It forever changed: The assumption that games don't have a 'Citizen Kane' title. Let's be clear, video games don't have or need a 'Citizen Kane title' to be championed in the same way as Orson Welles' masterpiece, they can get by on their own merits in terms of game design, player agency, world-interaction, art-aesthetic and the feel of being involved in controlling the experience itself. The point being; the things that make something like Citizen Kane so incredible are intrinsic to film design, and aside from comparing emotional weight or film-direction versus cutscenes, there's not a whole lot you can match-up when it comes to effectiveness. In saying all of that, if we're then talking about a game that revolutionised the very idea of inhabiting a character, feeling every beat of one of the most important times of their life, making some incredibly tough, intense decisions and completely understanding a set of fictional motivations delivered through character models and animation, Last of Us is that game. Effortlessly delivering on cinematic conventions in cutscenes wouldn't be worth anything if you didn't spend hours in the company of both Joel and Ellie in between, and their cumulative finale is one of character fulfilment, eventually ending on one of the most debated final shots you'll ever see. Games don't have a Citizen Kane moment, but give it another 60-odd years and other mediums can look to 'having a Last of Us scene' as suitable influence.
