Back in October I snuck into a Symposium on American Literary Naturalism and the Visual/Digital held in UCC, excited by a glimpse of academic Video Game discussion. On that day the 13th, Sarah McCreedy discussed New Naturalism and Video Games, with a particular focus on Naughty Dog’s 2013 post-apocalyptic action adventure The Last of Us.
She argued that though less discussed, video games such as The Last of Us engage with a new kind of naturalism. This new naturalism updates conceptions of determinism, instead highlighting the illusion of free will under neoliberal capitalism.
The Last of Us depicts a type of quint-essential American story, a journey across America that is ultimately fruitless. In the process, it features moments of beauty and nature. It also emphasises an intent of being grounded and realistic, honing in on resource allocation and scarcity among other features. As such, it resembles other American works of Naturalism. I myself recently read Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, a novel to which The Last of Us closely relates. Both works track a journey across a changed American landscape, a landscape that inspires awe both in negative and positive senses.
Sarah McCreedy’s conception of The Last of Us as an updated type of Naturalistic story explores media interaction and its fascinating impact. Video games engage in a dance of interactivity with their player. There is a relationship between player, game, and character that implies choice for the player, a power to shape their own, personal experience. This idea of Free Will turns out to be deceptive, McCreedy argued, as the linearity of the plot comes to light. The player cannot impact the choices Joel, the game’s protagonist, makes in cut scenes and vital plot moments. I find this observation interesting for its awareness of medium. The Last of Us and The Road share a lot of similarities. However the idea that the themes and messages of these stories transforms due to the ways Readers/Players experience the respective text spawns fascinating questions. Maybe The Road does create a sense of determinism through its introduction of slowly creeping threats and the passivity the reader holds as, for example, the protagonist’s deadly sickness develops. The Last of Us threads the player and Joel together, but the player is alienated from Joel in the most crucial ending moments, rupturing the player’s conception of choice. That kind of illusion of Free Will and deceptive personalised experience permeates a lot more Video Games than The Last of Us. Does this make Video Games an art form suitable to thrive in Neo Liberal Capitalism?
I could write about the latter question at length. Many Role Playing Games, Action-Adventure Games, and Shooters offer moral choices and customisation of character to differing degrees. But since the programming of the game must be realisable, the large scale impact of these choices often only goes so far as a few different endings to achieve. One of my favourite game series, the Bioshock Series, tackles questions of Free Will by denying the player significant choice and impact. The first game in particular weaves the player’s lack of free will into its plot, accompanying a critique of libertarianism and exploitative capitalist structures.
Yet, the note on which I want to conclude is different. Honouring the Naturalistic work’s focus on nature, there is an additional argument I would venture to make. The Road and The Last of Us are both works of the post-apocalypse, of the transformed environment and natural space. Their different approaches to choice and the illusion of free will are present in their approaches to post-apocalyptic space. Both perpetuate a conception of lack of human agency and choice in worlds which have been taken away from human authority. Both texts further engage with the threat of human extinction. Meanwhile, nature has reclaimed and eroded human buildings and landscapes. In The Road, the conquering of mankind by the dead world around them is deterministic, and uncontested. People may struggle against each other, but they can only run away from the snow, darkness, earthquakes and fires.
As Zombie media, The Last of Us provides undead enemies which the player fights as well as other humans. The virus that creates the undead, a fungi, links them to nature. They look no longer human, appearing overgrown. Through them, the player is given agents of the transformed natural space to combat. As a result, the game provides an illusion of ability to fight the post-apocalyptic natural space, unlike The Road. It is a miming of human agency that turns out to be as deceitful as the game’s Free Will, as the quest to find a cure dissolves.
Applying the paper’s argument to space reveals a core aspect of the post-apocalyptic genre. Agency, human systems, and the Natural link between each other to reveal multitudes of causality and effect. Naturalism, new or old, forms but only one approach to our place in a transformed world.
