After making its name with cartoony action-platformers –Crash Bandicoot in the 90s and Jak and Daxter in the early aughts— Naughty Dog moved in a realistic-looking, cinematic direction during the PS3 generation and hasn’t looked back yet.
Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune kicked off the transition and served as the opening installment of Sony’s biggest franchise of last generation. Drake’s Fortune, and the three main-series Uncharted installments that followed, were propulsive, globe-trotting fun; the console equivalents of a big-budget action-movie. The games were defined by blazing gunfights, jaw-dropping set pieces, clever puzzle moments, and top-notch cut scenes. Uncharted captures the magic of the Indiana Jones trilogy, with a penchant for the supernatural straight out of Temple of Doom’s playbook.
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If the Uncharted games were Indiana Jones, Naughty Dog’s next IP was The Walking Dead. But, better.
The Last of Us follows Joel, a smuggler working in a post-apocalyptic and militarized Boston, who is tasked by rebel group, the Fireflies, with transporting fourteen-year old, Ellie, to a rendezvous point at the Massachusetts State House. Joel discovers that, two weeks prior, Ellie was bitten by one of the infected, but never succumbed to the spore-and-bite transmitted disease that has turned the majority of humanity into violent, fungus-covered monsters.
But, narratively, that’s putting the cart before the horse. Although, Joel is the game’s main playable character, The Last of Us opens with the player controlling Joel’s daughter, Sarah, as she and Joel try to escape town on the night of the outbreak. As the father and daughter attempt to flee on foot, Sarah is shot and killed by a soldier following orders, and, when the main story picks up a few years later, Joel is still heartbroken and hardened.
Ellie becomes for Joel what Sarah was; she’s roughly the same age, smart, funny, and naïve—just like his daughter. The emotional core of the game, and its driving force, is the relationship between these two characters. Naughty Dog artfully, and subtly, draws us in. At one point, Joel and Ellie are separated when, while using an out-of-order elevator to climb to the next floor, the cord breaks sending Joel all the way to the basement. As Joel yells up to Ellie and tells her to stay put, I felt separation anxiety. That sense of unease stayed with me until I made it back to her.
The smaller this game goes the better. Probably what most sold the relationship between Joel and Ellie for me was the animation that shows Ellie wrestling an enemy off of Joel. It’s repeated throughout the game, whenever Joel can't punch or shoot his way free. Joel struggles to fend for himself; Ellie yells, “Get off of him!” and knocks the NPC off.
Ellie protects Joel—in that animation and in a much bigger way in the back half of the game— though Joel sees in Ellie a stand-in for his daughter; someone in need of protection. The questionable—and unquestionably brutal—decisions Joel makes at the end of the game are all meant to protect Ellie.
Joel’s decision to protect Ellie fuels the game’s polarizing final moments. It's a testament to the greatness of The Last of Us that it's ending deserves to be debated alongside classics like The Grapes of Wrath and Citizen Kane.
A week ago, one of my room mates asked me what I thought the best game of all time was. For me, that list formed years (maybe even a decade) ago and I haven't seen any reason to change it in the intervening years: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time in first, with Super Mario 64 close behind.
On the strength of it's storytelling, characterization, and fun stealth gameplay, The Last of Us has disrupted my list. It's the greatest game of last generation, and, maybe--just maybe--the greatest game of all time.
But that, like the ending, is open for debate.
