The Last of Us: Game Diaries, Part I
The Last of Us isn’t fun. It’s still compelling.
The opening of The Last of Us is a night that has seemingly played out a thousand times: Twelve-year-old Sarah falls asleep on Joel, her father, after they both stay up way too late watching TV. Joel tucking Sarah into bed is a comfortable, familiar moment that lasts until an explosion in the distance rocks Sarah out of sleep. The game erupts into chaos, and nothing is the same ever again.
The introduction acts as a prologue to the main story. Players guide Sarah and then Joel as their town in Texas is overrun by its own citizens, many of whom have been infected with an illness that turns them mindlessly violent. The transition from playing as Sarah to playing as Joel is as simple as Joel scooping her into his arms, but it’s so smooth that I was still thinking about it the day after. It’s also the one of the first glimpses we get as players into just how temporary everything is.
In games, we rarely witness the apocalypse. Games like Horizon Zero Dawn and Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture turn you loose on the world only after the damage is done. As Joel and Sarah move through a downtown area, they’re met with tumultuous violence. It’s a shocking and graphic opening: Zombie-like Infected attack others with impunity and almost everything is on fire. The violence is excessive, but (in what I’ve played, at least) it felt purposeful in establishing the game’s tone and setting.
Sarah is shot and killed before she and Joel ever truly escape the chaos. I figured it was coming, partly because Sarah isn’t on the box art and partly because she’s a fragile-looking twelve-year-old. She’s not even wearing shoes when Joel shepherds her out of the house. When I played this part, Sarah’s lack of shoes felt utterly damning, like a doom counter in a Final Fantasy game. Even knowing it’ll happen, Sarah’s death is still surprising for its speed and emotional impact. Sarah is there and then she’s gone, and the sense of loss feels all the more profound because — even briefly — you were Sarah. And now you’re not. Killing female characters to drive a man’s narrative is a regrettably common event in fiction, but it doesn’t make Sarah’s death (and Joel’s grief) less weighty.
Violence in The Last of Us is extreme and gory and difficult to stomach. It also feels overall more purposeful than not, a violence that invites interrogation. As I play the game, I’m thinking about it constantly, trying to determine which course of action best guarantees my survival. It’s not an open world game where you run around slaughtering bandits because that’s just what you do. Killing people in The Last of Us isn’t the first resort, it’s the last. Melissa Brinks at Sidequest phrases it so neatly in saying, “Survival is the reward, not the violence itself.”
Whether you choose stealth or combat, The Last of Us exerts remarkable control over players. So far, I’m enjoying its linear design. It’s a narrative that’s meant to be experienced in a specific way. Sneaking past enemies versus killing them has no real narrative consequence and no real reward other than maybe you save some resources. This design reinforces storytelling above all else. The story isn’t yours or mine, it’s Joel’s. I can’t go back to areas I’ve already crossed to restock supplies (like I would in an open world game) because Joel wouldn’t do that. The game isn’t about what I want to do, it’s about what Joel does in the context of a larger narrative.
In the two hours I’ve spent playing The Last of Us, its linear design might be my favorite feature. I love open world games because I love exploring a rich environment and doing side quests, but what really draws me is narrative. One thing that bothers me about open world games is that, by design, there’s so much to do outside of the main quest that these games often have little sense of narrative urgency. I could address the impending destruction of my home or whatever, or I could do side quests for 40 hours. As a player, I’m rarely motivated to complete an open world game before the 70 or 80 hour mark. The Last of Us presents a focused story that, coupled with the desperation of the survival aspects, is compelling and yes, urgent.
Adding to the sense of urgency is that nothing seems safe. Every place feels temporary and every character expendable. I haven’t seen the same setting twice, and even in the first two hours of gameplay Naughty Dog didn’t shy away from killing influential characters. Resource management is also extremely important. My usual tactic of running in and firing off shots until the last Infected hits the floor would serve me poorly. I might fire all five of my bullets and find six or two or zero in return. On the whole, I feel the game wants me to survive — there are usually resources in combat-heavy areas, even if I have to get a little creative about using them — but it won’t be easy.
One other thing that really interested me about the inventory system in the game is its hard limit. I can only pick up so many shivs or med kits at one time, likely just enough to get me to the next supply. It’s a minor but intriguing contribution to The Last of Us’s approach to survival: Take what you can and nothing more. The limited inventory means living takes a dogged effort. Out of any of the games I’ve played, The Last of Us might be the best at conveying what the characters are feeling and going through. Running out of supplies or being overwhelmed by Infected heightens the tension and desperation I feel as a player.
The Last of Us is a type of game I’m very much not used to because it’s not a game I would play without significant prodding. I don’t love horror. I’m weak on stealth. Games that require high levels of resource management — and by proxy, survival games — make me anxious. By all accounts, I shouldn’t like the game.
Gruesome violence, tension, and desperation mean that the game isn’t really fun or rewarding in the traditional sense. There is no cool armor. Weapons are whatever piece of sturdy trash Joel plucks from the ground. If survival is the reward, the closest thing to fun is unlocking a cutscene or discovering a piece of background information. Even so, The Last of Us is compelling to me because I have put so much effort into keeping Joel alive that I want to know if my effort, in the end, mattered. Despite Joel and Ellie’s tough exteriors and murderous tendencies, the tightly controlled narrative has established them as extremely human in a world that is becoming less so. And despite my initial misgivings about the game and genre, I care about them.
Next: The Last of Us: Game Diaries, Part II >
I’m streaming The Last of Us on my Twitch channel. You can check out the first broadcast here.
