An Emotional Masterpiece: The Last Of Us

Intro: In the beginning, everything was light, then darkness came and said, “you will know me, you will fear me, and then I will be your friend.” The Last of Us is a riveting and heartbreaking tale of Joel and Ellie on their search for the Fireflies, a militia group who are going to use Ellie in their quest to help humanity, or so it seems. Ellie, a young girl who is immune to the fungal infection affecting the masses teaches us that making logical tough decisions requires an emotional lens and a somewhat detached heart.

Kill To Survive: The last of us is a game that challenges you to emotionally and mentally take apart everything you know about how stories work in video games and makes you look at the game through this new psychologically based lens. All these characters mean something and are there for a reason. Whether it’s to tech you a lesson or bring emotional strife there is no character that does not carry weight and consequence in this game. To survive in The Last of Us you need to kill. Pure and simple. Killing creates a food chain; the higher you are on that chain the more likely you are to survive. Meeting Ellie in this abandoned world, one would think it brings about this idea that you have to be softer and not as harsh when around her because she is a child. When in fact this idea is spun around and put on its head. Ellie is just as violent as the next person trying to survive, if not more so at times.

What We Call Trauma, They Call Surviving: In the last of us there are instances that are riddled with trauma ridden moments. Ellie never being in the woods and experiencing things that most children her age already experience, Ellie killing someone (that wasn’t infected), Joel losing his daughter, Tess turning and facing her own mortality the list goes on. Within the factions of The Last of Us, there are different kinds of survival, passive, manipulative and animalistic. Each one different but the common goal in the end is to be the one alive and to be at the top of that food chain. In reality and in the 21st century survival for some isn’t a question. We don’t have to kill to eat or hunt our food or fight off a horde of clickers. So, this game puts a realistic stance on what it would be like if “all shit hit the fan” we wouldn’t know what to do and most likely we would be truly afraid of what were to come next. What The Last of Us does is it makes us choose the things that we don’t want to, it forces us to make a choice when normally the game automatically makes the tough choice for, you Naughty Dog wants you to experience the consequences of your actions.

What Would You Do? If you were given the choice, would you let the firefly’s take Ellie and make a cure since she is immune, or would you do what Joel did and take her away and “save her”. For me personally, it's an easy choice and one that is not the common belief with this game. I wouldn’t save her. If you think about it from two sides, there could be a logical explanation as to why saving Ellie is a terrible idea. First off, Ellie is unique in the fact that she has a mutated form of the virus in her brain, these cells and growths can be used to create a workable vaccine that would be out to the public in a year. The COVID Vaccination was out in eight months so it’s possible. Secondly, Ellie wouldn’t have died for nothing, she never had a lonely life. It was a difficult on her that’s for certain, but never lonely. She always had people who cared about her and for her there for she would have been dying not from a clicker, or a hunter or anything that would have been a negative, she would be dying for a positive, something that could have helped humanity in a way that only she alone could have helped.

Final Thoughts: The Last of Us is one of the most well thought out, well written stories and developed games I have ever had the pleasure to play. While challenging the player, it makes them think, grieve and process in the same way those in the game do. The controls are smooth, and the experience is flawless. If you like psychological horror games that deal with a post-apocalyptic world that challenge you, then this is the game for you.