The Last Of Us: Surviving The Super Apocalypse by Keith McNally What if the cordyceps pandemic was so severe that there were no weapons or items left for Joel to pick up? Author Keith McNally uses this bizarrely difficult playthrough to discuss the mechanics and storytelling of 2013's The Last Of Us. This Book Is Free! I love it when digital works are free. Many times in my wayward life, I've been stuck on the outside of a pay gate, with no credit card to pay for something I wanted to check out. To me, that kind of gatekeeping is not appropriate to the modern world. In the old world, you paid your money, and you got a product. But in the digital world, you get the product, and you can choose to pay if you enjoy it. If you choose not to, then so be it. So be it!! What I'm saying is that I'm a pirate, and it irks me when people rail against digital piracy. "You shouldn't download that! Someone worked hard on that!" Man, get out of here. I don't even know if I'm a fan of this thing yet. So now that I've written my own book, I'm putting my money where my mouth is. This book will always be free; if you'd like to help support my work, you can buy a copy at: https://www.amazon.com/Last-Us-Surviving-Super-Apocalypse- ebook/dp/B076MGLY44/ But if that's out of your means, just try to spread the word, and thank you. You know, while we're on the topic: If you're one of these people who treats pirating old ROMs like it's a horrible crime -- Fucking quit it, man. No one's paying attention to what you do, and no one cares if you emulate Batman for the NES. Not one person. So chill out. Ladies and gentlemen, a toast to piracy! A toast... to the future! If there are any sections of this book that you enjoy, feel free to post them wherever you like. You can even rewrite segments to make me look like a crazed bigot, if you really feel like it. Wait -- My legal team (estranged Aunt) is saying that I shouldn't suggest people slander me. She says a Creative Commons license would be more appropriate. But what does she know about comedy? If it's funny enough, I could be into some slander. Libel, whatever. There's no need to take the idea off the table, is all I'm saying. Again, my legal counsel is shaking her head. I dunno, it's not like I can stop these people. It's the internet! They're gonna do whatever they want, so fuck it! Fuck everything! Sorry, language. Look, we'll talk about it later, okay? Jesus. Sorry. Sidebars When reading a book, 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 accomodate both types of readers. Sidebars comprise about half of this book, and some of them get pretty esoteric. So the sections which are directly about my playthrough of The Last Of Us are titled in bold. The sidebars are titled in italics. We're all gonna die some day; there's no need to be reading some boring book while you're waiting for death to kiss you shyly on the genitals. If you find that you don't like even the mainline sections, this book is presented in a convenient digital format, which can be easily deleted. You may notice that all the segments in this introduction are titled in italics. So if you wanna get straight to reading about The Last Of Us, this is the stuff you'll wanna skip. But lemme tell you, you'll be missing out on some good stuff! Some good, self- indulgent stuff. Introduction Hi, my name's Keith! I'm in my thirties, I'm Canadian, and I love talking about video games. Do you have an estranged relationship with someone? No problem! Just talk with them about video games! Is there someone you talk to every day? No problem! Talk to them about video games! Video games are the best. I feel about gaming the same way that dumb religious people feel about The Bible: Waaaayyy into it! [note: consider changing that] I heard that a guy wrote a whole book about Spec Ops: The Line, and that seemed pretty neat. Not neat enough for me to read it, but neat in concept. Then I learned about Ben Abraham's Far Cry 2 book, where he chronicled a single permadeath run of that psychot- ically difficult game. Soon after that, I discovered eight-hundred-thousand other books written about video games. The facts were clear: People were writing book-length discussions about specific video games. That was a real thing that real people were really doing. So I placed my hand on my roommate's PlayStation 3, and solemnly vowed to join the ranks of these goddamn nerds. For choice of subject, I turned to the game I had been playing and re-playing compulsively since its release: The Last Of Us. The Last Of Us is a goddamn masterpiece. I'm fascinated by people's different interpret- ations of its story, and also really like its mechanics. I wanted to try rattling that cage a bit, so I devised a playthrough where I would pick up absolutely no items. I wanted to see if The Last Of Us could stand up to some fuckery. I'll describe how I came up with that absurd idea once we get into the book proper. For now, let's kick off with a round of highly-entertaining bookkeeping! The Cover My buddy Joel made the cover for this book. Playing The Last Of Us must have seemed weird to him, what with all the characters saying his name all the time. I'll have to wait until the gritty reboot of Keith Courage In Alpha Zones [5.5/10 - IGN.com] for a similar experience. Joel is a graphic design wizard, so if you'd like to pitch him some work, you can contact him at: [email protected] Sources I'm not gonna cite sources in this book. It's not that I don't want to, it's that my memory is garbage. I've read a lot of articles, and listened to a mountain of podcasts about The Last Of Us. But I don't remember the source of anything I've heard in my entire life, let alone those. So there'll be a lot of "Somebody on a podcast said this" or "I read somewhere that"; if I knew I was gonna write a book about The Last Of Us, I probably would have taken some notes. But in a way, I like pulling strictly from memory. For a piece of information to have stayed in my head means it must have been pretty interesting. I just won't be able to tell you specifically where it came from. What can I say? Journalism's dead. It's fucking dead. Future generations are gonna laugh at the very idea. But if I say something particularly wacky, and Google isn't able to verify it, just assume I was told it by a ghost, and take it as you would any mere ghost opinion. Spoilers! This book is obviously full of Last Of Us spoilers. Tess dies! Marlene dies! Fuck! It's all spoiled! But I'm also gonna spoil any other game that I want, at any time, with no warning whatsoever. If that fills you with anxiety, then I guess you better get the fuck out of here. If someone has an early copy of a game, then of course they should keep plot details to themselves. But once a game is in general release, all bets are off. People who crow about spoilers make me wanna barf into some other barf, then eat the resulting mega- barf so that I double-barf. If you care so much about spoilers, then play the frigging games, or shut your yap. To me, one of the most interesting and instructive things about art is to discuss its meaning. It frustrates me to see those kinds of discussions constantly curtailed, for fear of "spoilers". And let's be clear: When game nerds talk about spoilers, all they're really interested in is the body count. "Who lives and who dies" is not the point of a story. If a single sentence can ruin your experience with a game, then you're really not approaching art in the right way. That's a judgment call, and I'm making it. So in summary: If you've ever complained about spoilers for an older game, then take a fucking hike, dicky. Also, best wishes. Positive Spoilers I've actually become 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 we could ever hope to absorb in a hundred lifetimes. Three hundred hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute -- The riverbanks have eroded, and the flood's not gonna stop until our whole society outright collapses. So when someone says, "You should play this game, but I can't tell you anything about it", chances are I'm not gonna play it.