Conflict photographer Ashley Gilbertson took a tour through the world of The Last Of Us: Remastered and snapped some amazing pictures while in the game's Photo Mode. Those beautiful snapshots came at a price though - Gilbertson, a person who has seen actual war, had to call in someone else to help him play.
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After playing the game at home for a short time, Gilbertson went into the office and let co-worker Josh Raab play it for him, while he busied himself with planning the Photo Mode. Gilbertson was immediately struck by how amazing and photoreal The Last Of Us: Remastered looked. Although, he finds it realistic and fake at the same time: "None of the game's characters show distress, and that to me was bizarre - it's a post-apocalyptic scenario, with a few remaining humans fighting for the survival of their race! To be successful, a player must be the perpetrator of extreme, and highly graphic, violence. I'm interested in a more emotionally engaged type of photography, where the human reaction to a scene is what brings a story to life. That was tough inside this game. Occasionally the characters show anger, though generally they're nonchalant about the situation they've found themselves in. In the end, their emotions mimicked that of the zombies they were killing."
Because he could play around with all the settings, pause the game, etc. (all factors that definitely do not happen in combat situations), he found he had to change up his style: "It wasn't hard to make images that recalled posters for a war film, or that might be used in an advertising campaign for the game itself. It was too clean. The last thing I wanted to do was to advertise the game, so I tried to mess with the photos a little. Put unimportant information in the foreground. Tilt the camera. Pull back too wide. I needed to make the shots imperfect because, I believe, imperfections make photography human. In advertising things look perfect. In journalism, there's always something off. What some people see as visual weaknesses in our work, I see as part of our tableau."
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Read the whole piece over at TIME - it's quite a rewarding and thought-provoking read for gamers like myself (and perhaps you?) who have killed thousands, if not millions, over our gaming careers and do not blink at it. A person who's seen real-life death and destruction's reaction to something we all take for granted is a valuable thing to take into account, no?
