The Last of Us

Playing the latest game “The Last of Us” was a draining experience. Before the release of the game, I already know what kind of premises the developer Naughty Dog wanted to tread. I have always appreciated and admired Naughty Dog’s work in the video game industry. They are some of the few who wouldn’t want to compromise quality for mass or repetitive production. So when I first heard that they were working on a new IP (intellectual property) I was excited. However, with more information about their latest game “The Last of Us” coming out, I was kind of worry about the game. Or maybe I should I say I was worried about whether I could handle the game.

While I have no gripe against violent video games, I have never felt like I have the need to play them if I don’t want to. I don’t mind violence on fictional entities like zombies and weird monsters that put mankind in jeopardy. I don’t mind taking actions against real baddies in video games either. However, I do not like to play video games that apply violence on other for the fun factor. That is why I never really got into the whole “Grand Theft Auto”, “Saint Row” or “Manhunt” franchises. I just do not believe that one should just run over other people for fun in video games or hunt someone down for fun in video games just because you could. And with the advance of technology, the degree of violence exhibited in video has become more and more graphic. The splashing of blood from your victims has become more realistic.  Also the ways you could torture or dispose of your victims have become more and more “innovative”.

For “The Last of Us” my issue was not with the violence. Sure there is violence in the game. It is about an apocalyptic world caused by a fungal virus so there are zombie-like mutants running around attacking you. I have no problem dealing with them. But what I felt exhausting about was the story and certain decisions you have to make to proceed with the game. Certainly in the past, we can already make decisions and change the storylines in video games and it was fun and interesting because you feel you are in control of the situation. But with “The Last of Us” sometimes moral decisions are required because you are not in control of the situation, and the decisions are about your own survival in this hostile apocalyptic landscape. I still couldn’t get over that at the beginning, in a tutorial way you have to perform certain action against you will to just move on.  Also the game would not shy away to keep reminding you that it is about survival. That is not just about getting ammos for your weapons and such but about how you could out smart other survivors in its world.

I am not complaining about the gameplay or the story itself, it is just that I was torn during the playthrough because I did not feel relaxing and enjoying the game as much. Sure I pushed forward because I did want to know the story and I must say “The Last of Us” has one of the most well told stories in video games and Naughty Dog did raise the benchmark for story telling in this interactive media.  But the question still remains – do I want to exhaust myself playing this game while for me playing games is a means to relax and enjoy my leisure time? I have never felt that torn about a game before “The Last of Us” and this game actually did it.

I have to congratulate Naughty Dog for putting out such a piece of engaging work, but I personally do not know whether I could go through another game as such. I liked the “Uncharted” series, also by Naughty Dog, and I had huge admiration in what they were trying to achieve. I just do not know if they put out another game similar to “The Last of Us” whether I would want to go through that ordeal again. Surely I am always looking out for great gaming experience, but how much would I like to put myself through one moral decision after another as interactive as those in “The Last of Us” is another question. Maybe I just sound like a cry baby because after all they are just polygons on the TV. But “The Last of Us” did make me look at video games in a different light.

I do want to move on from candy games such as “Final Fantasy” or Mario, but how well I am prepared for such engaging and exhausting experience, I do not know. Maybe I should in the meantime check out the new “Animal Crossing” so that I could wind down by talking to Hambo and other town folks before coming back to another session of “The Last of Us”.

Who Do We Think We Are?

Had an interesting conversation with mum the other day. I told her I read an article about how some badly behaving Chinese tourists overseas actually became a threat to China’s image internationally. She was pretty fired up with that too being a person who needs to deal with the bullish behaviours of some of these tourists in Hong Kong day in day out. I have elaborated on that in my other article titled “One Country Two People”. However the most interesting part was not this. It was about the source that I got this information from.

When I told her that I got the article from a friend of mine who is not Chinese, she felt really offended. I was bemused by her reaction as I personally did not see any problem with this at all. Her view was that no matter how bad Chinese are behaving overseas, it is a Chinese matter and she does not need a foreign person to tell her. This, according to her is disrespectful and intruding. I told her that I don’t really mind. For me if my people are behaving badly, I would want to know, disregarding the source. Then the most interesting response came through – mum said I did not think this is an issue because I don’t see myself as a Chinese and I think that I am better than others. I was quite astonished by her statement but I couldn’t be bothered to argue as I just simply thought that it is unnecessary. I believe I know who I am and incorrect statements about me from other people are just breezes across the plain, they just come and go.

However, I did think about how we see ourselves. I am genetically Chinese, at least that is what I believe in objectively, but does my view about the whole “Chinese-ism” discount myself as a Chinese in any sense? Mum’s viewpoint was if I don’t care about other people criticising my fellow Chinese I am not Chinese enough. For me, the first thing is, if you don’t want someone to criticise you, don’t do it. Period.  If you did something that warrants criticism, it doesn’t matter where that criticism came from.  Neither should the source of information for you matter.  Putting the whole “Chinese-ism” into the equation was just unnecessary. I felt it absurd that I was branded not Chinese enough simply because I did not mind that it was a local friend who forwarded the information to me.

Having said that, I did think about the differences among Hong Kong Chinese, Macau Chinese, Taiwanese Chinese and Mainland Chinese. We are such a bunch of variety of people that apart from genetically connected, we were socially conditioned in very different ways. I don’t know about other people, but I personally was brought up as a colonial kid. Most of my teachers were expatriates from western countries. I studied Chinese as a language and Chinese History as a discipline. And maybe it comes as a shock to some people, we speak Cantonese in Hong Kong but we write mostly in standard Chinese, which is quite different from our spoken language. So if I am not Chinese enough, that’s probably why. But is that anybody’s fault? Maybe it is history, but then if it is history, we just need to deal with it and admit the difference brought along by it. I am sure that the new generation of Hong Kong Chinese will be different from me now that Hong Kong is part of China again but then that is their business.

This further brought about the issue of how some Chinese parents overseas want their kids to stay “Chinese”. For me an identity is not something that you can externally force onto someone. An identity is something you personally identify with or recognised intuitively. Genetic connection is an objective construct that one can’t shake, but identity is something social and intellectual. At all times these two aspects will need to be balanced by the individual in question. It is not something that some Chinese parents can force on to their kids. They can continue to be these kids’ Tiger Mums and such but at the end of the day it is up to the kids, who need to live their own lives in the society, to find a foothold and identity in the society they are living in. Chinese parents who worried about their kids growing up in Australia would no longer be Chinese because they do not want to learn the language and want to play rugby, are in my opinion, overthinking. They don’t want to learn the language mostly because it is hard (trust me I know) and they could not see the relevance of this language in their lives – most of their friends at school and socially speak English. For me, if they feel the need to learn it, such as for business or career in the future, they would put the hard yards into it.

This also got me to think about the conglomeration of Chinese in certain suburbs. My parents did ask me whether I want to live in the China Town as they have some distance friends there. I told her, if I want to live in the China Town, I would just stay in Hong Kong. For me if I want to live in Australia, I want to integrate and learn about this new country I called home. I have no problem with other Chinese living in the same community as it is quite taunting to live overseas sometimes, and this could be a way to ease into it. But for me if I opt for a new life experience, it has to be a new life experience. Does that make me less Chinese I don’t think so. There was a person whom was an acquaintance I knew through another friend labelling me racist against my own people because I did not want to move to a “Chinese suburb” in Sydney. Obviously we did not stay in touch because there is certainly no need for me to hang out with someone who does not know me at all but would not hesitate making value judgement against my character.

As for who do I think I am, I believe I am the person who I want to be. I would not disregard my genetic built as a Chinese, and I am proud to have that in me. But at the same time I identify myself as an Australian and Hongkongese too. Most importantly, I am someone who is decent and caring to myself and other people, and someone who would not intentionally cause harm to others and the society. I personally think this is a lot more important than many other things.

Hindsight

Recent events have got me thinking about all things hindsight. Coincidentally, at a recent catch up a few friends were discussing about whether we would want to know what the future holds by going to a psychic and thus avoiding having those hindsight moments. I personally have never been to a psychic. I am a big advocate about let things unfolding “naturally”. I remain to think that life is interesting because of the uncertainty ahead. Of course those kinds of sentiments don’t necessarily be shared by everyone. Besides my palm lines are so messy that probably it already predicted a messy life for me.

With me apart from preferring to face the unknown to make life more interesting, it is also partly because for my ostrich approach to life too. For me if I don’t know what’s coming ahead I don’t need to deal with them ahead of time. That doesn’t mean that I don’t plan for things, I do, and I believe everyone should. But I don’t want to be in a position that, if something good was predicted and it didn’t happen, I felt disappointed; and if something bad was predicted, I started to get worried before it even arrives. I know, maybe in that sense I am not a very future friendly person?

Nonetheless, there are times that I did think “If I had known, I would have approached it in a different way”. That applies to a few recent events around me. As I discussed this over the weekend with a few friends, we all felt that sometimes it is good to know the future. This is especially true when we got stuck in a situation that we thought there is no way out. In such situation, we would just be dying to know when the light to the end of the tunnel would come. And mostly often, we would be disappointed because there usually is no such luck when we feel stuck. Sometimes I do understand why some people try to choose the easy way out of life under such situations. But I am not going to talk about that.

As for me personally, I usually try to look at options available. A lot of time there are options, but then we were so clouded with what is happening before us that sometimes we just don’t see it. For example, one of the things I hate most is office politics. I always maintain work itself is straightforward, but then as long as you are working in a group environment, you bound to get yourself dragged into some stupid office politics at some point. I personally believe that while you cannot stop office politics coming to you, you can always choose how to play it or simply not to play it at all. Your options depend on what strategic position in the office you are of course. But I have been in situations that  I decided to play dirty and win (which I did) and at the same time I have been in situations that I simply decided not to play at all because I did not want to give those people the satisfaction of me participating. Those people might think that I threw the towel and lose but indeed for me that was not the situation. I just created an illusion that they won.

Of course if I had known these things were coming towards me ahead of time, I would have adopted different approaches or even get me more prepared. This is when I have that “on the hindsight” moment.  However, hindsight would not be hindsight if we already knew ahead of time. For me, if we actually have that hindsight moment, that means we did learn something out of that situation, which personally I think is a positive outcome we got out of it. We might not need to apply the knowledge we learnt from this hindsight (and sometimes hopefully not need to) but then this knowledge would be available for our disposal in the future if similar situations occurred again. Which, personally I think hindsight is useful in that sense.

I don’t know how many more of those hindsight moments I would have in my life. But then I strongly believe that no matter what was thrown at me that would trigger those hindsight moments, I would emerge stronger and more resilient