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Zaire Lanier: And She was Less Than a Dog [On Naughty Dog's Treatment of Black People in The Last of Us] (UPDATE: Zaire Lanier hired as writer at ND!)
- Thread starter Neoxon
- Start date
- Spoiler Sony
"Oh no Nadine was supposed to be white but she became black but we couldn't just replace Laura Bailey! Her crappy accent was totally needed!"
At least in Chloe's case, her race wasn't even mentioned until Lost Legacy. I always operated under the impression she was supposed to be Italian in UC2 and UC3.
They literally retconned her into being half-Indian, which makes it extra goofy.
That's a valid point, the game doesn't exist in a political vacuum, and the context does make it stand out even more. All the more reason I hope Naughty Dog course corrects in their upcoming games. I absolutely think they're capable of it, as they've included more and more progressive representation in their works.
The last fight of the game forces you to beat nearly to death a starved, mutilated woman trying to save a starved, mutilated child.
Also, Chloe being Indian-Australian was Word of God'd into existence for The Lost Legacy and not at all mentioned or alluded to in previous games.
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I didn't realize that torturing to death is a requirement for it to be considered torture porn. Also, the game makes you take control of the character to beat the woman. That is not the case for Nora, so I'd argue torture porn is actually at its worst in the last fight, forcing you to become an unwilling participant by throwing every punch, and then pushing a button in order to presumably drown her death.
This one legit got me. I'm usually good with tough scenes in media, however this scene in particular haunted me for days.
So, you didn't read the article and don't remember the game, you have to participate in Nora's torture to continue the game, if you are gonna make bad faith arguments don't even try this.
The first time I realized video game depictions of violence had gone beyond the event horizon was the torture scene they make you do as Trevor in GTAV. I felt sick for half an hour after that shit was over.
TLOU2's torture porn is worse than that.
Not to defend it, because honestly, I do think there's a bigger conversation to be had with regards to if this was all tastefully handled or not, but that final boss fight to me just screamed
"you are the bad guy"
"how does it feel?"
because I don't think I've seen a single person who played through that part of the game especially and gone "this is fun", and that feels intentional when Neil himself is like "no this game isn't 'fun' "
It's a game that makes you do very horrific shit, in order to make you more engaged in the story, and making you reflect on the actions being done by the characters you play as. Be it the start of the game where you play as Abby for a bit before she kills Joel, or the end with the fight between Abby and Ellie.
Not defending but, and I think there's an argument to be had as to how tasteful or not tasteful and even "was that really necessary" but that felt very by design if that makes any sense. Your by no means supposed to feel good about what's going on in that scene, and I don't think anyone who played the game did. You could argue that it succeeded in what it was trying to do in that sense.
I rewatched the Nora and End fight scenes to remind myself before posting. Please describe how you have to participate in Nora's torture scene.
The black Brute character is definitely problematic and that's something a minority might have picked up on if they were in the creative direction room at Naughty Dog. The Nora stuff I don't think is on Naughty Dog in terms of how shitty/racist players took it. The TLOU universe is pretty shitty as a whole, pretty much nobody has a happy ending. Joel got gruesomely beat to death. The Nora sequence did its job and well, you weren't supposed to be comfortable playing through that.
Naughty Dog definitely needs to do better as a whole though.
Naughty Dog definitely needs to do better as a whole though.
I think one of the arguments people may wrongly say is "well everyone in TLOU is treated poorly" but black pain is only utilized to progress the story of the two main white leads. I hated the part with Nora and while I do think TLOU is a superb game and was my personal GOTY I hated it's treatment of the black characters. It was almost as if any black character that took initiative (Issac, Marlene, etc) they were killed off, if they weren't relegated to servicing the white main protagonist development. I really hated that aspect of it. Killing off the two brothers in the first game was such a missed opportunity and felt like it wasn't needed to progress the story at all. I actually wish they lived and we got a different perspective of the apocalypse through their eyes. Great article and we need more like this. The game industry as progressive as people think they are is still very segregated and needs a ton of work. We aren't telling our own stories sadly cause the outlets to get black creators in just isn't there yet. I can't wait for the black gaming renaissance similar to the black film renaissance that happened in the mid 90s and mid 2010's.
Any time my brain struggles to try and form a coherent reason like "It's a brutal world, people die" to try to encapsulate how horribly both Last of Us games treated its minority characters, I remember Tommy died 3 times, with one of them being literally shot in the head, and hes still walking around by the games conclusion, while every single black character was murdered in a brutal way.
Naughty dog should do better.
Naughty dog should do better.
It's tough to argue with these percentages when considering the fates of the POC characters. ND should have definitely approached that more mindfully.
That said, ain't no happy endings anywhere in this universe. It's not like there aren't horrific deaths for countless white characters, too. Many of whom also serve as catalysts for other characters stories.
Most characters die, horribly - main characters not excluded.
Also, if it counts within this discussion - the show appears to be "correcting" some of this via its casting, no?
That said, ain't no happy endings anywhere in this universe. It's not like there aren't horrific deaths for countless white characters, too. Many of whom also serve as catalysts for other characters stories.
Most characters die, horribly - main characters not excluded.
Also, if it counts within this discussion - the show appears to be "correcting" some of this via its casting, no?
That is false. Nora's death wasn't a cutscene, it's a QTE. You take control of Ellie, and you must hit X to beat her to death. If you don't, the game will not advance, and you are stuck in a permanent loop of Ellie angrily breathing heavy.
Does the square button gets clicked by itself? really dude? I am reporting for trolling, this is a main point of the article.
Ah ok, for some reason the two youtube videos I watched of it don't show button prompts during that scene. (example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnzCndh__ao). (OK actually it was the pop up video they do at the end of it blocking the visual of where the prompt is. Apologies for that mistake. Even so, the last fight felt much worse to me on the level of having to actively interact/fight, rather than a QTE. Perhaps it would more accurate to focus on black characters being killed off or stereotyped, rather than the torture porn angle, for this particular game).
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The casting of the show does seem to indicate that Naughty Dog is aware of this to some degree. We'll see how this reflects in their future games though.
Yeah I think this is an important factor that's going to get lost in the sea of "but everyone is having a bad time! TLOU is about our inhumanity to each other!"
It's every black characters inevitably suffering for a white protagonist's character development. There's no other way to put that.
Yeah I'm cool with this games super cynical walking dead esque storytelling.
But Tommy really did hit a sore point. Dudes not even a main character, no way he deserves that level of plot armor lol.
As discussed before in the thread OP mentioned it's just wild that every person of color died in this series except fo Lev with most being black.
I'm glad this is getting talked about.
Y'know when i realized the whole story was gated behind that garbage, I should have just dropped it. I regret finishing the game.
Y'know when i realized the whole story was gated behind that garbage, I should have just dropped it. I regret finishing the game.
I feel in this game's case, everybody suffered for the development of the two protagonists' character development. I don't think it was particularly selective in either direction.
Yea, Tommy should have been iced. That was a misstep on Druckmann's part for a number of reasons.
Right, but how many games with this degree of clout and popularity are there where black characters exist who don't go through that, or just don't exist in any meaningful capacity?
It's like, everyone suffered, meaning 100% of the game's black cast suffered, but Tommy sure as fuck didn't suffer as much as Nora.
Which is to say that it's a lot more easy to swallow the deaths of a whole bunch of white dudes because I not only have a whole bunch of games featuring white dudes, I have games galore where the white dudes are the most developed, most focused upon characters.
As a black man, I absolutely love ND and their games. When the black characters died in TLOU1, I chalked it up to "well it's the apocalypse and Joel was justified." Then came Nadine being voice by a white woman which threw me off. Then this part came and I was like, "Why did none of the other minority characters in the game get this kind of treatment?" Look, I don't want to say that Neil Druckmann is racist or anything like that, but this Quentin Tarantino style of racism has to fucking go pronto. I was half expecting someone to get called the n-word several times in TLOU2.
Well Tommy wasn't beat to death but he's pretty fucked up at the end. I imagine Druckmann wanted Tommy alive at the end as a living reflection of Ellie's actions, also possibly to avoid the story being viewed as too nihilistic/grimdark, although again I think he should have died with how it was set up.
I do agree with the idea though that there needs to be more minorities in leading roles in games, I'm playing through Prey (Arkane) and it's great that your character is Asian. That's something all of Sony's studios need to work at.
To be fair, while I have an issue with the games POC representation, Tommy surviving wasn't one of them imo.
He was given a pretty messed up personal hell by surviving. Maimed in the face, permanently handicapped, losing his wife, and hell bent on revenge that he can't get over or even do himself.
It made the story better that he did in my eyes, because he represented the side pushing Ellie back into getting her revenge
Right but what I'm trying to convey is that Tommy "alive at the end as a living reflection of Ellie's actions, also possibly to avoid the story being viewed as too nihilistic/grimdark", that's a luxury catered only to a white dude in the cast, while in the ending the oly person who lives in Ellie's manhunt is Abby, another white character.
Yea, I wonder if Tommy himself thinks it would have been better if he died in Seattle. His life post that is complete shit.
Tommy himself though is the best person to be a reflection as you see what he's like pre-Seattle and how he was against all of this revenge business and then post-Seattle he's near deranged. It's more of a position given to him because he's Joel's brother and he was also viewed as the nice brother.
Some of the casting decisions, if you will, are baked in holdovers from TLOU1. Much of the leading cast in TLOU1 had to be white as either they were the same characters in TLOU1 or related to already established characters. Going forward ND definitely needs to be aware of this.
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My issue with Tommy is that any other side character would have died for less(and they did).
The dude brushes with death like 3 different times.
I do understand that they needed a character to represent the dark side of going after revenge for Joel. And who better than his brother?
Black disposability in TLOU games does hit on a visceral level. I loved Nora as a character. And being complicit in her brutalization was difficult to stomach. And the Black Seraphite boss battle damn near felt like it came from another game. A much more insensitive and clumsily presented game.
But I don't know y'all…everybody be dying undignified deaths in that universe. Of the main characters from the original, only Ellie and Tommy are alive at the end of Part II and they both barely survive and their lives are in shambles.
Damn near everybody we encounter. White, black, Asian. Dies horribly. Violent tragedy is kind of central to the premise.
But I don't know y'all…everybody be dying undignified deaths in that universe. Of the main characters from the original, only Ellie and Tommy are alive at the end of Part II and they both barely survive and their lives are in shambles.
Damn near everybody we encounter. White, black, Asian. Dies horribly. Violent tragedy is kind of central to the premise.
Anyone calling this series "torture porn" or saying it revels in its violence is straight up arguing in bad faith.
Like, the Nora scene is *literally* the exact opposite of torture porn. You are supposed to not like it.
I agree with the race problem, but, I'm so tired of this specific part of the argument against this game. If it didn't work for you, ok, but, it's disingenuous to say anyone at ND wanted you to actually get off on it.
Like, the Nora scene is *literally* the exact opposite of torture porn. You are supposed to not like it.
I agree with the race problem, but, I'm so tired of this specific part of the argument against this game. If it didn't work for you, ok, but, it's disingenuous to say anyone at ND wanted you to actually get off on it.
Yea it felt like Druckmann prioritized the themes and 'lessons' over the practicality and realism of that universe. I get it, but I don't agree with it.
My hope for ND is they get some black writers in the room for their next game
It's annoying because they give themselves such a pat on the back for acknowledging dinas cultural history (and neils) a]but turn a blind eye to the characters of color
It's annoying because they give themselves such a pat on the back for acknowledging dinas cultural history (and neils) a]but turn a blind eye to the characters of color
The conversation of race and characters in ND games is worth having, so interesting to see this article and the thoughts and comments so far.
I will say for me that this is the turning point in the narrative where I started to step back from Ellie and her quest for revenge.
Early on after what happens in the story I was very much - "let's goto Seattle and hunt those WLF down one by one and get revenge!".
By the Nora scene that sense of getting revenge had completely worn off and shows how messed up the whole idea and Ellie are and gets worse as the game goes on.
I didn't read it as something that is meant to feel good but yeah the visuals/dynamics can be troubling. Up there as being as confronting was the end at the beach.
I will say for me that this is the turning point in the narrative where I started to step back from Ellie and her quest for revenge.
Early on after what happens in the story I was very much - "let's goto Seattle and hunt those WLF down one by one and get revenge!".
By the Nora scene that sense of getting revenge had completely worn off and shows how messed up the whole idea and Ellie are and gets worse as the game goes on.
I didn't read it as something that is meant to feel good but yeah the visuals/dynamics can be troubling. Up there as being as confronting was the end at the beach.
I still remember that thread/poll where half of era showed their ass
I don't think you understand what the phrase 'torture porn' means.
You don't have to be able to be aroused or shit by it to classify it as such lol.
Also, this part of the conversation is prob too in depth for what this thread is alluding to but….
Nah, an instance or two in one game and not in any other games is an oversight/coincidence, but multiple instances across multiple games feels undeniably intentional and racist, at least to me. This is also just knowing tbat ND has been called out for this in the past and haven't done anything
Worse, Naughty Dog's next game will be a remake of The Last of Us, so we'll have to watch Sam, Henry, Riley, and Marlene die all over again. Until they make a third game, which could be never or a very long time from now, that'll pretty much remain the fate of their black characters going forward in The Last of Us. Definitely disappointing, but I'm hoping they can make a game soon where they do black characters justice, whether it's another Uncharted or a new IP.
Great article and I knew exactly what the title was referencing before I read any further. Lots to think on but for a game with many disturbing moments it was near the top, and the writer did a great job of highlighting the many layers as to why - much more so than I could have articulated.