Analysing The Last of Us’ intro credits scene

[@TheiPadCat]

Spent almost all of today making this, hope you all enjoy it :) Damn it. Didn’t notice that the Joel line had no sound lol. It’s supposed to say “some places got a heads up before the outbreak”

[@TheiPadCat]

Thanks BFGN!

[@Jennifer-xg3ck]

When I didn’t hear any sound for Joel I decided to scroll down; I knew you would say what was supposed to be there in the comments.

[@Logananti88]

Lol

[@edu7979]

quick note about the division and fallout fallout is a fucking nuclear war of course the whole world will fall soon when the earth is bombed to shit by nuclear weapons and the division wasnt total social collapse, infact the only place that was rlly fucked around that time was nyc and more specifically manhattan which was literally quarantined entirely its after some time when the entire us falls and if you take into account the differences between the diseases in tctd and tlou it becomes clear why in the division the green poison is airborne highly infectious and highly lethal in tlou the cordyceps spreads through bites and spores avode those and youll be just fine, that cant be said for the green poison cuz you wouldnt even know if someones asymptomic with it so the comparison cant really be made, and the us govt still stands during the time of the division so the comparison is kinda like out of place while i know the us has somehow turned into whatever tf it became in the division the us govt still stands and theres still a president and a semblance of government, so the comparison cant really be made between the two

[@ollierose2969]

allot of the skeletons may have been taken by animals or have fallen into holes as the street conditions worsen. It also takes around 8-12 years for a skeleton to mostly decompose so that may also be a factor in it

[@spiclerparker7670]

I think the thing with the "hundreds of bodies lining the streets" could be people who were potentially perceived dead before they rose again as infected - it's a stretch but it's an idea.

[@isaiahmoreno3067]

I can see that happening

[@dominickstewart433]

The bodies “lining” the streets implies order that would be evidence of organized euthanasia. Likely military.

[@fedra5873]

Impossible remember this ain’t about dead ppl this is about scientifically realistic things

[@The-Okami-Project]

I thought it was pretty clear it was about the armed military response gunning down infected

[@zombielover8]

in the last of us infected aren’t dead. when you die you do not rise up again. the only way to get infected is bites and spores. technically they are zombies.

[@alexnedin]

If it was indeed several years, I demand Joel/Tommy DLC. Also a dlc where we play as a rioter would be an interesting point of view; imagine snowy New York where you and your friends have to steal food from government who controls everything. The logic behind cordiceps‘ s initial super fast speed of spreading was always a mastery for me. Maybe the bloody thing mutates without stop? I wanna know more about the Outbreak and its aftermaths in Part 2, such large areas as we saw in the gameplay trailer can be a good basis for telling those stories. Also: if some places have been given a heads up about CBI, it could mean that some of them can still be relatively stable societies, would be interesting to visit one of them.

[@TheiPadCat]

Yeah, I’d also like to see more intact places. For example judging by the fact that the Denver quarantine zone could afford to use a helicopter for some random rescue mission suggests that they are quite well off. Maybe we could visit that zone in part II? I’d also like more about the outbreak hopefully the fact that it takes place another 5 years into the future doesn’t affect that all too much.

[@itsblitz4437]

Cordyceps infection spreading was due to contaminated crops. That's what it said in the beginning of the game.

[@chistinelane]

Viruses/diseases almost always start out way too infectious and deadly for its own good. No disease wants to kill it's host. it's just an... Unavoidable side effect. It wants to reproduce. It's best move is to push it's host's death back far enough that it can keep reproducing and find another place to reproduce to. Initially cordyceps probably killed the host WAY to fast. It had *just* adapted to humans and it needed to learn how to *keep* a host.

[@GabrielWilsonCollins]

There are a few TV studios within a half mile from the Boston QZ that Marlene and The Fireflies could have made broadcasts from. WFXT Channel 25 (local FOX station) has two studios in that area: One at City Hall Plaza and one at Beacon Hill across the street from the Massachusetts State House (The Capitol) There is also WHDH Channel 7 (local NBC station) on Bulfinch Place (near Government Center). I am thinking that Marlene and the Fireflies would be broadcasting from the FOX 25 Beacon Hill Studio because the Fireflies had control of The Capitol until FEDRA forces wiped them out.

[@TheiPadCat]

Ah that’s a cool bit of info! I assume you’re a local? Since I’m from the other side of the Atlantic to Boston I don’t really know too much so I can’t really say a lot about it. But I’m sure they had pirate broadcasts from outside QZs all over the country

[@GabrielWilsonCollins]

TheiPadCat Yes. I am a local. I live 23 miles to the Southeast of the Boston QZ (The North End, Boston’s Little Italy) and 35 miles to the Southeast of Lincoln. (Bill’s Town)

[@beinghuman9385]

Hello The IPad Cat at 4:50 there is no sound - wanted to let you know

[@TheiPadCat]

Hahaha yeah, thanks for pointing that out. Bummer that it was this video of all videos. It’s so long and would take ages to re-render just for that :/ I added what he says in my pinned comment though :)

[@itsblitz4437]

@@TheiPadCat you also misspelled "under" in the sentence "Under Martial Law" in 11:23

[@tkell31]

Hard to see it being that slow developing or more people would have been prepared and not taken completely off guard. If it was slow Tommy and Joel would have been saying things like, "it's here, I never thought it would get this far, we have to get away from large groups of people, etc etc."

[@CR7GOATofFootball]

Yes and no, I belive by slow he meant society didn't collapse for several years after the outbreak.

[@quickcube2834]

There were two waves of spreading.

[@NyanCatHerder]

Joel and Tommy don't talk about it, but there *is* actually discussion of people being sick in the prologue. A newspaper mentions a recall of contaminated foods from an expanded list of countries, meaning that the FDA has had time to put out at least two bulletins since the first people came down with CBI. Since those with the infection are still apparently being treated as sick human beings rather than bloodthirsty monsters, though, the protagonists probably just don't put two and two together in the chaos. Since only produce from certain countries was contaminated, and since realistically only *some* farms would have been exporting comtaminated goods (probably a minority in each affected country), the initial spread of the infection wouldn't have been uniform. Only a few lots from a few brands would have actually carried spores, and those lots would have been processed and shipped together. During the initial wave of infection the hardest hit areas were probably abandoned, and a newspaper release shown in promotional materials bears this out, mentioning a failed quarantine of New Mexico and Texas. With smaller numbers of infected people happening to be outside of the most heavily affected regions, the rest of the US would have had some issues from the start. Those would have only been amplified as large numbers of infected spread out from the quarantined regions with the collapse of the line surrounding each. It wouldn't be extremely slow, but it couldn't be too fast, either. We know beyond a doubt that parts of Massachusetts were evacuated around a month after the fall of Austin. Even two decades later there's still a federal government, along with multiple good-sized groups of survivors outside the cities where that government holds more than nominal control. The United States is a failed state facing the possibility of utter collapse, but the fact that it isn't there yet suggests that things went at a manageable-enough pace to develop a government with staying power. Communication and cooperation between different countries and settlements would have fallen off as cities were overrun, collapsed under their own weight, or ran out of resources and fell apart, but there could have been a period of months between the first confirmed case and the point where cities furthest from the initial epicenters lost their ability to function like truly cohesive components of a whole.

[@bigjohnstudd6868]

I think it took time for society to collapse as well, but not a ton of time. I think it took maybe 2 or 3 years at most. Most of what was mentioned in this video could occur in a year. BTW, I would also love to see a Last of US game featuring Tommy and Joel preferably in between the prologue and the main story of the first one

[@fedra5873]

10 years that’s only in the us

[@fullmns]

in terms of the communication part, i assume they lost signal to both radios and phones at the beginning because their nearby towers got damaged somehow since everything in their town was being destroyed. just bc the town they were in lost signal doesn't mean everywhere else did since not everywhere is connected like that.

[@milesbrown1235]

Jesus is king

[@dracolee_072]

Saying latest city to be put under martial law doesn’t mean it was the last city to be put under martial law, the saying latest could also mean as in the most recent but not last

[@NyanCatHerder]

That doesn't really change the point they're making, though. If anything, it would strengthen it. Cities and countries didn't implement martial law all at once, suggesting that initial impact of the disease wasn't evenly distributed. Some cities may have collapsed immediately, but others apparently maintained normalcy for at least awhile before establishing military governments.

[@chistinelane]

I think communication failed from lack of maintenance. Before the quarantine zones people could still repair lines, keep boost stations operating, etc. Not forever but for awhile. When they moved to quarantine... The system slowly decayed. Outages went unrepaired, etc, until only internal networks remained. At that point fedra probably shut down "the Internet".

[@levroz_6019]

It's wonderful ! 5 years later take the time to dig informations about this great game... and find some ! :D It's a very interesting search, thank you for this video, we learn on all day about The Last of Us ! :D

[@TheiPadCat]

Really glad you enjoyed the video Levroz_! Yeah it’s incredible that there are still things to learn half a decade later!

[@levroz_6019]

This is the proof that there is still some informations. This game is sooo rich :')

[@levroz_6019]

Really glad you made this video ;)

[@alexnedin]

Damn, 17 minutes! Going to bed rn, will watch in the morning.

[@TheiPadCat]

Sleep tight :)

[@cherrykissfilms]

Did you watch it yet?

[@j4cqu3s_79]

Have you watched it yet

[@ufctekkers1945]

did you watch it?

[@John-iv2xy]

My guy how long do you sleep for

[@anchor8615]

My guess is that communications went down because Fedra intentionally took them down, so the Fireflies were unable to continue spreading their message.

[@ozbej5988]

Omg you deserve so much more subs

[@Trebuchet26]

Good video. Joel's tekst at 4:50 cut out? No sound for me... I will play the whole game again on Grounded, when we have a releasedate for TLOU2 (And I want to be Orange... ;) )

[@TheiPadCat]

Trebuchet26 yeah probably a hiccup in the rendering :/ I can definitely recommend grounded. Makes the game so different and fresh :)

[@Trebuchet26]

I played it in the second highest difficulty, but I'll save Grounded for shortly before TLOU2...

[@itsblitz4437]

@@Trebuchet26 what does "orange" have to do with it?

[@Trebuchet26]

@@itsblitz4437 Ehm... old comment: I guess it means I want to be Orange because that is the National color for The Netherlands, and I am Dutch.... probably ;) But proably a joke anyway...

[@alialkhalidy1415]

This video and every other video in your channel is very amazing, I'm unlucky to find your channel now. I hope you come back soon

[@chulitna5838]

I think when they say in the intro "the deaths have now reached over 200" the governor doesn't know about all the specifics of whats going on. so victims who are now zombies count as "dead"

[@BullsquidGaming]

Joes Says: ....................... So, is Joel related to Gordon Freeman?

[@olavitakala8839]

"and in town, Joel says: '*silence*'" ????

[@lidob]

I know I'm late, but the speed of an outbreak spreading throughout states would all be different and depend on specific factors, though, we'd need more information to find out which states fell faster than others. Factors though such as: population of civilians, population of security personnel, percentage of those armed with weapons of self-defense, reaction time of security measures, etc.

[@MUZZLEFLASHER10O10]

Dude, could you make a video talking about gameplay improvements that TLoU2 should include?

[@TheiPadCat]

I probably could, but we’ve already seen so much at e3. So I’d have to think up stuff we haven’t seen yet :)

[@MUZZLEFLASHER10O10]

@@TheiPadCat I see, well I was thinking, if we get the possibility to play as the "mysterious woman" and she's in fact a hardened military, would the gun animations and shiver while aiming as well as her hand to hand moves be different (over Joel and Ellie) to portray her background? I think it would be really cool if they have that kind of attention to detail, after all, it wouldn't be hard to do. I just hope she's a playable character cause she's so badass! Edit: Some users say she might be military trained because of her looks and attitude

[@TheiPadCat]

I think we’ll definitely play as the MW sometime during the game. I mean just look at how the PGW trailer ends. It looks just like a cutscene-to-gameplay transition. Your theory about the MW being military is very interesting. I was planning to discuss which faction she was a part of since lev says “she’s one of them” to yara in the trailer..

[@MUZZLEFLASHER10O10]

@@TheiPadCat Yeah man, that PGW trailer looked like a playable character's introduction, you're right about that! Keep up the good work, your channel is great mate! Edit: grammar

[@TheiPadCat]

Thanks a lot stuntman! I’ll do my best :)

[@austingriff5905]

TLOU and Fedra is a great example of why the second amendment should stay strong and free in America.

[@MikeNapoli1989]

No kidding

[@samuelwoodouse4482]

I have a nuanced disagreement. I think the second amendment should be focused more on the militia part. Plus it would give you a pre existing organization which is a leg up in a rebellion situation

[@TR4_Designs]

Wow, you somehow turned a 2 minute game intro into a 17 minute video, I just don't know how you could do that!

[@dorci2026]

I have a Theory about the Phone Lines/Connection being cut off, its maybe due to the Radio Towers or Radio Stations being Destroyed in the Area, but thats a just a Theory, a Ga- Nope, not doing that.

[@fedra5873]

Doesn’t make sense

[@thecrock2474]

I always thought it was the government doing a telecommunications blackout.

[@RantDuJour]

TBH the radio in the car does work, there's just no broadcast...

[@brothers_of_nod]

May be some years late but glad I found this channel.

[@justusP9101]

Commenting to not let this great video fall under the shadow

[@heisenberg3024]

What do you think the PSX event will entail for Part II?

[@TheiPadCat]

That’s a really good question. Would they really just throw another cinematic trailer at us? I don’t think so... but we’ve already had gameplay too so what really is there to wow us now? Some people think we’ll get to know more about factions II, but that would probably mean we’re close to release. Major general info-dump maybe?

[@heisenberg3024]

TheiPadCat might be worth doing a video on discussing your predictions

[@TheiPadCat]

Yeah, If i can manage to get it to a 4-5 min video I’ll do it :)

[@albinodino5050]

lol nothing now. :(

[@SpeedDemon55]

Extremely well done video very well researched and interesting.

[@charlesdu84]

It’s not an apocalypse, unless the earth is destroyed. The last of the situation is just an average day on planet earth, on a geological time scale. 🌎🌍🌏

[@williamlam1415]

I haven’t seen a video discussing this so maybe what I found was a first? But while Joel Tess are walking through the alley There’s a trashcan and u can see a couple of news papers and there’s a one that shows a highway collapsed and says “Promises of a rebuilding highways broken” and this new paper can also be found when u meet bill and u go around the bar it’s in the back room so I have a theory that fedra maybe bombed the highways and roads to stop people fleeing from infected areas and it also may explain why fedra shot at people trying to enter quarantine zones like the one in Pittsburgh. And maybe fedra was trying to connect the quarantine zones by rebuilding the rubies highways and perhaps trying to restore America??

[@williamlam1415]

Excuse my grammar 😭

[@TheiPadCat]

Hmm. I think I know which paper you’re referencing. But considering how FEDRA is portrayed I doubt they’d ever actually work towards restoring anything. They’re a brutal military dictatorship clinging to power for dear life. Even if they’re the best hope for something close to what life was like before the outbreak - connecting all the QZs would probably just be something they told/tell the citizens to appease them and stop revolts from happening. But who knows? So far we’ve only seen fedra from an outside perspective and read about them when they’re already long gone. Perhaps those viewpoints are biased or inaccurate.

[@fedra5873]

They probably did for a while

[@trevorhoy8146]

Radio will always exist though, communications will never fully go down

[@ricardobautista-garcia8492]

I do not think that this is how it went. I believe that most of the world was affected at around the same time by infected food products from initial infected areas in the Americas. Otherwise it would have been unrealistic how the CBI outbreak could have spread so fast if it could only be transmitted via direct contact (i.e. bites) with the infected. Nevertheless, I do think your assessment is accurate based on the information that is available. The writers should have placed more efforts in the worldbuilding of this story.

[@fedra5873]

I do get your point in real life CBI would spread from spores or aggressive contact also good but South America is a large producer of cocoa beans so

[@ejwickschildhoodvideos2975]

The main question I have about the intro is what’s the white stuff in the background is that a parasite growing

[@AlldaylongRock]

Its a representation of fungal mycelia.

[@ImTouchkv2]

Wait, if the fireflies had a public charter and Marlene was talking at the end (sounding like what she said was actually a recording), would it be possible that Marlene was the public charter?

[@TheiPadCat]

Quite possible I’d say

[@asinimali]

NATIONAL SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL DIRECTIVE/NSPD 51 & HOMELAND SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL DIRECTIVE/HSPD-20 (May 9, 2007) have classified annexes: "(23) Annex A and the classified Continuity Annexes, attached hereto, are hereby incorporated into and made a part of this directive. (24) Security. This directive and the information contained herein shall be protected from unauthorized disclosure, provided that, except for Annex A, the Annexes attached to this directive are classified and shall be accorded appropriate handling, consistent with applicable Executive Orders. GEORGE W. BUSH"

[@asinimali]

Also see NATIONAL CONTINUITY POLICY IMPLEMENTATION PLAN. Homeland Security Council August 2007: It is all laid out in this plan minus whatever is in the classified annexes

[@gohan00dbz]

very good video!

[@TheiPadCat]

Thank you, gohan!

[@coldcocoa4090]

Meep

[@jean-mikail7207]

what’s the guitar song

[@jean-mikail7207]

last of us theme song

[@clarapettit3303]

17:20 Were is the sound?

[@sonamnechen8733]

And subbed..

[@TheiPadCat]

Glad to hear it sonam!

[@nateeldabaa2411]

Something's wrong with you video my guy I can't even hear some of the audio

[@ascghostgod1414]

I think the intro could have been a lot better visually.

[@May-gr8bp]

I disagree. It's 8 years old and I get chills everytime I hear it, so grim and nightmarish.

[@ascghostgod1414]

@@May-gr8bp You do? You hear it, you dont watch? :) It is a great Catylist, I give it that.

[@May-gr8bp]

@@ascghostgod1414 Visually it's unimpressive (except for the growing fungus) but the hidden panic in the people's voices and the music sets the tone for a dark game with a few hints of light and happiness.

[@ascghostgod1414]

@@May-gr8bp Exactly, where are the few hints of light and happiness exactly? That was very well put btw

[@May-gr8bp]

@@ascghostgod1414 in addition to the character development in the dlc, ellie jokes around with the porn mag she stole from bil before dumping it and acts upbeat, cocky, and humourous the whole time and joel's character development is good too. he goes from grouchy to less crouchy and more father-like, nicer? you get my train of thought?