Someone on my Twitter feed wrote that if the game is half as good as this episode, then he would finally try playing some games, ouch.

I will never forget that day when I finished playing TLoU 2. I was broken. It was too dark. Too heavy. Too hopeless. That last scene will be forever carved in the back of my mind. I remember vividly every single frame. I can see their faces. Hurt. Hurting. Again and again. These characters I learnt to appreciate, to like, and to be. I didn’t want them to fight. I tried to stop them, but I couldn’t. I was a puppet, directed by the hand of fate in a Tolstoy’s book. No matter what I wanted and tried to do, the result would have been the same.

I was sad.

I wasn’t well. I didn’t feel well. I had to recover from it, so I played Marvel’s The Avengers and Animal Crossing for a while after it. I needed something colourful and cheerful, with a happy ending or just being happy. I can’t play TLoU 2 ever again. It is a masterpiece. It created so much emotion. It is amazing.

But does it have to be a video game?

HBO’s adaptation gave me some clues. What a show. Not only it respects the core of the original piece, but it also brings new aspects to it. The acting is incredible. The chemistry between Joel and Ellie and their love for each other can be felt through those lenses, across the internet, traversing my OLED, and transpiercing my heart. The cinematography is at the standards of any good HBO production. I can pause any episode randomly; that image would be good enough to be printed and framed. The score, the audio ambience, everything is well done, well balanced, to accompany the show, helping to tell a wonderful story.

And then, that third episode. My partner Sam texted me, calling it one of the best moments on television. My friend Thanh couldn’t stop expressing his adoration on Twitter. I was in my Eames, balancing two contrasting emotions. I was moved by Peter Hoar and Craig Mazin's fantastic work. And at the same time, I was a bit upset because this proved that cinema is superior to video games. If games keep following the current AAA model.

Games have looked at the cinema, specifically Hollywood, for three decades as the ultimate challenge. I recall the first time I read about 3DFX and the promise of “realism”. Tomb Raider was everywhere and was all about bringing cinematic experiences to gamers. What my friends and I used to call “presentation” or “introduction” became “cinematics” or “cut scenes”, and put on a pedestal. The ultimate reward. The message was: if you play well enough, only then, you deserve that video.

I remember when Shenmue came out and how game critics criticised the invention of QTE, saying it was lazy, not really a game, but closer to an interactive movie. And then, about six years later, Fahrenheit took those mechanics even further, making the game even more movie-like. Decades later, QTE is so democratised we don’t even think about it anymore, so much so that in the last God of War, we can even eliminate the timing aspect of it. And watch a video.

Games became better looking. No, more precisely: more realistic. No, even more precisely: photo-realistic. Back in 1998, we discussed how those marines reacted and behaved. We dreamt of amazing NPC and the era of AI where those giant god-animals could have a real personality, maybe even a soul. Even a few years before, the immersive sims genre shocked the entire system, and we thought it would be the beginning of the era of player agency. The GPU would bring the computational power to realise all our dreams.

No. None of it really happened. Or at least they were all shadowed by the main focus: visual rendering. More triangles, more frames, more lights, more visual effects and better fidelity. Everyone puts all their effort into achieving the ultimate goal: photo-realism and cinematographic experience. The modern AAA.

And it worked. We reached that peak. Games are now so cinematographic that they can be translated, almost point-to-point, into a movie. “It is like watching a movie”. Yes, it is exactly like watching a movie. And guess what? Now, you can literally “just” watch the movie.

What’s the point of playing games, then? What’s the point of AAA?

I believe movies started to really become interesting when they took their distance from live performances. In the beginning, it was “just” filming a theatre. In the beginning, it was “just” to transcribe, as close as possible, the experience of a play. And then, it became something else. It started to do what a play couldn’t. And it became something interesting.

I believe video games become interesting when they detach themselves from movies. When they offer something else. Maybe something so different that if we try to turn them into movies, it won’t make any sense.

I went to the office. It was a clear day. We bought a few PS5 games for people to enjoy after work. I looked at the bluray case of The Last of Us Remake. I haven’t played it; I only finished the PS4 version of it. Maybe I should try? What for, though? I already know everything about it. The only thing new is it looks “more realistic”. And I watch the show; the remake cannot be that realistic. So, is that it? Those linear games are doomed to be always capped by Hollywood, and the AAA game is basically just a feature of the real product, the HBO show?

Then I talked to Sam again. He plays the game while watching the show. He started to play it in easy. Quickly, he changed it to hard. Because he wants to feel what it is to be Joel and Ellie. If it is too easy, it doesn't feel right. It must be hard. It has to be visceral. It has to take time.

I finished watching the show. That last episode was almost identical to the game. And it was good. It was probably even great. But something was missing. I didn’t feel that strong emotional attachment to the characters I felt playing the game. I like the actors and how they depict the characters. But it wasn’t that impactful. I didn’t feel connected.

Because it was too fast. It felt rushed. Because it was too easy.

Despite its linearity and how it mimics a movie, The Last of Us still offers something that the show doesn’t, which could be as simple as controlling the pace of the story.

I cared about Ellie because it was hard. I invested my time, my energy and put effort into helping her. Same for Joel. I didn’t just watch them struggle; we went through hell together.

Even though everything was written. Even though I followed a straight line, I was the one who moved forward. Who pushed that key. And that alone makes video games special.