7. “The tests just keep getting harder and harder, don’t they?”
Now here’s a moment that you could easily miss if you don’t explore the game’s environments thoroughly. In the final stage of the game, in the Firefly hospital, you’ll have the opportunity to pick up a few of Marlene’s own audio logs that are scattered around the area. These provide you with some insight into her own feelings about the idea of sacrificing Ellie for a chance to engineer a vaccine.
In these audio logs, she apologizes to Anna, Ellie’s mother, and voices her frustration and sorrow at the very notion of killing off a young girl just to save mankind. At the end of one of the audio logs, she releases a tired sigh and whispers: “The tests just keep getting harder and harder, don’t they?” and she shuts off the recording. Not enough credit is given to Marlene as a character and there just aren’t enough players who really appreciate the conflicts she goes through in the story. I think it would’ve been a lot more interesting if Joel actually reacted to these audio logs as he found them.
