I would dispute the idea that The Walking Dead handles narrative that well to begin with, because the consequences are precisely
not that important, and are trivialized by their frequency. I'm frankly too lazy to make the argument myself, so I'll quote
this because it sums up my frustration with the show, and with so many other shows:
Again, killing characters is not the only way to inspire character consequences and growth, nor is it even necessarily the most reliable.
Consider that TWD is consistently better written and handled than the narrative in TLOU, (not having a character who has a magical cure because reasons for one), and handles death better than TLOU because we usually have a much better understanding of the characters than the relatively short amount of screen time they had in TLOU. Character deaths have changed a shit ton of the characters in these shows, how was Joel changed by the death of Sam and Henry? He wasn't. It's not even just deaths either, it's seeing the characters get genuinely hurt. It was literally hard to breath during
this moment in GoT's last season, because that's how into it the audience was. TLOU has no moment like that, and is much more pornographic since look at how many people die in comparison to Joel and Ellie. When these things leave them, especially Joel, relatively unchanged it's hard to get invested as the biggest character change comes from Ellie having to face David without Joel around. It takes 3/4ths of the game for Ellie to experience a major change in character and personality.
I'm not sure how you get to the end of The Last of Us and thing there aren't consequences for what has happened.
Oh there will be consequences alright, preferably in the form of bullets, to Joel's skull. But i'm sure he'll be fine once he gets some more penicillin.
It was my mistake to bring up Breaking Bad, because it's one of the few shoes that manages to handle character deaths and drama in general with absolute appropriateness throughout the show. I don't think anyone reasonable is claiming that The Last of Us has drama on par with Breaking Bad.
Oh you'd be surprised how much gamers hype up a game like TLOU and think it holds up well against something like Breaking Bad. Some would even tell you that it's the best narrative ever.
Some schmuck on GAF doesn't prove your point if you're trying to have a serious discussion. Some schmucks claim stupid shit all the time.
I mean if it was a minority i'd understand but holy shit do gamers hold up the narrative of TLOU as some golden egg that is absolutely comparable to modern day television or
Literally how pulp action flicks usually work. The action heroes are coated in plot armor, that doesn't really mean anything to me when I'm along to watch a silly action story unfold.[/QUOTE]
Then maybe we should stop treating UC games as a golden egg of video game narratives. especially since the one that realized the most that it was pulp without a shit ton of contrivances to justify the actions of Drake was UC2. Nathan Drake wasn't an asshole in UC2, he was an unwilling hero/thief, he's a straight up asshole in UC3/4 and thus it's much harder to empathize with him when his wife gets mad or leaves him or feel happy when she comes back yet again.
