A Last of Us Retrospective, Part 1

Ian here—

Well, I’ve inaugurated a new video series, and I’ve done so smack dab in the middle of an academic quarter. Perhaps inadvisedly! We’ll see if I can keep up a regular schedule for this series, which dives deep into the storytelling techniques of the Last of Us franchise.

Script below the jump.

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Games of the Decade: Ambition

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It was important for me to immediately follow up my elegance sub-list with one on ambition. There’s a simple reason for this: these two are often incompatible.

The games on here are among the most rough-hewn of all the games I’m listing. In terms of visuals and audio, I would have to admit that two of them are outright ugly and grating. In terms of features, there are parts of these games that just don’t quite work. They don’t always succeed in doing what they set out to do.

But what they set out to do is something utterly fantastic, and their failures are, at the very least, interesting.

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