I Guess No Matter How Hard You Try, You Can’t Escape Your Past.
The best post-apocalypse story of all time; and the main reason I picked up a console after a ~10-year hiatus. The Last of Us is a beautiful and harrowing tale of survival, and is filled to the brim with fleshed-out characters and lore.

The game, despite being completely linear, has exceptional and vast levels to explore and leaves the player wanting to check every corner for resources or bits of lore. Reading notes, listening to audio logs, or simply taking in the environment lets the player gain bits of insight into the events leading up to the outbreak, and what takes place after; making for great world-building. I genuinely believe that I could have completed this game in 1/10 of the time it took me if I hadn't been so immersed in the rich environment and detailed level design.

Joel and Ellie work amazing in tandem, and provide a plethora of stellar dialogue whether through spontaneous events or in cutscenes. Watching their bond grow as they further their trek was the most satisfying part of the story. Joel’s personality and nods to his past also justify his actions through the game, and make his decisions feel in-character. It’s clear that Joel’s bravery and steeled-for-survival attitude rubs off on Ellie throughout their journey, and gives her the courage to fight on during the Winter arc.

The only downside of TLOU is the rather repetitive puzzles. Go here, get a ladder, move it here, start a generator, blah blah blah gets rather stale after doing it for the fifth time. Beyond that, the combat feels great and the game provides a wide array of weapons for your arsenal. Each level offers different ways to handle combat, whether it be stealth or a shoot-em-up style approach. Managing resources, which I thought would be a tedious task, was actually a very rewarding process and encouraged me to search areas I might not have otherwise.

After watching HBO’s adaptation and reading Cormac Mcarthy’s The Road, I knew I had to give this game another shot and I was not disappointed.

The Last of Us is well-executed for what it is. Effectively the first of its kind in a generation of gaming rewarding cinematic narratives delivered in prestigious AAA realism, the harsh post-apocalypse puts on the pressure with a linear but immersive and distinctly survivalist experience. But perhaps as a consequence of the hype and awards it received over the last decade, it turns out I am not the audience for the exact way it tries to blend gameplay and story–it feels like oil and water to me.

I love video games as a storytelling canvas, for the unique language they are able to take advantage of. I love Psychonauts, Half-Life, and Undertale for trusting the player to engage with the depth of their worldbuilding when it is baked deeply into the game design itself. You don't really get enough in The Last of Us that utilizes the gameplay language meaningfully for narrative effectiveness like those games do. The game’s story IS good, that much is fact. Rarely, however, can TLoU deliver any piece of it in a way only a video game can.

Outcomes are all predetermined by TLoU’s set path, dampening its themes about the cycle of violence (a topic Undertale’s player freedom engages with more intimately since you can affect the narrative by choosing murder or mercy for yourself.) Extraneous worldbuilding is typically found only in written notes, a far cry from Psychonauts demonstrating who its side characters are with the intramental level designs that represent them, right down to even the collectibles therein. Ellie is typically invincible, taking away from the stakes of protecting her as you bring her across America. Compare that to Ashley from Resident Evil 4, who isn’t even close to being as much of a character, yet you feel more need to actively defend her since she has a health bar and a failstate for it dropping to 0.

All these simpler decisions TLoU makes lend to it having broad appeal, but in trying to please the many, it fails my expectations about what video games are truly capable of. I enjoyed subversion of numerous established functions in the late-game, where you're made to think you'll be going through the motions, but enlightened by character-informed twists instead. But it feels like too little too late. I dunno. Frontloading the game with status quo and saving subversion for the eleventh hour could be genius, actually, but it doesn’t come across that way after the gameplay basics got repetitive and eventually felt like a slog.

I hear the HBO show is a good adaptation! Looking forward to watching that with my mom. Having a version of this story that doesn’t bog itself down for me by falling short of expectations of its artistic medium ought to be nice.