From there on out, the two are virtually inseparable, even if they are at first skeptical of one another, forced together by circumstances in a world where trust and faith are in extremely short supply. Joel makes a business arrangement early in the adventure to help transport Ellie across what remains of the United States, a wasteland marked with boundless wildlife alongside cities and towns ruthlessly reclaimed by nature. Indeed, calling him the main character is true only to an extent, because it’s his companion, a young girl named Ellie, who truly steals the show.
Joel can be cold and ruthless, but those around him have the propensity to be far worse.Īs riveting as Joel is, he isn’t the only character of consequence in The Last of Us. In fact, one of the great ironies of The Last of Us is that you’ll be pulling for him no matter how dark things get, or how violent his actions are. It’s fascinating to think about how he’s evolved since the world crumbled around him, and even if he does what’s necessary to stay alive – including stealing and murdering – it’s hard to fault him for it. The Last of Us takes place in 2033, so the regular world Joel harkens back to on occasion is one you and I understand. In the time it took me to beat The Last of Us, I came to care about Joel, and I became invested in his story, and the stories of those he meets along the way. He has a sharpness to him, but a tenderness, too, which he occasionally displays to his partner, a woman named Tess. He retains shreds of his humanity as best he can, considering the extraordinary circumstances he finds himself in. Occasionally haunted by his past but living in his dystopian present, Joel is surprisingly easy to root for. Joel does what’s necessary to stay alive, and in the ruined United States he travels around, his survival often means someone else’s untimely death. He takes odd jobs, acquires food, clothing, and shelter, and repeats the process endlessly, a process that only gets more arduous and desperate as time goes on. Joel remembers the world before the pandemic.Players are cast in the role of Joel, a grizzled and tired survivor stuck in a cycle any person could imagine finding oneself in two decades after the collapse of society. The 17 hours I spent playing through the campaign are among the most memorable I’ve ever spent with a game. I lost myself in Naughty Dog’s vision of a pandemic-ridden United States, in the characters that populate this unfortunate wasteland, and in their individual stories. It’s PlayStation 3’s best exclusive, and the entire experience, from start to finish, is remarkable.
It never slows down, it never lets up, and frankly, it never disappoints.
The Last of Us seamlessly intertwines satisfying, choice-based gameplay with a stellar narrative. The beauty of The Last of Us when compared to The Road, however, is that it’s fully interactive, complete with all of the vulnerability, uncertainty and perpetual insecurity such a situation inherently provides. It’s the story of the characters at hand, and those characters alone, at the center of both plots. Like The Road, The Last of Us is perpetually dangerous and unpredictable, and like The Road, what happened to get society to a point of rapid decay isn’t the focus. Both present a hopeless, post-apocalyptic situation navigated by two characters – an adult and a child – with nothing but absolute despair surrounding them. The Last of Us is a near-perfect analog for The Road, a literary masterpiece written by Cormac McCarthy.
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