsty boy. Yay! But she's keeping some shit from her lovely racist partner. And she's kind of a bitch, it turns out, b/c she's career oriented, the cunt -- she's also called "The Wonder Woman from the Bronx."

Turns out people have issues with her, left and right. B/c "the kid has issues," (yeah, Sean, they mean) and "she don't know shit."

It bares mentioning that Boy Wonder, who is so not totally racist for assuming an asian kid has to be Chinese, goes apeshit on a mentally handicapped individual who is actually totally racist and sexually harassing a poor girl. JUSTICE! Also, brass knuckles.

Sean is also steroid junkie, too.
The moral of this story is don't try to be Batman IRL. Shit ends fucked up and you end up killing Alfred for, literally, no reason.

This was nonsense. Have a nice night. Apologies?

Spring Break. Forever. That's not a good thing.

An indictment of the idiocy of those pesky Millenials.

Let us turn our brains off for a moment: Spring Break isthe escape from the meandering and the mundane for misguided post-teens who just discovered cardboard existentialism.

Of course it is all bullshit, and that is kind of the point.

That's the message buried deep beneath all the crotch shots, scantily clad displays of NUBILE FLESH (you guys!), and gun imagery (Because Chekhov's gun, you guys!).

The story follows complete idiots who have, at least legally, attained a degree of expected maturity in the digital era. But they are so fucking out of control! Because society and immaturity, bro.

"Seeing all this money makes my pussy wet," says Vanessa Hudgens' character after the girls finally get their much needed cash to finance their existential imperative, via robbing a diner no less. Because Spring Break. And proving once and for all that millenials can't verbalize complex thoughts (double totes).

What follows is, again, a heavy handed indictment of the stupid-ass post adolecents in one-too-many montages as they have a great deal of fun and power trips to bad techno music.

If only that shit lasted forever, huh?

Enter James Franco 

The fake grill adds to the artsy.

So shit goes on where grown ups monologue each other sounding like children, sexy time is had, and guns are fired. Also: expletives! So this is, like, real dark shit, fellas. Deep stuff.

You know already know where this is gonna end, even if you haven't seen it. You have seen this story in countless other places that teaches you that if you are gonna have fun and misbehave, the story gods from the older generation have to punish your decadent ass in stupid fashion before gifting you a completely illogical ending.

Now, what is good about this thing? The Imagery. Pretty pictures play on the screen continually, perfectly colored, framed, and shot. A bunch of 'em. I'm positive you could build an entire different narrative off of these and it might actually turn better than whatever this was. Also,excising almost most of its fluff could trim its total running time to half an hour, maybe even less. Seems perfectly doable.

What results is more an exercise in filmmaking than a film. It's as if somebody made a whole movie entirely out of half baked ideas and fantastic cinematography, suddenly realized what a bind he was in, and then stuffed it with aggressive redundance disguised as ambiance.

This is the kind of thing that happens when somebody decides to tell the story of a bunch of people he doesn't understand.

To close:

"Just pretend it is a fucking videogame!

You can't be scared of shit!

You have to be hard!

Just get this fucking money and go away on Spring Break y'all!"

Speak the truth, sisters! Yeah...

Why a certain kind of followup to The Last of Us is necessary.

Drums.

Ya, I'm back. After a billion years of not posting anything. But I read somewhere that for a blog to exist, you just have to churn content, so here I am. Sans vomit.

Anyways, why am I even using the word "necessary," here? First I'd have to lay down some context. Also, this is gonna be random so brace yourselves.

This is not a review and I am assuming you've if not played the game, seen enough Let's Plays in youtube to know the whole thing.

The Last of Us is a video game. An action-adventure videogame that focuses its narrative through a comprehensive prism of layered environmental exposition (and holy shit is it layered over gameplay) and cutscenes. For some reason this earned it the term cinematic.

The player mostly controls Joel, a surly fifty-ish old crusty dude with an almost pornographic fascination for being a SURVIVOR. Because, fuckit, when the world goes to shit and you stick around even after heart rending tragedy you are really in to stick it -- not win it, because nobody wins in this fucked up, godforsaken cesspool of a world twenty years after the fungal apocalypse.

Joel is eventually paired with Ellie. A smart fourteen year old girl who has no concept of the world other than "It is shit." For her, this fucked up, goforsaken cesspool of a world twenty years after the fungal apocalypse is all there is or ever has been. She likes comic books, whistling, and bustin' Joel's balls. And she's a badass.

Also, she is, likely, one of the best realized female protagonists the medium has ever had the luck of experiencing. So awesome is she that if you were to pit her versus the Hungar Games'  Katniss Everdeen in a fight for the last can of soup in the world, Ellie would gut her before blurting "Endure and Survive."

Reminder: Here Be Spoilers, motherfuckers. Please be warned.

But, back to Joel: Old coot is basically, for gameplay and story reasons, stuck in what appears to be a perpetual escort mission where he picks up items,  does some pared down Nathan Drake heroics here and there, shuts his mouth lest he be bit by fungy monsters, and moves shit around to facilitate companions moving around. This is also deep, deep stuff, surprisingly. Think Uncharted but with a lot more moving stuff around, less acrobatics, way more horrific, and bloodier/deppressed.

Over the course of the game some shit happens (Joel gets Crofted) and the player is forced to take control of Ellie, alternating between both characters afterwards and until the end of the chapter where crusty old bastard returns to being the defacto avatar of the player. This adds to the familiar artifice of the on-rails narrative that is weaved throughout the whole experience and into a game.

The on-rails narrative construct is the one where the player is taken by the hand and placed within a developing plot without say or consequence in its eventual conclusion. It is one inherited from the older forms of storytelling we are all familiar with and the one that is easier to implement in the medium.

It is, also, being abandoned as gaming slowly shifts to arranging experiences around more and more open ended and procedural settings. If you are a child gamer from the eighties, you likely came to notice it around the same time you first began playing the original Super Mario Bros. in 1985, where that fucking princess was always in another fucking castle. Until she wasn't, and the game just ended.

It isn't anything new, but, in this instance Naughty Dog made use of it not just well, or great, but Real Fucking Batshit Awesome Good. So good that this game is, effectively and without hype or exaggeration, the very artistic cusp of what has been and likely will ever be achieved using this particular setup. This alone justifies its weird uber-metaphorical title, in an odd way.

The Last of Us.

Now, why is a sequel neccessary? Especially considering what an accomplished piece of work it is. Well, because gameplay. Or rather, the complete lack of it. yeah, I know...

Follow me down the rabbit hole, if you will, 'cuz it gets weird...

Quick plot dump: the whole crux of the story revolves around Joel taking Ellie in a cross-country trip from hell to meet a group of anti-government resistance fighters that call themselves The Fireflies. Becuase they are supposedly working on a cure to the plague that nigh wiped the human race since, it turns out, Ellie is the only known immune human being in the world of the fungal apocalypse -- Basically: the exact sort-of-layout of the movie CYBORG sans Van Damme, characters hilariously named after musical instruments, or just, you know, CRAP/AWESOMENESS (your mileage may vary).

The plot demands that shit be taken seriously when it comes to the amount of leeway it has to do away with. In game time, the trip takes months and months. Stuff does not get resolved quick, lending an episodic vibe to the proceedings. Because of this, Joel and Ellie grow closer and closer in an organic non-manipulative way that is respectful of the audience's intelligence. Their relationship evolves to resemble the one between a parent and his child/partner. Basically, Joel becomes The Boss to Ellie's Snake, sans the awkward, murderous sexual tension.

Swap the sexes and pretty much everything else save the basics, but just, if not more, dramatic.
For realsies.

When all is said and done and they find themselves at journey's end, shit hits the fan and all seems lost (Ellie, who can't swim, falls to the water and almost drowns) yet they unwittingly manage to make it to the fireflies (and on accident, no less).

After taking a rifle butt to the face and passing out (because dramaz), Joel wakes up in a hospital, where the Fireflies have shacked up, to be greeted by Marlene.

Her.
And No, she's not a crewmember of the Battlestar Galactica.

She, stupidly, informs Joel that he can't meet with Ellie 'cuz she's getting prepped for surgery, so all's good, right? Fuck no. Turns that for the scientists to be able to synthesize a cure from Ellie's mutated fungal infection they'll need to scramble her brains. Permanently. With a scalpel, because that's where it spreads to. For great justice.

So, what is Joel, a worn, battered, but still very much a dangerous killer, whose feels have been rekindled, to do? Fuck shit up. Hard. That's what.

And shit up does he fuck. Depending on the player's playstile, the Fireflies get mowed down by Joel's self-righteous indignation, to varying degrees, as he saves Ellie's life. And here is where The Last of Us goes full meta. Because it is a game. An interactive experience whose main driving plot point is the notion of choice between the extremes of the human condition and its consequences -- Why do we choose to bother with helping others? If we can't deal, can't cope, why not choose to end it all? Is choosing survival for survival's sake really moral?, etc.-- and then it takes it all away from you entirely.

It forces you to doom the human race. Because Joel. Becuase his feels.

Dramatic rendering of the Event.

Post insane last chapter, a recently awekened Ellie is fed an outlandish story of how the Fireflies failed one too many times to make a cure that they stopped trying, reeks of utter crap. And it tastes like bullshit. Because it requires that she believes that there were dozens others like her already there. Because it requires that she believes that after nearly drowning and passing out she then, conveniently, woke up in a car with Joel at the wheel. Because it requires that she believes that, whatever went on during sleepy time, it didn't have anything to do with Joel murdering anyone for her sake, even though she knows that's what Joel does.

Yet, she passively chooses to accept it. Because he's Joel and he loves her as she loves him. So despite some hard earned self reliance a part of her is still made to do as the Big Man says.

Putting things in perspective: she's a girl who has lost everyone dear to her because that's just how shit is, and there's fuck all to do 'bout that so all there is to do is keep going...

Ellie symbolizes the every-kid of the post fungal apocalypse, except she struck the post fungal jackpot and it turns out that she's special. Suddenly she has somebody that gives not half a shit, or two shits, but all the shits. To hell and back. For her. And he means it.

This is evident by her feeling down just before the fateful meeting with the fireflies. She knows that, whatever happens, her raison d'être --she's the kid that carries the cure-- is just about to expire and there's an insecurity that it all might go away bound to that realization, even though Joel goes on and on about future plans like a proud dad. 

It is at this point when Ellie's personal drive through the whole game becomes horribly apparent: she just doesn't want to be meaningless the same way everyone else is meaningless in this world.

Having known her all her life Marlene knew it, and so she was convinced that Ellie would be willing to go full Messiah if she had to -- an argument that doesn't sit well with Joel, so she gets some lead in her head. He never gives a second thought about what is really at stake here.

We are shown that Quarantine Zones are getting abandoned by the military, that the infection is spreading, that people are resorting to cannibalism to survive, and that the single most important person in the world just dug some bullshit story and surrendered all her agency to the needs and demands of the most powerful authority figure in her life.

Joel, on his part, is unable to part with Ellie, not after going through so much, doing so much, culminating in his finally finding somebody to fill the black hole of his daughter's death. Her mere presence makes him feel truly alive again and rekindles that sense of manhood he lost after the apocalypse hit.

Thus Joel, the ultimate nurturer, doesn't just want to live, not for himself. Joel wants to live for someone else. He wants to teach Ellie how to swim, just like he taught her how to shoot a rifle, wield a knife, or be quiet when quiet is all you can be. And this is the single most selfish thing in the world.

Ellie gets to be as close as a kid as can be, finally, and Joel gets to look after her, while the world burns. There are two objective wrongs here, one of action and one of omission.

And the game ends.

Ellie once alluded at wanting to make the ordeal count, no matter what.

"This can't all be for nothing."

Yet it was not enough. Love purportedly kills mankind in the slowest of ways.

 Or does it? Continuing the metanarrative argument, The Last of Us is not only the cusp of the "on-rails" narrative construct in video games but also both an interesting, if simplistic rendering of parenting and being parented that, ultimately, culminates in the latter. You, as the player, are reduced back into the child you once were when you were playing Mario, when you still took the word of your protector for what it was. The Word.

Even if the you of today is not entirely okay with it.

But, does it have to be? Not really. There's enough development and drama sprinkled on the piece to make an argument of necessity twards continuing said overarching meta narrative.

It is true that the game prevents the player, just as it did Ellie, from carrying out an important choice -- Joel, as the parent, takes it upon himself, and the player just follows along. In doing so, Naughty Dog creates a powerful dramatic representation of the power dynamics between the adults and the children they look after. It also manages to dodge the bullet of having the plot collapsing into a bad gaming crutch (choose ending A or B. Game over), or even having it devolve into controversy of having Ellie's agency as a fully formed female character completely stripped away only for a man to decide whether she lives or dies.

Were there to be a sequel, and judging from both commercial and critical reception, that is likely the case, it would open the doors to interesting things. But not just for any sequel. We are at a time where video games have sort of begun to move beyond a prolonged stage of post adolescence and begun to stress the confines of what traditional narrative structures can afford. If there is a story that deserves to be tackled in different, potentially more fulfilling ways it is this one.

Creative director Neil Druckman wanted the game to be about something and he made it happen. Now, fully weighting the merits of the existing piece, what The Last of Us was to "on-rails" narrative and childhood, the sequel ought to be to actual, palpable "choice-based" narrative and coming into maturity -- this just hasn't been done yet.

Why not? The story of letting agency slip away has already been told.

I say let Ellie make her choice. As an adult.