The Last of Us Retrospective

Introduction

Art is difficult to objectively critique. If you sit on a new bench and it buckles under your weight and sends you tumbling to the ground then it’s a bad bench. If you’ve owned a blender for years and years and it still chops up food like it did on day one that’s a great blender. But how can one go about discerning whether a work of art whether it be a movie, piece of music, painting, sculpture, or literary work is definitively good or bad? You can’t. 

There is no objective measure by which one can state the quality of these kinds of experiences. So then what’s the point in reviews? Obviously that’s a hotly debated topic but personally I’d say the job of a reviewer isn’t to say that their word is law and everyone should agree with their tastes, but rather to say to whom a certain work might appeal. If they give a rating at the end it can be used to create a pattern for that particular reviewer to see if your tastes align with theirs and if so, you may find their subjective opinion useful in addition to their critique.

Video games are stuck in a weird middle ground though. While asking a reviewer to decide on the entertainment value of a certain mechanic or storyline will always involve some form of subjectivity, there are other things with a less fluid sense of good and bad. Input delay, graphical glitches, error codes, they’re all present in games and much more important to the overall experience than say, a missed note might be in a song.

So can I objectively say with one hundred percent confidence that The Last of Us is one of the greatest games of all time? Absolutely not, but over the course of the next hour or so I intend to do my damnedest to convince you that it is because to me, The Last of Us is the pinnacle of what video games could achieve at its time of release.

Incredible storytelling and character development, beautiful art design with impressive graphical fidelity to back it up, a subtle score that perfectly accents every scene, engaging gameplay with a bevy of options, and the ability to tie all of these elements together into a final product that’s so much more than the sum of these parts- The Last of Us is a masterpiece.

I first played the game back in college when it released and ever since it’s been one of my favorites. It’s an incredibly moving experience and still has me thinking about how it makes me feel to this day.

I’ll be covering the entirety of The Last of Us, its Left Behind DLC, and touching on the Factions multiplayer mode in this video, with another video on the second game coming soon. I’ll only be spoiling the first game in this video, but I will be covering everything in depth so if you haven’t tried it out for yourself I cannot overstate how much I recommend doing so before watching this video.

This retrospective is also going to be a bit different than the others as I plan to critique the game sequentially, bringing up different gameplay elements when they’re most relevant. This just seemed to make the most since given how intertwined the story and gameplay are in this series. However, I do still think it’s important to cover the game’s development history first.

Development History

Development of The Last of Us began shortly after the release of Uncharted 2, with Naughty Dog’s team splitting up between the third game and this project, headed by game director Bruce Straley and creative director Neil Druckmann. Originally conceived as a mix of Ico and Night of the Living Dead, with the player switching perspectives between a cop and a young girl he’s trying to protect.

The game slowly took form over time, with inspirations from Sin City, Resident Evil 4, Planet Earth for the infected, and even input from the character actors Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson. The game was centered around the relationship between Joel and Ellie, with the main themes being Ellie’s coming of age, how far Joel was willing to go to protect her, and the overarching mentality that ‘life goes on’.

After 2 years, multiple game engines, new AI techniques, and multiple user interfaces, the game was finally shown off at the Spike Game Awards in 2011 with a trailer showcasing Joel and Ellie taking out some scavengers before dealing with infected. It did a good job of setting the tone, but it was with the E3 2012 gameplay trailer that the hype really got started. Joel and Ellie sneak around an apartment building taking out various enemies while showcasing features like the melee takedowns, holding enemies hostage, and stellar graphics for the time. 

Some have said this trailer is misleading, with certain aspects like the cinematic grappling to steal weapons, AI hiding behind corners to ambush, and enemies begging for their lives not present in the final game during dynamic gameplay encounters, but it’s clear that Naughty Dog likely intended to add these features, but probably either ran out of time or were unable to achieve them on the PS3, with some of them being included in the sequel, plus it’s a trailer from alpha, so it gets a pass on having differences from the final product.

The game released a year and a half after its debut on June 14th, 2013. It received pretty much universal acclaim, ending at a 95 on Metacritic and getting its fair share of perfect scores as well. The visuals, story, music, character interactions, performances, and more were lauded by critics and fans alike and it went on to win a number of awards at various events.

From there the game went on to receive a DLC prequel, a full documentary covering its development, a comic with Dark Horse Comics, a PS4 remaster, a rumored film adaptation, and a current television adaptation in the works at HBO. It also inspired future games such as A Plague Tale, God of War 2018, and even Naughty Dog’s own Uncharted 4. 

However, with time and future releases, come nit picks and criticisms. With analyses, critiques, and articles being written for years after the game’s release calling it out for various reasons. The gameplay isn’t engaging, the scavenging is too repetitive, the story uses too many cliches, when you give a game this much hype and more people start to play it with their expectations so high, the flaws and cracks always present themselves more readily, inevitably leading to the one word that always comes up- overrated.

Obviously you already know how I feel and having played the game through for a third time now I’d like to give it an in-depth look to show exactly why the game is deserving of so much praise and take a look at which areas could be improved. So with that, let’s jump in.    

Upon booting up the game players are presented with a dark room bathed in sunlight from a dirty window covered in overgrown foliage. A gentle breeze occasionally blows the curtains (with the graphics being quite impressive for the time) and it’s all accompanied by the sound of light strings and a gentle yet foreboding guitar. I have never seen something as simple as a title screen convey the tone of the game as well as this. I won’t go full english teacher and over-analyze everything, but I wanted to point out how much attention was paid to even the smallest details.

The options are really robust as well. While the audio, control, and display options are pretty standard, the game also allows players to modify many aspects of the difficulty settings, with higher difficulties even taking away options like the x-ray granted from listen mode or removing the HUD entirely in addition to modifying enemy AI, increasing the rarity of supplies, lowering player health and more. It’s really obvious that Naughty Dog wanted this game to be as accessible as possible, even if it is a bit annoying that they don’t explain the difficulty options when starting a new game.

Seeing as how I already beat the game before, I recorded my playthrough at a variety of difficulty settings, switching between them on the fly at the start of various encounters. I won’t go into every difference, but later on I’ll discuss some of the ways Survivor and Grounded difficulty can really switch up the experience.

The Last of Us

The game opens on a young girl sleeping on a couch when her dad comes home from work. He’s talking to his brother Tommy on the phone about possibly losing his job when his daughter wakes up. We learn their names are Joel and Sarah and she presents him with a watch as a birthday gift, joking that she paid for it with drug money.

He teases her by pretending the watch is broken and later that night carries her up to bed. I love this cute little interaction because it perfectly sets up Joel and Sarah’s dynamic. He’s a hard working single father, a jokester, and is doing his best to make ends meet and she’s understanding of that, caring, and playful. It’s amazing how much character the writers were able to put into this small intro scene.

Sarah wakes up in the middle of the night and answers the phone to hear her uncle Tommy telling her to get Joel on the phone before the line dies. There are a few objects for players to interact with as they make their way to Joel’s room, where a large explosion downtown can be seen from the window or on the live TV.

She makes her way downstairs as Joel bursts inside, quickly loading his gun before their crazed neighbor breaks in and Joel shoots him dead. Sarah’s horrified, but Joel gets her to head outside where Tommy’s waiting for them. They make their way out of town, trying to make sense of the situation with the player able to move Sarah around the car to see the various bits of destruction around the environment. Infected running around, a burning barn, and even a family looking for help that Joel convinces Tommy to ignore. It all sets the chaotic scene very well and really emphasizes the feeling of helplessness playing the role of a little kid in the backseat, a feeling I’m sure many can relate to.
    Traffic blocks their way out of the city and some infected descend on the trapped cars. Tommy attempts to go around, but they get t-boned by a truck as the screen goes black. We wake up in Joel’s perspective, kicking out a window before being saved from an infected by Tommy and picking up an injured Sarah to run from the hoard.

The group reaches a bar where Tommy holds a door shut to allow Joel and Sarah to escape. They soon come upon a soldier and while Joel thinks they’re saved, the man instead raises his gun and shoots them both before Tommy stops him and Sarah dies in Joel’s arms.

This is the most incredible opening to a video game I’ve ever experienced. The instantly charming characters, ridiculously fast pace, and heartbreaking tragedy all combine to essentially be the gaming equivalent of the prologue to Pixar’s Up. There isn’t a lot to do gameplay-wise, but it does give players a chance to learn the very basics of movement before hopping in. Most importantly, this introduction gives players two very important pieces of information- the reason Joel puts up so many walls and doesn’t trust others and the tone going forward.

As the opening credits roll, we’re given snippets of radio broadcasts detailing major events during the outbreak. The virus spreading quickly around the world, the US government starting a program called FEDRA to impose martial law, and a resistance group called the fireflies opposing their tyranny.

    Cut to 20 years later. Joel’s visibly older, gizzled, and woken up by a knock at the door. His friend Tess comes in with a wound saying she got jumped by thugs sent by a guy named Robert before beating them up. It turns out Joel’s become a weapons smuggler living in the Boston quarantine zone over the past two decades, trading guns for ration vouchers, and Robert stole some of those guns.

    He agrees to go with Tess to hunt Robert down and as we follow her out of the apartment we see the dystopian nightmare that is the FEDRA QZ. Anyone suspected of being infected is executed in the street, rations are sparse, the city’s completely run down, and different areas are closed off without a special reason to travel between them. 

Tess gives Joel a pass to get to Robert’s zone, but just as they’re about to reach the gate a truck is blown up in a firefly attack, forcing the two to use a secret underground passageway to get through. On their way they learn from others that Marlene, the leader of the fireflies, is also hunting Robert.

They soon encounter some spores and a man with a broken gas mask trapped under some rubble, begging to be put down before becoming infected. It’s a brutal way to get the player to test out the shooting mechanics, but an effective and understandable one while also explaining that these spores are what caused the infection.

Up next is the first encounter with infected. They’re crazed, hyper-aggressive people with just enough humanity to be pitiable, but disfigured enough to be terrifying. The game tries to get players to grab one from behind in order to strangle it and have a stealth section, but the prompt never showed up for me so Joel just kinda gave the guy a hug before letting him go and starting a boxing match. Kind of annoying, but I checked a playthrough on YouTube and the prompt does normally show up so I’m betting it was just a small glitch.

Melee combat has a lot of upsides and downsides. As a plus it saves ammo and looks really cool, with some brutal finishers that sometimes even take the environment into account. On the downside it makes noise that alerts other enemies and leaves you vulnerable to being swarmed. It’s always good when a game can balance out pros and cons like this, even if the combat can be a bit clunky with some hits going through characters instead of connecting as you’d expect.

Eventually they reach the black market where Tess pays for information on Robert’s whereabouts before encountering a few of his men. One threatens her so she kills him, initiating our first fire fight of the game. It’s pretty standard- showing how a partner can cover for you when fighting, providing clear, useful hiding spots, and only having two enemies, so it makes for a solid tutorial.

Although I did notice one problem that tends to pop up every now and again. See the game has a slight aim assist that sends the player’s aiming reticle towards a target if they’re looking at them before aiming. It’s a common feature in console third-person shooters to compensate for the lack of precision that would be present with a mouse. 

Unfortunately it can occasionally cause the player to focus on the wrong target if two are near one another. It’s a rare problem that can mostly be avoided when the player becomes more familiar with the controls, but it did end up causing me to get a little disoriented every now and again.

They find more of Robert’s men, but this time the game encourages stealth as opposed to combat. It also lets the player know that they can drag grappled opponents for a bit before strangling them. It can be really helpful, but there was no reason to use that technique here. I mean two of these guys just continue their casual conversation while staring at a wall, practically begging to be strangled like a repressed catholic girl on her wedding night so I’ll just talk about hostages later.

The game also introduces the shiv and melee weapon mechanics. Shivs are single-use items that can be crafted from collected materials and used to instantly kill enemies and avoid the slow strangling animation while pipes, bats, and wooden planks found around the environment can be used in melee combat to speed up the process of killing nearby enemies. Each of them has a limited number of uses and while I do question how lead pipes or axes lose their ability to be used as an effective weapon, it keeps the combat engaging and tense without ever becoming annoying since melee combat is usually a last resort.

The next two areas are where The Last of Us introduces its bread and butter of encounters- open areas with guards patrolling that need to be taken out and maneuvered around, with a failure of stealth causing a fire fight to break out. The best thing this game has going for it is that stealth and combat are equally enjoyable. The shooting mechanics are fantastic and satisfying, especially when the headshot marker pops up on the reticle and a motherfucker just… drops.

On the other hand the stealth is just as fun. Hiding from enemies is nerve-racking and constantly engaging, forcing players to make tough decisions on the fly. And there’s nothing better in this game than taking out a room full of guards without getting caught, with the excellent sound design coming in clutch by warning the player with a low hum when they’ve almost been spotted while also being freaky enough to build tension.

More importantly the transition between the two gameplay styles is where everything comes together. Resources are scarce, so the proposition of a shootout is threatening and since enemies are so aggressive, it makes getting caught this balls to the wall moment where you instantly start shooting the place up or bash a guy’s head in with a wooden plank before finding cover and either retreating until enemies go back to their rounds or popping out to give them a taste of lead. A perfectly balanced back and forth that only gets more engaging with different scenarios and an expanded arsenal in the future.

After passing through the docks the two reach Robert who fires at them before running away. There’s a quick chase sequence showing off the ability to jump over obstacles and smash through doors before they catch up and Tess holds him at gunpoint. He says that he sold their guns to the fireflies, but offers to go with them to take out the remaining rebels and get them back before Tess shoots him dead.

She and Joel discuss how they’re going to convince the fireflies to give them their guns back when an injured Marlene shows up out of the shadows. She refuses to return their guns, but says she’ll offer them as payment along with more if they agree to a smuggling job.

    They agree and follow Marlene to a rooftop where we see fireflies blowing up a building. Afterwards we have another encounter with FEDRA soldiers where I actually used the hostage ability. After sneaking up on someone or beating them down, Joel can grab an enemy to use as a shield until they break free, allowing him to take out his pistol and shoot as you see here. In those last ditch effort moments it can be a great way to take out a few enemies before finding cover for the shootout.

    Marlene leads the smugglers to their package- a young girl named Ellie, who needs to get to the state capitol building. They’re hesitant, but agree to have Joel look after Ellie while Marlene takes Tess to look at the guns. On their way to the safe room Ellie tries to start a conversation, but Joel’s closed off. We learn that she’s 14 and her parents are dead, with her finding Marlene by luck. They reach the shelter and Joel falls asleep.

    That night, he wakes up from a nightmare and Ellie expresses her fascination with leaving the quarantine zone for the first time. Tess enters and says they’re good to go, with Marlene on the road to recovery. After a jaunt through some more secret tunnels, the group is ambushed by soldiers who use a device to check if they’re infected, but just as they’re about to check Ellie she stabs one in the knee, allowing the adults to take them both out.

    Ellie’s clearly unnerved by this, thinking that they were just going to capture the soldiers or knock them out. I love this because it really shows how Ellie is between those innocent years of childhood and adolescence, but the stabbing is indicative of her growing up in such a harsh world at the military boarding school. It’s little lines like this that really cement this game’s character development as some of the best in the industry.

Joel and Tess discover that Ellie’s scan came back as positive for infection, but just before they turn on her she reveals that she’s immune. She shows her infection and says it’s three weeks old, far longer than the maximum two day incubation period. They don’t have time to waste as soldiers swarm the area following the distress call from the attackers and we’re dropped into a gorge and tasked with avoiding their line of sight by sticking to the shadows.

This is a good time to bring up the game’s listen mode. By holding R1, Joel can focus on listening to the area around him and figure out enemy positions through walls. During this section it can be really useful because it allows the player to see when a soldier might be turning their head before moving their light.

This mechanic is really cool for a ton of reasons. It allows for more creativity in stealth, prevents players from being surprised by an enemy they couldn’t have seen coming, speeds up the pace of stealth sections, and is just a genuinely clever way to portray one of the character’s senses that a player can’t actually experience for themselves.

But while it’s incredibly useful on a technical level, it doesn’t always make sense. Like in this section, why am I able to see the soldiers’ heads turn in listen mode when they don’t shift position? Why am I able to see a full outline of the characters through walls including the weapon they’re carrying? It’s not like it’s a huge detriment to immersion, but the game may have been better off with simple footsteps or a more general blob shape instead of revealing the entire character silhouette. It’s listening after all, not x-ray vision.

There’s also only one enemy in the game that has any effect on the listen mode, which is a little disappointing. Maybe if enemies disappeared through particularly thick walls or when walking on sand it might have been a more fleshed out idea, although I’m nitpicking at this point. It’s still a cool inclusion, but could’ve been expanded a bit more. 

When they escape the soldiers Ellie reveals that she’s being delivered to the fireflies to be studied in their efforts to find a cure for the infection. Joel refuses to buy into the idea, wanting to turn back, but Tess says she plans to finish the mission and presses onward.

    As they continue the next sequence of events is a fantastic way to introduce one of the most important and unique enemies in the series- the clicker. A five-stage set of encounters gives the player everything they need to know about this new and threatening enemy going forward.

    First, the group encounters a dead clicker on the ground and Tess explains that they’re blind, but use echolocation to see. Next, Joel opens a door and gets jumped by one before Tess shoots it dead. Soon after the player gets put into a few rooms with individual clickers, allowing them to experiment with stealth and combat however they like.

They’re an interesting enemy, requiring a shiv to stealth kill and being able to hear even crawling players if they move too fast. They also can’t be punched in combat since getting in their range without a specific skill results in instant death. It makes them priority targets for stealth, but also some of the most difficult enemies to get rid of, it’s genius design.

    So we get a description in safety, then a few button prompts during an attack, a real encounter to top things off so the player has all the tools they need to understand clickers as a whole, but then they’re forced into two more encounters that ensure they know what they’re doing before being allowed to progress.

    The first combines clickers with a bunch of runners. This is the one two punch of the series, since the blind clickers ensure players can’t move too quickly without being noticed and require a shiv to dispose of, but the runners are able to spot them if they take too long to get to a good hiding spot in exchange for being able to be strangled. Plus the player can’t just distract all the clickers with a single bottle throw since the runners may turn around after and see them. It’s a deadly combo that puts all of the player’s stealth skills to the test.

And finally we get to level five. Players are dropped into a dark garage absolutely swarming with clickers. This is easily the most difficult challenge players have to face thus far, since alerting even a single clicker can send a massive swarm after them. It’s dark, tense, and difficult- the perfect way to wrap up this enemy’s welcome party.

Along the way I also found a door that required a shiv to open, making future decisions to kill or dodge the clickers altogether much more difficult since you may want to save your shivs for these special doors, which leads right into the crafting system. Over the course of the game, Joel will find new items that can be crafted using materials scattered around the environment. And while these items can be crafted at any time, the game doesn’t pause while doing so, adding a risk reward element to the crafting menu.

It also makes the shiv ingredients and the shivs themselves much more important given that they can be used to upgrade a melee weapon later on, or create a shiv that can be used to either kill a clicker or unlock the door. It makes players think twice about stealth killing that clicker when a secret room full of goodies could be right around the corner.

Around this time players will also learn to craft med kits and molotov cocktails, which use the same ingredients as one another and lead to the classic dilemma of offense vs defense. A health kit can be extremely useful when fighting human enemies that attack from a distance, but throwing a distraction into a room full of infected and blasting them with a fire bomb is a fantastic way to minimize resource waste and extremely satisfying to pull off. In fact, most ingredients can be used to craft items useful in either stealth or combat, meaning supplies are always useful regardless of a player’s preferred playstyle.

I’ve heard some complaints that the combat in this game is shallow, but I couldn’t disagree more. The mechanics are simple, but the options presented between resource collection, crafting, stealth, combat, and strategy along with player input and creativity lead to one of the most varied combat systems at the time that still holds up incredibly well to this day.

That said, there is a more valid complaint that searching through cabinets is boring when many of them turn up empty. The game encourages players to either dispose of all enemies in an area before casually walking around to find collectibles or avoid them entirely. And while the stealth is still fun, if they had put more effort into forcing players to find supplies while avoiding enemies or thrown in a few more casual conversations while scavenging it probably would have slightly alleviated this issue. 

After the clicker introduction there’s this area I really want to point out. Tess and Ellie run to the right while you’re following, but there’s this obvious open door just to the left. Naturally nearly every player is going to want to run in to look for supplies, but instead they get a massive surprise when three runners just so happen to launch into an attack upon entering.

There’s no warning, and experienced players should be able to get by them without trouble, but this is the THIRD time I’ve gotten jumped by these fuckers since this building is just so unassuming. It’s a naturally occuring, well-deserved jump scare that ensures new players will always be on their toes going forward and I will need a change of pants before moving on.

After they escape from another hoard, we find a workbench in the garage. Whenever these are encountered Joel can use the various mysterious “parts” found around the game world to upgrade weapons, with some requiring special tools to create. Things like clip capacity, fire rate, power, and even adding a scope to your rifle can all be done here, but the supplies are limited so players are forced to choose which is most important to them and which apply to their playstyle the most.

Overall I like this in theory and at the time it was pretty great, but it does feel a bit dated by today’s standards. There are just so many possible upgrades and ammo for certain weapons is really rare. I found plenty of handgun and revolver bullets lying around, but gas for the flamethrower and arrows for the bow were ridiculously sparse. I feel bad for players who upgraded those weapons only to never be able to use them.

I also think locking certain upgrades behind special tools was unnecessary since the most powerful ones tend to cost a lot of parts anyway, so it seems kind of pointless. At the very least, most upgrades are significant enough to feel impactful. Going from headshots being a necessity to being able to unload a clip into a stubborn clicker is a great feeling.

After, Joel is separated from the girls and is forced to make his way through a few floors of infected before finding Tess being attacked. She shakes off the runner and they head into the next room to take out a massive incoming horde. I’m not particularly keen on these horde segments since it completely relies on the player’s ability to aim and kind of sucks all the variety out of the combat, but they do at least provide a decent change of pace.

With the infected taken care of, the gang finally reaches the roof and Joel has a bit of a moment with Ellie during her first real view of the city outside the QZ, but an exhausted Tess is in a real hurry all of a sudden. Unfortunately when they finally reach the capitol building they find all of the firefly escorts dead. Joel sees this as a reason to end the mission and head back, but Tess refuses to accept that Ellie won’t lead to a cure, revealing that she’s been infected.

Joel and Ellie are distraught, but there’s no time for grief. She begs Joel to take Ellie to his brother Tommy’s place, since he might be able to get her to the fireflies being a former member himself. She then tells them to run as FEDRA forces swarm the building and she holds them off and I just need to pause for a sec.

What amazing character writing. You want a strong female character in your story? Tess is one of the best examples I’ve ever seen. She’s strong, but not superhuman. She’s tough, but empathetic. Not only does she act of her own volition, but for the most part, Joel acts like her sidekick. Letting her do the talking and negotiating while he just kinda goes along with it.

Plus, while a potential romantic relationship may have been suggested at some point, there’s no definitive proof and even if there was Tess isn’t the type of character to be defined by such a thing. The reason she’s the epitome of a strong female representation isn’t because they took a male character and just swapped his gender or because she’s all about girl power and proving she’s just as good as the boys, but rather because the writers focused on making a great character first, whose gender doesn’t define her, but is a part of her.

Not only does this explain her recent exhaustion and desperate need to hurry along, but it’s also heartbreaking hearing Joel’s typically stoic demeanor instantly break down when he sees the wound, especially when combined with hearing Tess’s final screams through the closed door when she’s gunned down by the soldiers. A tragic end to a stellar character.

Joel fights his way out of the building and heads down into a spore-filled subway tunnel, finally accepting Ellie’s immunity as real when she effortlessly breathes the spores without the use of a gas mask.

They escape the tunnel by having Joel carry Ellie across the water on a wooden palette since she can’t swim and they make it outside. Ellie tries to talk about what happened, but Joel gets mad and lays down ground rules- do as he says, don’t mention her immunity to anyone, and do not talk about Tess. It’s rough to see how these two very different characters try to get through their grief, with Joel ignoring it and pressing on while Ellie wants to discuss and come to terms with it, making for an interesting character dynamic due to their different world views. Joel plans to take her to his friend Bill’s place in Lincoln to get a car.

Cut to the duo arriving just outside the town. I pick up an upgraded melee weapon and learn how to improve them in the crafting menu. When a weapon is upgraded, it’s able to take out most enemies in a single swing for a certain number of uses before going back to a standard weapon. It’s a good alternative to shivs for players who prefer combat to stealth.

Ellie’s amazed by the natural environment, having never known anything besides the urban quarantine zone. Joel explains that Bill’s the only person living here and he keeps the entire area clear, having traded with him in the past resulting in Bill owing him a few favors in return.

Taking a turn down one of the alleys has a clicker run straight into one of Bill’s exploding wire traps that litter the path forward and can then be either avoided, blown up with a weapon, or used defensively when attacked. It’s a neat gimmick and doesn’t overstay its welcome, so for the most part it acts as a great way to add variety to traversal. 

There’s also this odd door that sounds like some infected are banging on it, but when opened it just leads to an empty stairwell with infected upstairs. Just a strangely artificial way to call attention to the door in a game where those kinds of signals are otherwise pretty well integrated and avoid breaking immersion as much as possible.

Joel is then tasked with grabbing a wooden plank and carrying it around to use as a platform across some buildings, so I think it’s time I mention one of the biggest complaints levied against this game- the overabundance of traversal obstacles. Every once in a while players will be tasked with retrieving a ladder, plank, or some other kind of random object necessary to continue on their merry way. These are slow, boring segments that don’t add much if anything to the overall experience. Sometimes there will be a minor puzzle element, but in general these just serve to waste time.

I get that it’s probably a way to hide the game loading the next location, but I think a small piece of dialogue at these points would’ve worked just as well without requiring a bunch of boring traversal if that’s the case. Either way it can be kind of annoying (especially on repeat playthroughs), but it’s not really a major issue since most of these segments act as some down time between combat encounters and don’t last all that long.

This is also where Joel finds the bow, a useful weapon in stealth encounters as a silent one-hit kill on basic enemies and being able to take out others with a headshot. As mentioned before arrows are ridiculously rare and usually break after hitting an enemy, so while it’s a useful tool I do wish there were more opportunities to utilize it.

Speaking of combat encounters, as they make their way through the town Joel gets caught up in Bill’s rope trap and it leads to a super fun and creative set piece- hanging upside down from the rope and having to ward off infected as they descend upon both Joel and Ellie as she tries to cut him down. It’s tense, frantic, and unforgettably unique.

When she finally gets him down, Bill comes in to save him before the group is forced to run from the horde. Once they’re safe, he shows his true paranoid colors and handcuffs Ellie, causing her to attack him. Their dynamic is really funny, with Ellie refusing to accept any of Bill’s bullshit and him disregarding her as a whiny brat. Some of their interactions are just downright hilarious.

Joel tries to convince him to find them a car, and while Bill immediately refuses, he actually gets convinced surprisingly easily when Joel says that doing so will make them even. They plan to reach a military truck that crashed in a town a little while back, but head to Bill’s hideout first to gear up.

    On the way there’s a training manual Joel can pick up. Finding these throughout the game grants various power ups to Joel’s abilities whether it be an increase in the molotov’s damage radius, getting multiple uses out of shivs, or increasing the effectiveness of health kits. Nothing game-changing, but they’re always useful when found.

    They’re usually plopped right into mandatory paths so they don’t usually feel like collectables, but some are well hidden or tucked inside a locked door or safe. It’s a bit more rewarding to get them this way, but as a standard way to give players upgrades over time it’s fine.

    The other major upgrades in the game come from pill bottles. By finding pill supplements around the environment, Joel can upgrade his skills like listen mode distance, max health, and weapon sway among others and these are some of the most useful tools in the game. They’re all incredibly helpful and pills are always a welcome find when exploring.

    The group reaches Bill’s basement where he and Joel discuss the plan while Bill tells him about his former partner who left a while back, clearly hurting Bill despite his tough guy act. He warns Joel not to get too attached to Ellie before handing him a shotgun (one of the best tools in the game for getting rid of powerful enemies up close) and a nail bomb which is great for taking out big groups of enemies in a single blow. 

Nail bombs also won’t explode until an enemy walks by them, allowing them to be picked up if left undetonated. This is a slight nitpick, but it is hard to believe that all of these scavenged materials can be used to make a motion-sensitive bomb that magically doesn’t harm the user. Maybe it’s just me, but the bombs are fun and useful so it’s a minor issue at most. Ellie asks for a gun, but Joel refuses despite her objections.

I then head over to the work bench and craft a weapon holster, which is a great reason to talk about the weapon selection in this game. All equipment is selected by using the D-pad to navigate horizontal and vertical menus. It’s actually a pretty unique system that I personally haven’t seen copied in any game since.

Guns are always horizontal, with long guns on the left and handguns on the right, but in order to switch to a different gun in that size, you’ll need to spend extra time looking through your backpack in a vulnerable state, something that can be partially alleviated by crafting a holster that gives each gun type a new slot to utilize without resorting to the backpack.

Throwables like nail bombs and molotovs are on the vertical axis with the health kits, giving them pretty easy access. It’s nothing groundbreaking, but it does keep the action tense, force players to think about their weapon choices, and provide a sleek and simple way to choose weapons that I’m really surprised hasn’t become more widely used.

The group heads towards the truck and encounters more clickers, prompting me to use a brick to attract them before nabbing a bunch with a molotov. Bricks and bottles can be found around the environment just about anywhere and can be used to distract enemies, stun enemies with a quick throw allowing for a one-hit kill, or even as a melee weapon if equipped.

Although I do wonder why bricks and bottles are the only distraction throwables in the game. A little more variety could have helped especially since the only difference between the two is bricks being better for melee attacks. Maybe if bottles were required for crafting molotovs or created a louder noise that attracts enemies from further away, or if they simply added a few more options for visual variety it would’ve fleshed out the mechanic a bit more, but it works well for its intended purpose and fits perfectly into the gameplay loop so overall I’d say it’s a great inclusion.

There’s a horde attack just outside the school where the truck crashed, but once they get inside they find that the truck’s battery’s already been stolen. They decide to sneak through the school to get away, but this only leads them to the most powerful enemy in the game- the bloater.

This absolute unit is the toughest of all the infected, able to throw spore bombs that leave poison gas in the air and dishing out instant death within melee range. They’re susceptible to fire and nail bombs, but when combined with other infected that rush the player as they try to dodge spore clouds it’s a serious threat. This first bloater is tougher than others encountered later, and after a few runners bust in to help it out Joel’s able to take it down.

And can I just talk about how well the infected are designed for a sec? Looking at the concept art the team really threw everything at the wall before settling on these monstrosities. Fungus was such a perfect choice, growing in dark, damp areas, expanding through the use of gaseous spores, and being so incredibly varied in its appearances and functions. 

It gave the team plenty of leeway and each stage of the infection is both impressively disturbing and horrifying to imagine going through, due in large part to their inspiration being the brain-devouring Ophiocordyceps Unilateralis, a fungus that infects the minds of ants and even controls their behavior until they die. Stellar visual design and a fantastically unique take on the classic zombie.

The group escapes the school and reaches the safety of an abandoned home. Joel and Bill begin to argue, but stop when they encounter the hanging body of Bill’s former partner Frank. He got bit while heading out of the town and Bill’s clearly hurt by the loss despite his angry quips. They learn that Frank was the one who took the battery, finding it in a car in the garage before deciding to push the car while Ellie starts it up from the driver’s seat.

She misses the clutch on the first attempt and as the guys push the truck to a position to try again, they’re forced to fight off incoming waves of infected. Ellie eventually gets the car started and Bill chastises her for her failure before Joel interrupts, showing that he’s getting more attached. They drop him off and he says that Joel’s gonna die because of his connection to Ellie, but Joel just says he’s sorry for Bill’s loss before parting ways.

On the drive away Ellie reveals that she stole some of Bill’s stuff including a CD, a comic, and some gay porn. This is really telling because Bill being gay doesn’t really change much, but it does cause players to consider how their perception of him and his parter changes on a second playthrough. For 2013 it was subtle, but welcome LGBT representation, but more importantly it actually adds a lot to how you might view his character, going from a bitter old man who couldn’t care less about others to a man pissed off at the world because the only person he cared about in his life left him and wound up dead who closes himself off so he doesn’t have to feel that pain again.

Of course, things can’t go too well for too long as the duo makes their way to Pittsburgh where their path is blocked by a road full of abandoned cars. Joel is wary, but decides to drive around only to see a man in the middle of the road limping and begging for help. He immediately tells Ellie to buckle up before speeding up and ramming through as the man pulls out a gun and fires at them and a crowd of attackers pop out of the surrounding area.

They even toss a bus down a hill causing Joel to crash the car. Both of them get pulled out by the attackers before fighting them off in a shootout. He and Ellie escape to a room full of chopped up bodies and Joel finds some smoke bombs lying around. Honestly, these might be the least useful items in the entire game.

They’re grenades that can stun enemies and create a smoke cloud into which enemies won’t shoot and won’t be able to see. Even clickers can’t hear into the smoke for some reason. Still, while getting away from a gunfight is nice in theory, the player still has to get to the smoke to be safe and it alerts all of the enemies nearby to your location. Plus when sneaking around it requires close combat to be useful since Joel can’t see through it to shoot either. It’s not a bad addition, just a pointless one.

There are a few more encounters and one in a book shop is particularly difficult due to the sheer number of enemies present. Unfortunately it also shows off one of the rare flaws of this game’s stealth where it really shows its age- alerting enemies. This is one of those games where alerting one enemy causes just about every enemy in the same zip code to come running towards the fight.

They do tend to come in waves to avoid a completely unfair scenario, but it’s still pretty frustrating when a bop on the head or being a second too late to grapple someone from behind cover sends an army directly to your location. It’s not a major flaw and is pretty typical of games from this time period, being especially rare when fights are avoided or the enemy group is too small to really make a significant difference, but in hindsight it’s probably this game’s biggest annoyance.

After another quick trip on a palette the two get into a hotel where I try to move a ladder to get some items, but Ellie followed me up so I had to wait a few minutes for her to get down before the game would allow me to progress. It did allow me to find a safe, which I was able to open with a code I found on a collectible upstairs. It’s odd that they’d add in the safe when just putting the collectibles in a hidden room would have worked just as well or maybe allowing players to blow it open with an explosive, but I got a lot of cool supplies so I’m not complaining.

They eventually get to the upper floors of the hotel, where we play through the scene from the E3 gameplay trailer. There are a few differences, but honestly, outside of scripted sequences in the trailer that are more dramatized than misleading, I’ve got to commend Naughty Dog for really nailing the feeling that preview gave- not just here, but throughout the entire game.

Although there was one point that kinda broke the game’s immersion for me. I already mentioned how alerting one enemy instantly alerts everyone else in the encounter, but systematically bouncing back and forth to take these guys out as they pop into the room one at a time makes the entire encounter feel mechanical and artificial. It’s fine when luring infected through a door since they’re mindless monsters, but this just comes off as comical.

That said there’s also a grounded and sobering story moment where they come across a person who died of suicide and Ellie remarks that they took the easy way out before Joel tells her that it’s not that easy. It’s really sad because hearing this we know that Joel likely tried at one point or at least considered the idea, likely after the loss of Sarah. Just another one of those small touches that really adds to the character.

Eventually they get to an elevator where Ellie safely gets across before it collapses and sends Joel to a flooded basement. Here we get a Resident Evil-style sequence where the player is tasked with exploring this underground area to find a key card and start up a generator before being swarmed by enemies and needing to escape. It’s tense, intimidating, and pretty fun, even if I did accidentally trap the bloater in this little cage before heading out.

Joel heads upstairs and takes out a few more hunters, but when he tries to climb up a ladder, he’s attacked and held underwater. Just as he’s about to drown Ellie bursts in and saves him by shooting the assailant dead. And look, I know Joel’s been harsh towards Ellie this whole time, but this sequence goes a little too far to the point where it’s almost out of character.

Not only does he refuse to thank Ellie for her help, he actively insults her by saying he was more worried that she’d shoot him by mistake. Like dude, the girl just took a human life for the first time to save your ass. She’s clearly upset about the situation and just wants someone to tell her that she did what she had to to comfort her about the decision. It makes for a sweet moment later on, but right now it just comes off as Joel being pointlessly cruel, made even more dissonant by his relatively chill attitude in the dynamic interactions right after.

Speaking of which, they leave the hotel to find some hunters down below. Joel leaves Ellie with the rifle, telling her to look out for him if he gets caught. And just before he hops down he tells her that she didn’t have a choice to make her feel a little better and while the analysis part of my brain wants to point out how artificial this is thanks to the scene from earlier, it’s performed and executed so well that I have to admit that it was still really sweet and endearing.

The encounter isn’t too tough, with Ellie giving some help after the enemies are alerted, it’s not too bad if you stay within her line of sight. It is weird that Joel still has access to his rifle since I think the lack of access to it may have made the encounter more interesting, but still fun. When its done Joel finally gives Ellie a gun to defend herself.

With that, Ellie becomes an active participant in combat from now on. She can stab enemies to death, get them off you in a grapple, and take a few shots with her handgun. It’s cool, even if she does get a little overzealous now and again. 

The way this game handles companions is really cool. When it was first announced, I remember seeing a lot of comments worried that it’d be a long, tedious escort mission for the entire run, but much to the contrary. Allies can take damage in a fight, but it’s exceedingly rare. Aside from that they’re a massive help and never get caught during stealth either, plus they grant ammo and items every once in a while. It does occasionally break immersion when your partner runs right by an enemy without being noticed, but aside from that they’re a welcome addition that even adds to the story by making you miss their help when they’re not around.

As the two make their way around Ellie reveals that she grew up in a military prep school, which is another one of those tidbits that expands on her character and the kind of world they live in where orphaned children are raised to be soldiers.

The next encounter has the duo trying to take out a few guards while avoiding getting shot by a gun-mounted military truck outside. The truck itself is kind of annoyingly clairvoyant, but I respect that with most of the arsenal now available the team’s still throwing out new ideas to keep combat fresh and engaging.

They reach a high rise apartment where Joel gets attacked before being held up by a kid with a gun. Ellie stops them all from getting into a fight and the two introduce themselves as Henry and Sam, two brothers who’ve been trapped here by the hunters. Joel and Ellie agree to join them at a hideout to discuss their plan to escape the city.

    On the way, Sam tries to take a toy from a store before Henry stops him, saying they only take what they need to survive. It’s an interesting philosophy on how to act in the post-apocalypse, but more importantly it shows that Henry cares about their survival above all else.

    There’s also some dialogue with the characters getting to know each other, something I haven’t mentioned yet. Much like in the Uncharted games, the characters will occasionally start conversations while exploring. It feels natural and prevents the artificiality from characters only speaking to one another in cutscenes present in other games. It’s neat, although it is a bit distracting when the two characters are far apart so you can’t hear what one says and Joel responds with a normal speaking voice. Still, a good way to introduce characters naturally.

    At the base, Henry explains that they’re looking for the fireflies, revealing that the rest of his crew planned to meet at a radio tower nearby before going to find them. Joel explains that he’s looking for the fireflies too and they discuss a plan to get past the guards at night and reach the tower. Sam and Ellie get to know one another and start a cute friendship.

    That night the group moves forward with the plan. They dodge some guards, but when they’re climbing up a ladder to escape from an armed vehicle it breaks as Joel’s about to climb, leaving him separated from the other three. Henry takes Sam and leaves him behind, but Ellie jumps down and the two escape.

    They get to a bar where a polite group of hunters lines up at the door to get shotgunned one by one and upon leaving they’re forced to run from the truck until finally reaching the bridge, getting cornered when they realize it’s been destroyed. Joel desperately tries to think of a plan to save Ellie, even offering to use himself as a distraction, but Ellie decides to jump into the water below, knowing that he’ll have to follow to keep her afloat. He manages to get to her, but just as they embrace they plow into a rock and Joel gets knocked out.

    He wakes up on a beach with Ellie, Henry, and Sam, instantly threatening Henry before Ellie tells him that he’s the one who saved them. They reach a sewer full of various noise traps. They never get used in gameplay which is disappointing, but they work as a framing device for the encounters. As they make their way through, Sam and Joel get stuck together when a door suddenly shuts behind them, with Ellie and Henry forced to run from a horde of clickers.

    In here we find a couple of clickers along with some of the scariest enemies in the game- stalkers. They’re really rare, only appearing twice in the game, but they’re essentially runners that can hide their presence from Joel’s listen mode, use complex tactics when approaching a target, and are extremely easy to alert. It’s a shame they don’t show up more often, but they switch up the flow of stealth in a really cool way when they’re around.

    I also found the shorty down here, a handgun that shoots shotgun rounds and I’ve gotta say while this is pretty useful it does kind of drive home how samey some of the weapons are. The revolver and pistol are nearly identical in use, with only minor differences, the shorty is just a handheld shotgun, and the diablo found later on is just a rifle with more power. Having the extra weapons is nice, but the lack of unique mechanics or use cases between them is a touch underwhelming.

    Eventually they find Ellie and Henry and the adults are forced to fend off a horde while the kids get a door open. From here they reach a suburb on the way to the tower. The kids discuss pre-apocalypse life like it’s a myth and play some darts. It’s cool to see these characters acting like real 14 year old kids, just relaxing in the relative safety of these abandoned homes.

    Of course, that was never gonna last long and the group soon encounters a sniper. Joel’s forced to sneak around his line of sight, taking out some enemies before getting to the man himself and taking his place, which starts a novel mission where you have to snipe random hunters as they burst from the surrounding area before they kill your friends. Then some infected come out from the bushes and even manage to tackle Sam and Henry before you save them. It’s weird that all of these enemies attack from behind since the group just came from that direction, but it’s a cool sequence with a lot of tension.

    They finally reach the radio tower where Joel and Henry start to bond. Ellie goes to check on Sam who’s clearly stressed and taking inventory. He asks Ellie why she isn’t scared of anything and while she says she’s scared of being alone, Sam’s terrified of becoming infected, thinking that they may still have some semblance of their humanity, but are unable to control themselves. They discuss the afterlife and she gives him the toy from the store that she took after his conversation with Henry. When she leaves he knocks it over in frustration and we see that he’s been infected with a claw mark.

    The next morning Ellie goes to wake him up, but he’s already turned and despite Henry stopping Joel, he winds up killing Sam himself. He’s destroyed by this, clearly unravelling and pointing the gun at Joel while blaming him for Sam’s death before turning the gun on himself and pulling the trigger.

    This fucking broke me. I mean, even knowing that Sam was a goner I had no idea that Henry would kill himself in grief. I’ve seen a lot of scenes like this in zombie films, but I’ve never seen one executed quite this well, plus it’s entirely believable given what we know about his character. An excellently handled, tragic end to their story.

    Cut to fall, Ellie and Joel reach Jackson County, Wyoming. They’ve clearly bonded, as shown from their dialogue, which makes sense given that this trip should take a few months on foot, but Joel’s determined to avoid the subject of Henry and Sam, still preferring to forget and move on instead of work through the issue. He mentions that he and Tommy burnt some bridges a while back, but he’s hopeful that they’ll be able to get along.

    They reach the gate to a hydroelectric power plant, but they’re held up by the people inside. Luckily Tommy comes out and gives Joel a big hug, introducing him to Maria, his wife and leader of Jackson County. They get invited in for food and readily accept.

    Tommy explains that they’re getting the generator turned on so they can supply the town with renewable energy and he and Joel go to see the crew attempt to turn it on, something they’ve failed at a few times in the past. When they get there he tries to give Joel a picture of Sarah, but Joel, sticking to that philosophy of moving on instead of confronting the past, refuses the gift.

    Tommy explains Jackson’s safety measures, the plant is brought back to life, and Joel asks Tommy to finish the mission for him. Tommy declines violently, saying it would be wrong to leave his wife and happy life for that kind of job, but the two don’t have much time to argue before the base is attacked.

Here I found a new kind of melee weapon- the hatchet. Hatchets and machetes are unique in this game in that they’re able to instantly kill enemies with a single hit without upgrades. Super useful and satisfying to use. It was kind of annoying when a guy did a 360 no-scope to fire at me, but taking him out with the newly acquired El Diablo handgun that I mentioned earlier more than made up for it.

They shoot their way through the plant and reach Maria and Ellie, with Tommy trying to explain the job to Maria soon after. She’s pissed at Joel, but they all find out that Ellie stole a horse and ran away. Tommy and Joel hop onto some horses and head out to find her.

Riding on horseback takes some getting used to with slightly stiff controls, but it works well enough and it’s pretty fun while it lasts. Plus the casual riding time gives players a chance to take in the beautiful graphics. Sure, by today’s standards they’re a little dated, but in 2013 this was easily one of the best looking games ever made. The animations may be a bit stiff at times and there’s an odd visual glitch here and there, but overall the lighting, textures, and character models along with the fantastic art direction and environmental design still allow this game’s visuals to hold up to this day.

Not only that, but it also gives way to some of the best character acting in games to date. The facial animations convey so much emotion in the cutscenes and while there’s definitely a stark difference between the graphics in a cutscene and those during gameplay, the movement animations are also really smooth without feeling slow, tedious, or unresponsive. So yeah, realistic graphics will almost always look old after a certain amount of time has passed, and there are the occasional hitches here and there like getting stuck or stopping in front of an obstacle instead of vaulting, I don’t think this is a game whose visual style is appealing enough to stand up to the test of time.

After the brothers get attacked and fight their way to Ellie, they find her in an abandoned house. She ran away out of anger thinking Joel wanted to abandon her, but he refuses to admit that it’s out of fear of losing her. She tries to bring up Sarah, having been told by Maria, but Joel doesn’t take it well despite her heartbreaking pleas.

The facial animations, the voice acting and motion capture by Ashley Johnson and Troy Baker, the musical score backing it all up, it’s just a perfect blend of melodrama without the slightest hint of cheesiness or going over the top. Two of the most realistically written characters in any medium, brought to life masterfully. This level of game design is exactly why the Last of Us was so revered at its time and why its looked at as a classic today.

The house gets ambushed and after fighting off the hunters and Joel looks guilt ridden on the ride to Jackson. He asks Tommy about the fireflies and who tells him that they’re at the University of Eastern Colorado, prompting Joel to get Ellie on his horse and send Tommy on his way to the town. It’s a great character building moment for Joel, who’s finally confronted his fear of loss and when the ability to turn down all of that risk for a safe and happy life in Jackson sits right in front of him, he chooses to selflessly continue on his journey for her sake, Tommy’s sake, and possibly even his own sake.

    Hard cut some time later and the two arrive at the school where Joel’s explaining football to Ellie who, like any sane person, considers the rules really strange. We ride horseback and walk around the school while the two have some idle chit chat. They’ve clearly bonded during the trip, being more open with each other and discussing things like how Ellie would have wanted to be an astronaut in the pre-infection world and Joel wanted to be a singer.

Along the way, Joel grabs his final weapon- a flamethrower, and we take out some infected to access a generator and move on. The flamethrower is pretty cool, but the ammo is severely limited, meaning it’s best saved for bloaters or maybe large hordes. It’s pretty niche, but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t supremely satisfying to use.

The school appears to be abandoned and swarming with infected, prompting Ellie to worry that the fireflies may have left. They make it inside the school, get a quick jump scare from some monkeys, and I find a recording that explains that the monkeys were infected and when one of the scientists let it out of its cage, they infected the school in turn.

These little notes are something I haven’t covered yet. As you explore, there are three major types of non-gameplay-based collectibles scattered around the world- Firefly Pendants, Comic Books, and Artifacts. The pendants are just like dog tags for fireflies to identify themselves, so it’s not clear why Joel collects them. The comics are from a series that Ellie likes, so while it’s a cute character quirk that Joel collects them for her, it would’ve been cool if players could read them.

Speaking of which the final collectibles are artifacts hidden around the world. These can be items, notes, or recordings. They give a decent bit of worldbuilding and are often pretty entertaining, plus Joel usually has something to say in response to the context of each note. All of the collectibles are purely there to act as side goals and rewards for exploration. It’s not my kind of thing, but I could see finding them being a fun challenge in repeat playthroughs, plus finding these, along with completing other various objectives, grants players a special currency to unlock new skins and bonuses in the pause menu.

The pair find a dead scientist holding a recording that explains how the other fireflies evacuated to Saint Mary’s Hospital in Salt Lake City, but as they plan to leave and follow up on this trail, the school is swarmed by hunters. As they make their escape, Joel’s tackled off a balcony and impaled on a loose piece of metal. From there, he struggles to make it out of the school, with Ellie doing the majority of the shooting. They reach the horse and escape, but Joel eventually passes out on the road as Ellie begs him to stay with her.

The game skips to winter where we get a big surprise and begin to play as Ellie. She hunts a deer, but as she’s about to collect her prize she finds it being watched over by a couple of men. She’s immediately like a little Joel- disarming them, holding them up and refusing to accept any of their apparent kindness as genuine. One man, David, asks if they can trade her anything for the meat and she asks for penicillin. He sends the other guy, James, to retrieve the medicine while he and Ellie wait for his return.

The two go into a small cabin, but despite David’s attempts at conversation, Ellie remains cold. Suddenly, a clicker walks into the building and David uses a hidden handgun to kill it. He and Ellie then fight off a massive flood of infected running at their location and trying to get through the boarded up windows. They run away and Ellie sneaks through some clickers to reach another cabin where the two are attacked by another horde, this time ending with a bloater. It’s one of the most challenging parts of the game, mostly due to the lack of cover and options, being all about positioning and aim.

With the infected taken care of, they return to the original cabin where David reveals that the men at the school were from his group and looking for food, with only a few returning telling stories about a crazy man and little girl who slaughtered the lot of them. Before she can act, David tells James to lower the gun behind her, and despite James’s objections, he gives Ellie the medicine while offering her a place to stay with his group. Ellie returns to Joel, applies the medicine, and goes to sleep. She wakes up later to noises outside, realizing that David’s men tracked her back to this location.

She leaves, heading out on her horse to drive away the hunters, with some of them shouting that David said not to kill her before they start to defy his orders. She makes her way to their cabin, taking out enemies along the way before finally reaching the door and getting found and captured by David himself.

This is one of the chapters where I turned the difficulty up to Survivor so now’s as good a time as any to bring it up. As I said before, survivor and grounded difficulty remove the player’s ability to use listen mode. During combat enemies are supposed to be more aggressive and do double damage, but honestly I hardly noticed a difference between the various difficulty modes when in actual combat. The major difference is with stealth.

The lack of a listen mode completely shifts player perspective and tactics on how they approach the game. You can’t see if an enemy is coming around a corner, so you have to be careful, but you also can’t see if you’re being flanked, forcing the player to be assertive as well. It’s a really cool take on difficulty modes and if you’re someone who’s played this game before I highly recommend giving it a shot on survivor or grounded difficulty for a really different experience.

Plus with weapons and supplies being more rare, I was less inclined to engage enemies in combat, which is why the game also allows you to avoid encounters altogether. While opportunities like this are a bit rare, it’s absolutely possible to sneak around opponents entirely without taking them out, which is especially helpful as Ellie since her stabbing animation somehow alerts all of the guards in a way Joel’s never did.

She wakes up in a cage and finds David preparing human bodies to be eaten, which gives his earlier statement about his men going to the school to look for food all new meaning, while also explaining why they blindly shot at Joel and Ellie on sight. He gives Ellie some deer and lectures her on how their desperation for survival makes their cannibalism acceptable. He continues to be nice to her, but then reveals why as he starts to flirt, prompting Ellie to break his fingers in an indescribably satisfying moment. She tells him her name as a warning, but he threatens to eat her before leaving the room.

It’s amazing how much this makes sense. David being a pedophile tracks with his overly friendly demeanor, trying to get Ellie away from Joel, and trying his hardest to get to know her. Later on we even overhear some of his men talking about her being David’s “new toy”. It’s horrifying, but makes perfect sense and if this world full of hunters and infected wasn’t scary enough already this was definitely when I was at my most worried for Ellie.

From here we cut back to Joel as he wakes up, still walking somewhat slow from his injuries. We take out a few guys and eventually capture two of them leading to an incredibly brutal scene where Joel puts them in two different parts of the room and asks them for Ellie’s location, saying that he’s going to ask them both separately and if the answers don’t match up he’ll make them regret it. It’s a really smart technique for getting accurate information and when done he kills them both before heading out.

Ellie’s woken up in her cage and dragged onto the counter to be cleaved, but tells David she’s infected and can’t be used for food before grabbing the knife and running away. From here it’s an escape mission, getting away from David’s men by sneaking around in this snow storm. Ellie plays similarly to Joel, but her arsenal is much more limited and her knife has infinite uses. Though it is kind of strange that they had the foresight to remove Joel’s skill enhancements since she didn’t take the pills, but all of her weapons still have the upgrades made at the workbenches despite picking them up off of dead bodies.

She goes through a restaurant where David finds her yet again and begins to hunt her down in a boss fight after accidentally starting a fire. As someone who’s played the game before it wasn’t too difficult, but to anyone playing the game for the first time it’s incredibly tense. There’s broken glass everywhere, something that’s normally rare in the game, but is able to give away the player’s position when stepped on. Plus no matter the difficulty mode, David has the ability to hide from listen mode when he sneaks around, a scary proposition for those playing on Hard or lower. The fight requires players to either sneak up on or stun David 3 times before having Ellie knife him.

One of the most impressive aspects of the encounter is its versatility. No matter where you are when you get to David the game has an in-game cutscene that dynamically adjusts to match the obstacles  nearby. It’s those little touches that add so much believability to the events taking place. Eventually the two get into a skirmish that leaves them both knocked out.

We cut back to Joel and fight our way through a few encounters before finding Ellie’s backpack, a room full of dead bodies, and finally, the burning restaurant. Inside, Ellie wakes up (in a different location than where she got knocked out so fuck me for praising the dynamic cutscenes I guess) and David begins to kick her from above. He gets on top of her and holds her down as she reaches for his machete.

So those of you who haven’t played the game might be expecting the typical finale where David gets rid of the knife and is just about to rape Ellie when Joel bursts in and saves her, but instead we get one of the most badass and satisfying endings possible- Ellie reaches the knife and just obliterates David’s face, just in time for Joel to enter and embrace her to let her know she’s alright.

Now look, just because a game subverted story expectations doesn’t mean it’s good. Just because Ellie was almost raped and managed to fend off her attacker doesn’t automatically make this a quote unquote “good” representation of an assault victim, especially since scenarios like this don’t usually end this well for the victims. In fact, while I personally see it as empowering I’m sure some others might see it as roundabout victim blaming, saying that those who don’t resist as hard as Ellie or manage to fend off their attackers simply weren’t trying hard enough. I can’t say for sure, as I’m not an expert on the topic and even if I was, I’m sure there’d be plenty of room for debate on the subject. However, what I’ll absolutely stand by is that the moment that follows is one of the most impressive character building scenes ever crafted.

This whole time Ellie’s been brave, determined, defiant, and strong, but after Joel reaches her she just breaks. She’s still just a fourteen year old kid, one who’s been forced to take care of Joel, kill numerous people, and just faced the very real possibility of being raped, murdered, and eaten. She’s not some hardened killer willing to do anything to survive like Joel, she’s just been acting like one for both of their sakes, so when she knows that he’s there to comfort her she finally lets her facade slip away and it’s heartbreaking as she begins to cry.

    The game cuts forward to spring, with Ellie and Joel being near the hospital at long last. Ellie’s a little distant, but Joel tries to reach out, promising to give her swimming lessons and teach her guitar when they return from the trip. She runs off ahead after spotting something, eventually coming to what is probably the most well-known scene in the game.

    The two find giraffes wandering the grounds and even get to pet one. They reach the rooftop and watch them walk away and just relax for a little while. It’s not mind-blowing, but this little reprieve from all the darkness is certainly welcome, especially considering what’s to come.

    Joel asks Ellie if she wants to turn back, perhaps knowing there’s a possibility that creating the vaccine could kill her, perhaps just worried that the fireflies will want to separate them, but Ellie says that they can’t because their journey can’t be for nothing. As they press further into the Salt Lake City quarantine zone, we can actively see how much stronger their bond has become with Ellie asking Joel about Sarah and consoling him for his loss, and him actually confronting his own sadness and thanking her. She even gives him Tommy’s picture that she stole from Maria.

    There’s one final encounter with infected in a tunnel under a bridge, but it’s honestly not that tough despite the litany of clickers, runners, and even a few bloaters. In fact the biggest issue I had was when I hopped over a railing and died from a glitch trapping me between a palette and the wall.

    Afterwards, they try to jump across a bus, but it collapses and fills with water. Ellie even hops on, risking drowning once again to save Joel. He then saves her, but they encounter soldiers who knock him out while he’s performing CPR.

    Joel wakes up inside the hospital. Marlene is in the room, saying she travelled there with a large group, losing most along the way. She says they saved Ellie and congratulates him on getting her to the facility, but then says that the operation to create the vaccine will kill her. They argue over the ethics and who would be hurt more by Ellie’s death, but Joel doesn’t have a choice with the soldiers preventing him from stopping the procedure.

    Marlene leaves to check on the preparations, but Joel soon sees his backpack while being escorted and manages to kill his escort after learning Ellie’s location. This leads into the final sequence in the game- a no-holds-barred, tough as nails mission to reach the top floor of the hospital and stop the operation. 

    This section is difficult, but manageable, and even gives the player a machine gun to use if they choose to take one off of the dead fireflies. A great way to wrap things up, with Joel reaching the operating room just in time, killing the surgeon, and making a mad dash to the elevator to escape.

    He finds Marlene in the parking garage, who tells him that Ellie’s better off dying in a world as cruel as theirs, pleading with Joel to turn back before the game instantly cuts to later on with Joel driving the car away as Ellie wakes up. She asks what happened and Joel tells her that the fireflies actually managed to find dozens of immune people, but nothing ever worked out so they stopped looking for a cure. Cut back to the garage and Joel kills Marlene, remarking that she’d come after Ellie if left alive.

    There’s a final epilogue scene where Joel and Ellie arrive back at Jackson County. They hike towards their destination, with Joel remarking that he thinks Ellie and Sarah would have been good friends. At this point, he’s pretty much become her surrogate father. Ellie stops him and admits that she wasn’t alone when she was bit, but was with her friend Riley who she watched turn. She’s frustrated, having hoped that their journey would lead to a cure, stopping anyone from feeling that kind of loss again like she had with Sam, Tess, and Riley. She demands that he swear to her that everything he said about the fireflies was true. He does and she responds with a simple, “Okay”. Roll credits.

    There’s a lot to unpack here. First off, I consider this one of the greatest endings to any media I’ve personally seen. It cements the theme of the game, completes the story arc of our main character, and leaves off on a tone that’s simultaneously ambiguous and satisfying. Every decision made makes sense for the characters, every moment is captivating, and it perfectly tows the line between feeling like a badass and feeling like a monster.

    Let’s start with this: I’ve heard a lot of people say that this is when Joel becomes the villain, killing a bunch of people to save one little girl, completely eliminating the chance for a vaccine in the future, but that’s simply not the case. To start, Ellie’s immunity is likely genetic, meaning they’d be better off letting her live, have children, and then do the operation later when they can. It’ll take longer, but that way they’re more likely to have other potential subjects and they aren’t killing a young girl without asking for her consent.

    That small bit of logic aside, there was no guarantee that the operation would have resulted in a cure or a vaccine. Yes, Ellie was their best chance at the time, but it’s entirely possible that there are plenty of other immune people out in the world. Plus who’s to say that this lead surgeon isn’t like the engineers from the Jackson County power plant? Saying that this will absolutely work and treating it like a sure thing while potentially missing something or just being too optimistic?

    Of course, none of this is to say that what Joel did was right, only that the question of right and wrong is entirely morally gray. Personally I think the most ethical thing to do would have been to ask Ellie with Joel in the room. I think we can all agree that she’d have instantly agreed to the operation and giving Joel a chance to say goodbye may have made all the difference. It’s one of those situations where no one was in the right, even if taking an utilitarian approach clearly puts Joel in the role of the villain.

    Secondly, the epilogue. We know Ellie is suspicious of the situation and to her, the entire story is a tragedy. The two of them went across the entire country, with people like Tess, Henry, and Sam dying in ways that might not have happened if not for her and Joel, and it was all for nothing. Not only were there other immune people, but all of the people she knew who were infected are what drove her the entire way, all for the hope that such a thing wouldn’t happen to anyone else, only for all hope to be lost at the very end.

When she asks Joel to swear on his word at the end it’s the final step in getting over her denial. She desperately wants to believe that her immunity means something, that there’s some other hope for a vaccine, and that she can make a difference, but it’s also possible that a part of her wants to believe Joel- that she can go on living a normal life without the weight of an infection-free world bearing down on her shoulders. She’s looking to Joel to absolutely confirm in her mind that this situation was out of her control and she can move on without survivor’s guilt.

She turns to the one person she trusts more than anyone else in the world and he lies to her face without giving it a second thought. Her “Okay” at the end leaves us wondering whether she believed him or not because she herself probably wasn’t entirely sure. It’s tragic, but hopeful at the same time. And if you ask me, it’s the perfect ending to one of the greatest games ever made.

And that’s where the story of The Last of Us wraps up, but of course there’s more to discuss. For one, players can replay the game in new game plus, starting off with all of their unlocks like skills and weapon upgrades. Plus, as they make their way through the game they can accomplish various goals to unlock things like concept art, gameplay filters, and various costumes in the bonuses menu. It’s neat, and a solid reward for accomplishing these little challenges.

Multiplayer

There’s also the Factions multiplayer mode. Now look, I know this mode has its fans, but I just don’t see it. Don’t get me wrong, it can be pretty fun playing as either a firefly or hunter and achieving various goals to win different matches, but in reality it’s just a typical competitive third-person shooter with the addition of listen mode and crafting, and while being able to find materials around the map to craft weapons is certainly unique and something I’d welcome in other games, I personally think the listen mode lessens the experience.

See, while going around the map, players have the ability to use their listen mode to see anyone else that moves, with it being restricted by a meter that depletes as it’s used and restores over time. The issue is that it basically turns the matches into a guessing game, moving up and hoping your opponents aren’t listening for your movement at that very moment. If it had been a perk for a specific loadout I think it would have been fine, with some players acting as scouts and being able to warn their teammates, but as it stands I think it makes many matches more about luck than skill or strategy.

There are 3 game modes- Supply Raid, which is like team deathmatch, Survivors, which is just search and destroy, and Interrogation, which is similar to Call of Duty’s kill confirmed mode where players need to get to a downed enemy and interrogate them before scoring any points to unlock the location of a lockbox that must then be opened up. 

The first two modes are pretty standard, but Interrogation is unique and while I appreciate the attempt, the inclusion of listen mode makes the experience an exercise in frustration. Since lock boxes are inside the enemy base, they only need two players to stay behind and protect it since they can see when enemies are approaching, which also allows them to interrogate you in return. It’s all fine, but there’s nothing here that would really keep me playing for more than an hour or two.

Of course, it’s something that could definitely be refined in the second game when it eventually drops its multiplayer mode, but as far as this game goes, it’s pretty old and definitely lacking in players and eventually the servers will be shut down, making this entire part of the video pointless so I’ll just say it’s a welcome addition to the game, but not really something that vastly adds to the experience.

Left Behind DLC

Lastly, the Left Behind DLC. This is a prequel and mid-quel simultaneously covering the events with Ellie and Riley before the game and Ellie’s efforts in caring for Joel after his injury at the college. It’s only a few hours long, so I’ll just go through nice and quick. If you’re wondering if it’s worth playing, I’d say so, just don’t go in expecting a three hour masterpiece.

The story begins at the last scene after the school with Ellie getting Joel out of the building and begging him to wake up after falling off their horse. We cut to a dorm room where Ellie’s friend Riley wakes her up. There’s some expository dialogue where Ellie asks Riley why she’s there after having freaked out at her before abandoning the school and Riley reveals that she left to hunt a firefly before being introduced to Marlene and joining their ranks. She convinces Ellie to get dressed and come with her to talk.

Cut back to future Ellie searching through drawers in a mall for medical supplies she can use to stitch Joel’s wound. When she doesn’t find anything she promises him that she’ll return with supplies before leaving the store, closing the metal door, and heading out, prompting a title drop.

She padlocks the door shut and begins to explore the abandoned mall. There’s some moments of stealth and a funny scene where she begs a clicker not to come to life as she grabs a key off its body. She encounters a living clicker soon after, with her only weapon being a handgun with no ammo and the bricks or bottles found lying around along with her trusty knife. The pharmacy didn’t have any supplies, but she spots a crashed military helicopter and decides to inspect it for a med kit. After a bit more exploration, she hops over a railing and we go back to the past.

The two girls have some cute bonding moments around a mall in the QZ. Ellie’s slow to forgive Riley for leaving, but tries to be understanding. She even alludes to Riley being her only friend at the academy, which further amplifies our understanding of Riley’s importance to her as well as the pain she felt when she left.

They explore for a while, trying on masks and joking around in a halloween store, having a race to be the first to destroy all of the windows on a car with bricks, and eventually reaching their destination- a power switch. Riley says that the military turned off power to different parts of the city, but by flipping this breaker they can bring power back to the mall. They turn the power on and just before heading out, Ellie forgives Riley for leaving and Riley apologizes for her words beforehand.

Cut back to future Ellie, who makes her way through flooded hallways and eventually finds a generator. She tries to get some gas for it, but this causes a horde of stalkers to come after her. With supplies and weaponry being extremely limited, this fight is really tense, but once it’s done she’s able to make her way across some support beams and avoid an electrified floor below before having a couple of stealth encounters with infected and eventually reaching the helicopter and finding a med kit.

    We cut back to the past where Ellie and Riley continue their journey through the now-powered up mall. They ride a carousel together, take pictures in the picture booth, and despite the arcade machines being broken, Riley describes the game to Ellie as she closes her eyes and mimics playing it. It’s really cute and goes to showcase a little bit of that childlike imagination and hope that Ellie still has inside her, with the game’s UI showcasing what Ellie imagines the game to be like.

    Unfortunately Riley explains that she brought Ellie to the mall to tell her that the fireflies plan to send her to another base, so she won’t be able to see her again for a while. And Ellie can’t join the fireflies because of a promise Marlene made to her parents. They’re both clearly hurt, with Ellie knowing that Riley’s passion is to help the fireflies, but not wanting to lose her, callously telling her to leave. 

Riley runs off and Ellie gives chase and when she catches up, Riley explains that she did all of this and risked her life just to see Ellie before she left, revealing that she got water guns for the two to play with, something Ellie’s always wanted. Ellie agrees to have a fight and then discuss after.
    There’s a quick shootout with the squirt guns before the two decide to have a game of search and destroy. It’s honestly really tough and I lost, but afterwards Ellie accepts Riley’s decision and despite not wanting to lose her best friend, she tells Riley she if she wants to she should go. Riley goes over to a speaker system and hooks up a walkman to play some music and as the two dance on the display counter, Riley removes her firefly pendant having realized that she’d rather be with Ellie than join them and we get the big moment- Ellie gives Riley a kiss.

Now, I’m not going to say this automatically gives Ellie a whole new dynamic as a character. In fact, I’d say the opposite- it changes nothing about her character aside from maybe making her relationship with Riley a little more tragic and giving some new context to their previous interactions, but I’d say that’s just as good as any other kind of representation. Much like with Bill, the team have a gay character in a time where that was incredibly rare, and they made her an excellently written character whose entire personality wasn’t about their sexual orientation. In other words it’s not really something to commend Naughty Dog for, but it makes for a cute relationship between the characters.

Just then the store gets swarmed by a group of runners and before the girls begin to run we cut back to modern day. Ellie escapes from the teetering helicopter and encounters some straggling hunters and more infected. It’s actually really cool because with a well-placed brick you can set the two groups against each other, lowering their numbers. It’s easily the most memorable gameplay mechanic out of this DLC. She encounters a few more hunters in large numbers, with one attempting to bust the lock and reach Joel. This puts the entire encounter on a time limit, which is a great way to shake things up. Part way through the sequence, more infected swarm the place and with their help, Ellie eventually reaches Joel with the supplies. 

We cut back to Ellie and Riley as they run from the horde. Just as they’re about to escape, a ladder breaks and Riley jumps down to protect Ellie from a runner. She then gets attacked before Ellie saves her and the two realize they’ve both been infected.

There’s a quick cut back to future Ellie as she prepares to stitch up Joel’s wound, then we switch back as the girls discuss their options, either suicide or waiting until they turn together. They agree to spend their final moments together as we get a montage of Ellie fixing up Joel and dragging him out of the mall from the horse and the credits roll.

Now compared to the main game the DLC isn’t much to write home about. Riley and Ellie have a cute relationship and it does fill a gap in the main story, but given that we already knew the ending of both parts, the story lacked a bit of that tension present in the main game. The new backstory for Ellie is neat and even explains some of her survivor’s guilt since Riley probably would have been fine if Ellie hadn’t fallen from the ladder. As I said earlier it’s worth playing and I like the characters and some of the new mechanics, but it doesn’t really stand out in its own right.

Conclusion

    But with that my analysis of The Last of Us comes to an end. As stated in the beginning, I can’t objectively say this game is one of the best games ever made. It has some dated elements, combat encounters that feel less natural and more obligatory, really cliche story beats, and some bugs and glitches that occasionally combine with slightly clunky mechanics to make things more frustrating than they need to be. Most of these are either minor nitpicks or extremely rare occurrences, but they are genuine criticisms of the game.

No game is perfect, but I do genuinely think this is one title that damn near anyone who’s interested in video games should play. Nearly every fault I just listed is completely buried under everything that the game does right. And above all else I’ll always hold it up as a prime example of why video games should be treated as works of art.

    Story-wise, this is a game about relationships. It’s a game that asks the player a simple question: how far are you willing to go for the people that you love? Yes, the framing of the story is cliche, especially for the time it was released, but what it does within that framework is completely original and masterfully executed.

It builds these characters so well over the course of its runtime that many have been debating what they’d do in Joel’s position ever since. It’s a game that stays with you and manages to be fun, engaging, consistently impressive and surprising throughout.

    And while the story is definitely the part of the game that most people tend to focus on, I think many forget how much fun the game is to play and how well that gameplay manages to both enhance the story being told and be fun in its own right. The two form a symbiotic relationship and build upon one another to make both integral to the game’s success. 

The back and forth of combat and stealth is emphasized by the back and forth of story and gameplay. It feels like anything can happen at any time, but the game does a fantastic job of making players forget about the tension with the casual conversations in between, preventing players from growing numb to it over time while combining additional story details with downtime, which is a brilliant way to ensure the game is always engaging, which is why to me, The Last of Us is a classic, an absolute masterpiece, and one of my favorite games ever made.

    And with that I’d like to thank you all for watching. I really hope you enjoyed the video and I’d love to hear your take on what I’ve said and your opinion on this new sequential retrospective style in the comments down below. I’ll be covering The Last of Us Part 2 in my next video in a few weeks so be sure to keep an eye out for that. Trust me, I have a lot to say on what is easily the most controversial game released in years. That said, be sure to subscribe to see more videos, thanks again for watching and I hope you all have a mighty nifty day today!