In my continued play through of The Last of Us I have realized one thing. I forgot just how much I loved this game, and how I wish I was truly experiencing it for the first time on this play through. This time around on the game blogs I decided to narrow my scope of focus slightly and tried to explore more into the impact of the game’s audio.
In The Last of Us the player’s willingness to stop and listen throughout the game is a very important given how the player character Joel, has supersonic hearing and the ability to echolocate enemies through multiple walls. However, regardless of that particular game mechanic, the in-game audio serves several functions that the player may take for granted without specifically looking for them. Many stealth games use sound to provide a sense of foreshadowing to the player and warn them of when they are about to be discovered (Collins 130). The audio during combat/stealth sequences is very useful in filling out the peripheral senses of the player. For example, whenever the player is out of cover and within the line of sight of an enemy, the game will play a loud white noise that feels very out of place, thus giving the player a jolt to realize that they need to move or they will be discovered. While playing I decided to make a comparison in playing with and without this game audio. I found that playing without the sound forces the player to be much more active in scanning their surroundings and using Joel’s echolocation ability, turning what were usually fairly simple levels into a more disorienting and difficult experience.
Along with its direct impact on gameplay and mechanics, the audio of The Last of Us was very effective in creating a sense of different environments and phases throughout the game. This game is a combination a handful of intensely stressful combat/stealth sequences followed by long stretches of either narrative development or simply scavenging for supplies in every nook and cranny you can find. However, The Last of Us plays through like a cinematic experience in many ways, in that there are no breaks for loading screens and few breaks for cut scenes. Therefore, in most instances, the best way to tell if you are bridging from one sequence to the next would be if there was a change in the background audio (Collins 132). As you approached a combat scene the music would gradually rise until it is eventually playing a very dramatic symphony as you engage in a fight for your life against a horde of zombies. Then provided you either kill everything that moves in the area or you sneak past them, the music will quickly fade out and return to the ambient noise of your environment, letting you know the time of danger has passed. Relying on this did result in me falling for several jump scares, but it holds true for the large majority of the game. In conclusion, given that audio is one of the only two senses you utilize in a game, I am amazed at how often I underappreciated and took for granted the in-game audio, especially in stealth games such as the Last of Us.
Works Cited
Karen Collins, “Gameplay, Genre, and the Functions of Game Audio” from Game Sound (2008), pp. 123-137
Source: Can you hear me now?