Ellie扮演者:Ashley Johnson
TLoU主创:Bruce Straley
TLoU主创:Neil Druckmann
EDGE: Let’s talk about the very last exchange in the game between Joel and Ellie. Story-driven games have notorious difficulty with figuring out how to drop the curtain in a satisfying way, yet The Last Of Us strikes just the right balance between conclusiveness and ambiguity. Ashley, as the actor bringing Ellie to life, what did you think when you read those pages of the script for the first time?
EDGE:让我们来谈谈游戏最后那场Joel和Ellie的交流吧,故事驱动的游戏在想圆满落下帷幕方面是出了名的难,但The Last of Us很好的平衡了结论性和歧义性。Ashley,你作为给Ellie带来生命的人,你第一次读到这些对白时你是怎么想的?
Ashley Johnson: It’s funny because that ending, everybody’s interpreted it so differently. In my mind, Joel and Ellie have already gone on this whole journey and Ellie is fully prepared – if finding the cure and getting the cure means dying – then so be it. But finally having a connection and a relationship with somebody, that becomes more important because it’s like, I’ve finally connected with somebody in this world. If your choice is to save me over everybody else in the world then…ok. I trust you now and let’s live life.
BS: I like that it can be read different ways. Like we were talking about earlier with the title, just with the two little syllables of Ellie’s “ok” to Joel, depending on where your head space is when you get there and how committed you are toward Joel and his goals, how aligned you are with who he is versus how much you’re committed to Ellie and what her perspective is, that commitment that she had. She was ready, to the ends of the earth, whatever it’s going to take, we were going to do it. It could really be read in several different ways, and it is open-ended and it is a somewhat ironic ending. It’s not your typical ending, but it’s still a nice resolution to me. It has a nice finality of, ok, all right.
Bruce Straley:我喜欢结局被不同方式解读,如我们早先谈到的一样,Ellie最后给Joel的台词就只有2个音节“ok”,这就取决于身临此景的玩家你怎么思考了,取决于你对Joel和他的目标有多坚定,取决于你如何衡量“Joel是什么样的人”和“你对Ellie有多坚定以及她对她所承担的任务的观点”。她准备好了:就算到世界尽头,无论会夺走什么,我们都要做。这个结局真的可以不同方式解读,它是一个开放性结局,也是一个略带讽刺意味的结局。它不是一个你心目中传统典型的结局,但对我来说它是个非常不错的解决方案,它是一个好尾声。
ND: Some people read it as, oh, they left it open for a sequel – cool! And what we’re saying is, if we never make a sequel, that’ll be alright. In our mind the journey has been wrapped up.
Neil Druckmann: 有些玩家把这个结局看作是“哦,他们这是留着给续集用,好极了!” 其实我们想说的是,如果我们不出续集,这结局也没问题。在我们看来,这段旅程已经收尾了。
---06.27更新后半译文---
EDGE:In a podcast we were listening to recently, there was a discussion about when it’s ok and even prudent for parents to lie to their children because there’s an aspect of life that they’re not yet mature enough to process. Yet Ellie is too savvy to be persuaded by Joel’s denial in those final moments. She clearly knows what the score is and why she was important.
ND: We were talking about this between ourselves yesterday. Ellie’s got a good bullshit detector, which is why she knows something is up with David from the moment she meets him. She doesn’t know what, but she knows there’s something off.
You were asking earlier why I thought the game would be polarising. There are people who hate the ending with a passion. Because we have focus tests toward the end of production and we do these exit interviews, and there are people who have said, ‘I love the game, love the mechanics, love the combat, but you’ve gotta fix the ending, you really have to fix the ending.’
BS: Yeah, just wanted [Joel and Ellie] to save the day.
ND: I think the most painful comment from a focus tester was, ‘Because she kind of reminds him of his daughter, he’s going to sacrifice mankind? Whatever.’
AJ: But not everybody’s going to be satisfied with an ending.
ND: I’d rather people be passionate about it either way than shrug and say, yeah that was good.
BS: But it’s different, even from a movie, right? You’re so invested because it’s you with the controller pushing this thing forward. You get to that point and there’s an identity that you relate to Joel and Ellie, and I think in stereotypical games, the ending would be, everything’s good, we saved the day and everybody’s happy, and we’re all, yay, awesome! But this is two flawed characters in an ambiguous situation, the world is a dark world, hard choices have had to be made.
ND: The journey was kind of for nothing, but at the same time it was for everything.
BS: Yeah, this beautiful relationship has been formed and these characters have completely changed. Ellie’s completely capable and both characters have completed an arc. It’s an interesting thing that it’s different, but not intentionally trying to be different.
ND: The original ending that for a long time we discussed is Ellie would believe the lie and you’d see them walking off to Tommy’s town and the camera would track up and you’d feel like, they’re going to be ok. It was about a week before we shot that scene and we thought, this isn’t honest, this doesn’t feel right, Ellie would know, I don’t buy it, we have to change this.
This is an Ashley thing but no matter what the acting direction is, she’s going to nod her head and be like, ‘ok…ok’. And throughout shooting, a lot of her improvisation for Ellie involved saying, ‘ok’. And I thought, you have to end on that. Whatever it is Joel tells her, she has to just be like, ‘ok’.
EDGE:So Ashley, when you’d say that to Neil, you weren’t being glib, it really was a matter of trusting his direction. Is that the same feeling you wanted Ellie to communicate to Joel?
AJ: That’s how I was playing it. Obviously she has a bullshit detector, she clearly knows he’s lying, but she says, alright, let’s see where this goes.
ND: And it’s also like, how do you approach that? Would she start asking very detailed questions? Why would they release me before I woke up? Why wouldn’t I talk to someone before leaving? Was Marlene there? No, she would just ask the one obvious question: are you lying?