168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Last of Us paints a grim picture of the future. A zombie apocalypse sits at the heart of it, but there’s more to it than that. I know Druckmann doesn’t call them zombies, but if they walk like zombies, quack like zombies, and eat human flesh like zombies, I’m not going to call them ‘Infected’ or ‘Cordyceps Monsters’, am I? Regardless, the depth of darkness the apocalypse holds in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Naughty Dog’s blockbuster goes way beyond zombies, and it wasn’t until watching Sweet Tooth on Netflix that I was able ꧋to put my finger on exactly what my issue was with it.
168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Last of Us has no heroes. Joel leads the first game, which culminates in him killing several innocent doctors to stop them from using Ellie to find a cure that could save the world. This is the cause of his death in the sequel, when the surgeon's daughter, Abby, tracks him down to get her revenge. Because The Last of Us constructs a universe where revenge is all that's worth living for, this in turn causes Ellie to track Abby down. In the end, Ellie does not kill Abby - the first time she hunts her Abby isn’t around, so she kills several of her friends instead, including a pregnant woman. The second time she finds her, she reconsiders at the last minute, sinking down sadly into the ocean before returning home to discover her wife and child are gone.
Along the way, several innocent people - or relatively innocent, given the inescapable darkness of the game's world - are shot in the head, beaten to death with metal pipes, mauled by dogs, burned alive, or have their faces smashed repeatedly off the floor. That last one happens to a different pregnant woman. That's before you even get to the WLF’s military invasion of the Seraphites’ island in a hostile attempt to seize the land and enact genocide.
The Last of Us thinks the worst of everyone. Sure, Joel is a supportive father figure to Ellie, Ellie and Dina find comfort in each other for a little while, and Abby and Lev appear to have a brig🔯hter future ahead of them, but the games cannot shake off their view of humanity as a collective, irredeemable evil. 'The humans are the real monsters' is a tired trope, but usually it refers to a handful of evil men who seek to profit from the post-apocalyptic chaos. In The Last of Us, everyone's a bastard.
This is where Sweet Tooth comes in. There are notable differences and similarities across both stories. Crucially, both take place in post-apocalyptic times where a disease has all but wiped humanity out. There are no zombies - or any equivalent - but both deal with a gruff, stoic man helping an enthusiastic and charismatic child across the country. In each case, the man and child have just met. The biggest difference is that around the same time as The Sick (the killer disease in Sweet Tooth) started to appear, so did hybrids; half-man, half-animal creatures. These creatures are as intelligent as humans - our lead, Gus, is a hybrid - but most of them were instantly abandoned out of fear and disgust and so never get the chance to develop. There’s also the Last Men, an institution in charge of rounding up the hybrids, who are believed to be dangerous with no real proof - these behave with similar authority to the Fireflies, although because of each story's framing the Last Men appear to be significantly worse.
The stories are held together by a clear similarity - a post-apocalyptic trek across the country in search of a hope that may not exist. However, in Sweet Tooth, it's difficult to tell who has The Sick. In The Last of Us, with the exception of Ellie, it's easy to see when someone is infected or not. Yet in Sweet Tooth, there is much more peaceful respect amongst people. Sure, if they discover you have The Sick, they'll tie you to a chair inside your own house then kill you by burning it down, but even with that, it has a better view of humanity than The Last of Us. The Last Men exist, and a few do seek to profit from the chaos of the world, but Sweet Tooth believes in humanity. It believes that we can be better, even in times of adversity. I wish The Last of Us had as much faith in us.
I've written before about 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:the flashbacks in The Last of Us, and how, as the only sections brave enough to be hopeful, I'd like to see them become the building blocks for the next game. I was never exactly sure what a hopeful Last of Us would look like - after watching Sweet Tooth, I finally know.