The (Really) Great about The Last of Us

This entry is a giant sack of spoilers for The Last of Us. Do not read it unless you’ve played the game.

Since finishing The Last of Us, I find myself wanting to talk about all the amazing aspects of the story with anyone who’ll listen. Because so few of my friends have actually played and finished the game, I’ll take it all out on you. I know that in my review, I complained about the combat, what is essentially the game, and I did something very similar for Bioshock Infinite. In general, I think it’s a shame when gameplay doesn’t marry up to skillful writing, even if it might technically be well-executed, and I find myself at a loss to come up with why that is: laziness, checking a box, fulfilling a demand, or a combination thereon. I’ll give more credit to The Last of Us in this regard if only because the writers left no story element wasted. The backdrop of racism, xenophobia, and religious zeal in Bioshock Infinite was just that, and it ultimately served little purpose against the crux of the main characters’ stories.

Initially, I find it commendable that The Last of Us borrowed a page from The Walking Dead property as a whole and focused squarely on people instead of “zombies.” The outbreak of infection happened, it terrorized the world, and the plot hones in on people dealing with it as opposed to a scenario where droves of infected must continuously be thwarted in their paths. I also like that the player is forced to confront other people who are also trying to survive but are more aggressive about their efforts. Ultimately, by creating throwaway characters, such as the infected, a light is shone on the nature of man itself. It’s easy to speculate about how one would act in a similar situation, but like life, the game sometimes doesn't offer a lot of choice. (Of course, I just wish I got more of “survival lite” on the Easy campaign.)

The Last of Us also managed to treat a variety of subjects on a more mature level than the bulk of video games ever attempt. For one, the writers’ treatment of gay and black people is the best I've seen, period. After Joel concludes that he and Ellie need a vehicle to get to their destination, he decides to find an old “frenemy,” Bill, to assist him. Bill is crotchety and has set up something of a war zone for trespassers. While trying to find a vehicle of use to the pair, he ably tackles foes and uses his mechanical know-how to survive. Along the way, the characters find out that his survival partner, has died, providing for a somber moment when Bill both laments his passing and curses his existence. When Joel and Ellie finally do get on their way, Ellie reveals that she stole some periodicals from Bill, one of which is clearly a gay porn magazine.

Here, in a AAA game, we have a gay character who is tough and useful with little flair for the dramatic and who doesn't get killed by his own melodrama. Moreover, the nature of his sexuality is actually not relevant to his character. The game doesn't stop for the player to balk, “You’re gay?!” Instead, Naughty Dog offers up the implicit. The man Bill finds dead was possibly his lover, but players are not goaded into probing like an insecure teenage jock. Instead, you make of it what you will because the story has many other places to go before it is through. Joel and Ellie find out, but they don’t waste a minute on it.

The black characters, Henry and Sam, are introduced as Joel and Ellie try to evade the bandit tank chasing them down the streets. After a small scuffle, it is revealed that the men have similar goals of finding the Fireflies like Joel and Ellie, and in a snap, they decide to proceed together. Sam is a pre-teen aged like Ellie or below, who has tired of survival. This is not to suggest he wants to die, but he does clearly want to be a kid, evidenced by when he tries to knick a toy from a shop the group passes through.

Henry, his adult brother, is clearly as keen on how to manage this unsavory world as Joel is, and both lead their young partners capably. Although his personal story is not too fleshed out, Henry becomes a quickly likable character while avoiding many of the tropes that lead other black characters in games to just be “other.” He wields a gun upright and doesn't send off foes with a “motherfucker” in an Isaac Hayes-like voice. In fact, he doesn't play the funny guy at all. His hair is natural, but it isn't a kooky afro or corn rows; the writers are smart to realize that styling one’s hair is probably a survivor’s last concern.

It’s important for me to point out that there is nothing inherently wrong with all the things Henry isn't. People of all races run the gamut, occasionally exemplifying stereotypes. However, video games (and media in general) like to convince us that these stereotypes are all black people are and ever will be. They’d have us think that black men are all funny or badasses, and black women are all sassy, but more dangerously, they’d convince us that black people are sidekicks while white people do their thing. The Last of Us, though it does ultimately kill off these two characters, manages to make Henry and Sam whole people who are as capable of being helpful when times call for it as they are at looking out for themselves…like people do. When they die, it is not forgettable, but neither is it martyrdom. Their deaths are just more heavy material for this well-woven tale.

Finally, I’d like to address how well women are treated in The Last of Us, especially Ellie. When Joel’s adventure begins, before he meets Ellie, he is partnered with a woman, Tess. As they traverse the distances of her story arc, she also ably performs as a survivor in the infected environment. In fact, in one scene when they confront someone who betrayed them, Tess acts downright mean and vengeful, showing both strength of will and weakness of human nature – you know, like all people do. She isn't a femme fatale or a mystical being who can’t control herself. Tess is literally just a person trying to live, and her sex is not a commodity worth bartering with other characters or the player to do so.

Ellie’s shining time is during the Winter chapter of the game, which is so amazing and emotionally intense, it just haunts me. Thinking about it overwhelms me with emotion. At the end of the Fall chapter, Joel is severely injured, and Ellie is forced to aid him as the two try to leave East Colorado and continue towards Salt Lake City. But the chapter ends with Joel just falling off their horse, too sick to go on.

The Winter chapter starts with the player controlling Ellie, who appears to be alone, and trying to hunt a deer. As the beginning of this chapter transpires, Ellie gains weapons and shows off knowledge of the same tricks Joel used during the first half of the game. Realistically, her size prevents her from choking grown men to death, but she is still able to use her knife to take them down. It quickly becomes clear that during their journey, Joel has enabled Ellie to survive. And until the plot reveals that Joel is still alive somewhere, the player is given the genuine feeling that the rest of the game might be played through Ellie, something not previously revealed when Naughty Dog talked up the game. It was a nice but scary feeling, not knowing what became of Joel.

Eventually, Ellie is kidnapped by a group of men who either seek to use her body for sexual pleasure or eat her as they have done to others before her. This scenario, my friends, is where The Last of Us does something almost no other game bothers to do. Briefly after she is kidnapped, Joel wakes up in the garage where he has been fighting off infection in the bitter cold. Like any good partner (father figure or otherwise), he seeks Ellie out, leading to scenes  with similar combat and stealth as he’s encountered before, though travel is marred by heavy snowfall. But Ellie does not just sit and wait for her hero, nor does it even seem that she’s considered doing so. Using her wits and her notable feistiness, she escapes her small prison and begins trying to find her way out of the labyrinthine bandit town. At this point in the game, where the player is moved from one character to another, both Joel and Ellie are tasked with surviving the same scenarios with the same weapons and toolsets available to them. Joel and Ellie are equals, despite their age and differences in gender.

But amazingly, that’s not all. Ellie’s trials take a turn for the worst when she gets trapped in a hotel restaurant with her psychotic captor, David, who begins to set fire to the place. He is extremely aggressive and done with treating Ellie with even the faintest shred of tenderness. In something of a boss scenario, Ellie must jump David several times with her knife in the hopes of taking him down. The crescendo is when they are both heavily weakened, but David manages to stand over Ellie as she tries to crawl her way to a weapon to take him down.

In this moment, as he kicks and chides her, the writers forewent the lazy route, that is, having Joel barge in at the last possible moment and take David down as Ellie cowers on the floor. No, the player instead navigates Ellie to an unseen machete, which she uses to cut his leg before kneeling on top of him and stabbing him over and over. It is not until this point that Joel arrives, his only purpose to comfort an enraged Ellie. The fact is that here, Naughty Dog let a young woman fight for her own survival and escape both a sexually and physically threatening event in her life. They did not let the man play the hero. Instead, Ellie triumphs over her own adversity, and the player finally gets the satisfaction of seeing Joel play the father. This scene, Readers, is one of great impact and one of the best I've ever witnessed in a game.

I am thankful for playing The Last of Us. Typical gameplay elements aside, it just features masterful and mature storytelling that we, as gamers, not only craved but needed to get out of the funk of the status quo. It is also delivered straight until the ending, which is both smart and uncomfortable. However, this is not to say that it doesn't still borrow some tried concepts, which I will address in another post.

All images obtained from the official website for The Last of Us.