So what's the point in The Last of Us?

[Kopikatsu]

So to keep it spoiler free, I'll just give a brief overview of what's poppin' off in LoU. Ellie is immune to the fungal zombie plague and so the Fireflies want to use her to make a cure. Whether they failed or succeeded, Ellie is treated like humanity's last hope for most of the game...but why? The fifth stage of the infection ends with the zombies becoming fused to the landscape and unable to move or anything else. Humanity can just outlive the zombies, then strap on some gas masks and roam around with a squad of flamethrowers, cleaning out infested areas.

Even if a vaccine was made, who is going to transport it in large enough quantities to matter? Planes are gone. Cars aren't especially useful. There are still bandits roaming around all over the place.

Am I missing something? Is there some way that a vaccine could actually do anything significant for the world as it is?

 

[The-Traveling-Bard]

Why do people use logic against stories?


Like... really?

This is just like trying to use logic against 4th edition rules of D&D.

Elves don't get Trance which is a fey ability because they are no longer part of the fey.

But at 21st level they get fey abilities.


Don't use logic when it comes to stores/games. It just ruins it.

/Fixed errors, silly keyboard.

 

[Nfritzappa]

The fireflies want power over the government/military. Pretty simple.
They would use the vaccine as a bargaining chip to get what they want.

 

[hazabaza1]

Haven't played it, but I'm guessing that maybe outliving the zombies is hard? Resources and the such are low so taking some action is more likely to result in positive results.

 

[The-Traveling-Bard]

Why do people use logic against stories?


Like... really?

This is just to use logic against 4th edition rules of D&D.

Elves don't get Trance which is a fey ability because they are no longer part of the fey.

But at 21st level they get fey abilities.


Don't use logic when it comes to stores/games. It just ruins it.

They use logic in stories where the suspension of disbelief is not high. In a zombie apocalypse where nobody has superpowers or anything of that nature, the bar is set to "OK, zombies exist, but everything we know about science and logic and such are still completely intact."

The means people will question the decisions when what the OP explained just makes more sense.

Pokemon and Zelda (and other games of this type) have a near unquestionably high suspension of disbelief because of the magical and mystical elements apparent from the beginning.

Shhhh. Stop that. I see his points and while they story is flawed. It's still a good one.

Besides there will always been groups dedicated to finding a vaccine to any virus no matter the state of the world.
If you can save a few hundred lives. Then it's probably worth it. Why? Because you can now start building towns that have people that are immune and start taking back the world little by little.


Gotta start some where.

 

[The-Traveling-Bard]

Shhhh. Stop that. I see his points and while they story is flawed. It's still a good one.

Besides there will always been groups dedicated to finding a vaccine to any virus no matter the state of the world.
If you can save a few hundred lives. Then it's probably worth it. Why? Because you can now start building towns that have people that are immune and start taking back the world little by little.

Gotta start some where.

Not really. Manufacturing has completely collapsed. How would the vaccine even be made to begin with? Where would they even get the very expensive medical equipment and raw materials (all those fancy medical compounds I cannot pronounce) to even make one vaccine? And keep the vaccines on ice (they need to be kept cool to not turn into poison basically)? You can't just throw a bunch of science-sounding stuff in a test tube or syringe and have a vaccine. The equipment necessary is insanely complex.

Zombies "cure" storylines are almost always ridiculous. This is why "Shaun of the Dead" and "Zombieland" are still the best zombie movies ever made. Because they were honest about the whole thing.

Still gotta start some where.

:b If Zombie story lines are generally ridiculous.. Why do we try to apply logic to them? c:

 

[Zhukov]

So to keep it spoiler free, I'll just give a brief overview of what's poppin' off in LoU. Ellie is immune to the fungal zombie plague and so the Fireflies want to use her to make a cure. Whether they failed or succeeded, Ellie is treated like humanity's last hope for most of the game...but why? The fifth stage of the infection ends with the zombies becoming fused to the landscape and unable to move or anything else. Humanity can just outlive the zombies, then strap on some gas masks and roam around with a squad of flamethrowers, cleaning out infested areas.

It's made clear that the infected expand aggressively. Even the relatively safe area that Joel started in had them encroaching around the edges.

Even if a vaccine was made, who is going to transport it in large enough quantities to matter? Planes are gone. Cars aren't especially useful. There are still bandits roaming around all over the place.

Obviously spreading it worldwide would be next to impossible, but if they could synthesize it in quantity then there's no reason they couldn't spread it over a large part of their home country at least.

There are still operational vehicles around. Hell, they could spread it on foot and still do it, it would just take years. I doubt bandits would be that much of a problem. The Fireflies were well armed. They could approach bandit groups and military remnants and offer them the cure.

Lastly, it's made clear within the game that the vaccine is a somewhat slim hope.

 

[tippy2k2]

BEGINNING SPOILERS! This will not ruin much but if you want to know absolutely nothing about the game like I did when it came out, back away slowly from the post...

Ellie is a job.

That's it. To Joel, Ellie is literally just a package to be delivered. He doesn't care about the vaccine in any way, shape, or form. He wants to get paid. The point of the rest of the game is the relationship that these two characters build as they experience survival in a zombie/Road Warrior wasteland.

We don't know what the Fireflies actually want with the vaccine or what their plan is if they pull it off and it's unimportant to Joel.

 

[Miss G.]

So to keep it spoiler free, I'll just give a brief overview of what's poppin' off in LoU. Ellie is immune to the fungal zombie plague and so the Fireflies want to use her to make a cure. Whether they failed or succeeded, Ellie is treated like humanity's last hope for most of the game...but why? The fifth stage of the infection ends with the zombies becoming fused to the landscape and unable to move or anything else. Humanity can just outlive the zombies, then strap on some gas masks and roam around with a squad of flamethrowers, cleaning out infested areas.

Even if a vaccine was made, who is going to transport it in large enough quantities to matter? Planes are gone. Cars aren't especially useful. There are still bandits roaming around all over the place.

Am I missing something? Is there some way that a vaccine could actually do anything significant for the world as it is?

The vaccine, if it could even be developed with most technology gone or borderline useless, properly tested, manufactured on a mass scale, communicated to the public, distributed without further killing/outright war over who gets it, is a hopeless cause. Man has lost more of its humanity than even the infected and there is no real cure for that. Joel was surprisingly the only one doing something humane in the end, valuing the life of someone who has become a loved one even if it seems selfish to the detriment of everyone else.

Looking around and finding one of the doctors' journal states that Ellie wasn't the only one of their patients and after slicing up other people's brains, in horrible medical environments no less, they have found scant answers to really combating the infection. Ellie would've been slaughtered like the rest for nothing and then they would've been looking for/banking on another person, all for a species so far gone (with so few exceptions like Tommy and his community) that it deserves extinction by way of each other, and even ecologically never has and never will make sense in relation to the rest of nature.

The ending isn't as bleak as it looks, though. The presence of flora reclaiming the land and fauna (like the giraffes that obviously adapted fine to being out of zoos/relocated from Africa) remind us to get over ourselves and that a future without people by no means is the same as 'the end of the world'.

In short, life has been here before us and will go on without us, hence the title, "The Last of Us".

 

[Smeggs]

So to keep it spoiler free, I'll just give a brief overview of what's poppin' off in LoU. Ellie is immune to the fungal zombie plague and so the Fireflies want to use her to make a cure. Whether they failed or succeeded, Ellie is treated like humanity's last hope for most of the game...but why? The fifth stage of the infection ends with the zombies becoming fused to the landscape and unable to move or anything else. Humanity can just outlive the zombies, then strap on some gas masks and roam around with a squad of flamethrowers, cleaning out infested areas.

Even if a vaccine was made, who is going to transport it in large enough quantities to matter? Planes are gone. Cars aren't especially useful. There are still bandits roaming around all over the place.

Am I missing something? Is there some way that a vaccine could actually do anything significant for the world as it is?

Realistically they will never find every instance of the fungal infected in the world. There will most likely be some tucked away where nobody could find them, and then years later accidentally be come upon and the whole thing begins again. I'mm assuming that once they fuse to the landscape the fungus is still caopable of producing millions of spores, correct? That's like asking why they wanted to save that little boy in 28 Weeks Later who was immune.

Why? Because a cure ensures flat-out that the infection will never be able to spread again. There are far too many variables to just put trust in some guys wearing masks and burning everything to the ground. Being able to kill the fungus without having any fear at all of becoming infected is the best option possible.

Likewise, if you were vaccinated and immune to infection, any average Joe could go out and fight the infected without fear of becoming one themselves. With a cure, humanity could actually go to war with the infected, and with humans wielding superior intelligence and weaponry, and the infected's main mode of combat-infecting the humans-being neutralized, it'd basically be more like killing packs of feral dogs than anything else.

The cure is a super-easy button as opposed to playing cleanup on Hardcore difficulty.

 

[Casual Shinji]

"What's the point?" That is the point.

Surviving against better judgement is the theme of the game. The cure (if possible) wouldn't have done any good at this point, since there's no infrastructure to even transport it. Marlene even says she's lost half her men getting back to Saint Mary's hospital - How would they go about getting vaccines all around the country?

The game deals with people who are deluding themselves as a means to survive, when there's nothing left to live for. Adam Sessler made a very good point in his review that the mindless struggle to survive becomes its own form of zombification. Humanity as a species is extinct, and the few that are left (the last of us) mindlessly keep on fighting to stay alive one more day.

I don't know if you've ever seen the movie The Plague Dogs, but its ending is very similar to that of The Last of Us, except way more heartwrenching.

 

[Pjotr84]

Why do people use logic against stories?

You don't really mean that, do you? There's something as suspension of disbelief, but that doesn't mean a story can't be logical within context.

 

[Phrozenflame500]

The fifth stage of the infection ends with the zombies becoming fused to the landscape and unable to move or anything else. Humanity can just outlive the zombies, then strap on some gas masks and roam around with a squad of flamethrowers, cleaning out infested areas.

Congrats, you've just discovered the "Zombie Lifespan Problem". That is to say, mindless creatures who can't harvest their own food, are constantly exposed to the elements, are as slow as an old man's bowels and only reproduce by killing humans don't live very long. Pretty much every zombie scenario (with the possible exception of "The Walking Dead" due to it's "all dead turn into zombies, bitten or not" thing) has this problem, and there is no real solution other then to take the MST3K Mantra and not think about it that hard.

The really irritating thing about this is that it's just important enough to the plot to matter, but not focused on enough internally to have it fall under willing suspension of disbelief.

 

[Kipiru]

Why do people use logic against stories?


Like... really?

This is just like trying to use logic against 4th edition rules of D&D.

Elves don't get Trance which is a fey ability because they are no longer part of the fey.

But at 21st level they get fey abilities.


Don't use logic when it comes to stores/games. It just ruins it.

/Fixed errors, silly keyboard.

That! That should just be stamped over any nitpick-y story-unraveling discussion! Stories don't need to hold up to logic to be good- look at fairy tales,legends, jokes and anecdotes! Our logical world is boring and mundane, let imagination run wild- that gave us early Vernian science fiction, steam-punk and later the whole zombie thing! People keep complaining how dull and grey/brown games have become- that's because of such relentless scrutiny to details, regarding logic, physics and general fact! Leave it be, if it's interesting- that's all that matters!