The Last of Us: Game Diaries, Part II
Walls in The Last of Us aren’t just physical, they’re emotional, too.
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Tess is dead. I wondered when it would happen. Like Sarah, Tess’s death felt inevitable, never an “if” but a “when.” I don’t know that any death would truly surprise me in the context of the narrative. Rather, the surprise is how fast it all happens. Tess is there and gone in the space of seconds, just like Sarah.
I talked about control in my first game diary, and Tess’s death is another good example of how the game controls players. It’s a difficult loss to play through for that reason. Part of getting Ellie to the Capitol Building — the supposed rendezvous point where the Fireflies (a revolutionary militia group searching for an infection cure) will take over escorting Ellie to their lab — entails fighting or sneaking through grimy, semi-destroyed rooms full of Infected. At any point, if your party is discovered by a Runner or Clicker, Tess or Ellie can start to lose health. In other words, Joel (the player) has agency in whether they live or die.
Arriving at the Capitol Building immediately erases that agency. Going inside the building triggers a cutscene where the group discovers the Fireflies who were supposed to meet them have been killed. Tess becomes frantic; Joel, reluctant to take Ellie any further. And then Ellie realizes Tess became infected.
The Last of Us always shows Tess as the one in control of the situation. Even though we as players are sometimes responsible for keeping her alive, Tess has always had agency in her own story. I, as Joel, have some agency in how I decide to handle enemy encounters and where I go. The use of a cutscene to relay this information takes that away. Tess was infected in the brief period where Joel was separated from her and Ellie. There is nothing you or Joel could have done to change that.
Tess is the one who steers Joel through the opening supply retrieval mission, the one who kills their supplier Robert, the one who accepts the mission to escort Ellie to the Capitol Building. Joel is her muscle, her backup, content to live within what is now familiar to him. I liked that the game gave her agency to the very end. The Capitol Building is where Tess’s story ends, and when she decides she wants to die at the hands of the military, there’s nothing we can do to stop her. It’s defiance in the face of the inevitable. Tess chooses not to become a shambling fungus person. She chooses to die, defiant, to buy time for Joel and Ellie and help them survive.
I think Tess’s final moments are the closest we get to knowing anything real about her. She’s uncharacteristically honest with Joel. Most conversations between her and Joel are flirty banter or quick-witted jokes. They don’t talk about the past or anything outside of the moment. It’s heartbreaking to watch Tess’s facade crack, to watch her plead with Joel to keep Ellie safe. It says a lot about the game’s content that this might be the most optimism we’ve seen from any character. Despite her hard exterior, Tess really believes that Ellie could be integral to finding a cure to the infection. She needs Joel to live, and by sacrificing herself, Tess gives her last instructions and maintains her agency. For a brief moment, I worried the game would make me make Joel kill her, but Tess was far more practical than that.
This is a lot to process from a three-minute cutscene.
It left me reeling, confused, and upset. It was meant to. Tess’s last words — a steely “Just fucking go” directed at Joel — add to the rising sense of desperation. When the game gave me control again, I ran for what was familiar. First supplies, then up the stairs and out. It felt like being on autopilot, knowing that the only other character I could reliably trust was busy dying in the next room. I can’t speak to how this would feel in real life, but in the game it was brutally emotional and effective. As with Sarah’s death, there’s no time to mourn or look back.
I mentioned this in my previous game diary, but one of the ways The Last of Us exerts control over players and gives the game a sense of urgency is by not giving players the option to go back. In many places, a threshold like a drop or locked door prevents you from returning to a previous area. In this way, each area is broken down into a series of “rooms” you must solve in order to advance in the game. Once Joel and Ellie clear the Capitol Building and a derelict subway station, they’re outside of the city, which is a stark change from concrete rubble. The area seems enormous because the size of the room isn’t obvious. For the first time, I didn’t feel confined to a cramped space.
It was also the first time I really felt Joel’s age; standing in the woods amplifies the feeling of losing Tess and makes you conscious of just how many people Joel has lost. Joel and Ellie successfully accomplished her last just-fucking-go directive, but it has also left him lost and directionless. His response to loss is to shut down and not talk about it. He can’t, if he wants to live, but even this is telling. The game’s walls aren’t just physical, they’re emotional. Right now, Joel is still making decisions based on what’s familiar, but we’re rapidly approaching the point where familiar will cease to exist. I’m interested in seeing if and how leaving Boston breaks those walls down. The storytelling seems too purposeful for the game to maintain those boundaries, especially as Joel and Ellie head vaguely west toward the Firefly lab and probably toward Joel’s hometown in Texas.
I talked a little bit about the lack of fun and reward in the game in my last post. I still wouldn’t call The Last of Us rewarding in any traditional sense, but it did feel easier to make it through this part of the game. The difficulty and utter bleakness of the city environments made me appreciate the environments so much more. Watching the sun rise over the Capitol Building, stepping into the woods for the first time, and seeing running water was a shocking reminder of life. It was breathtaking because it was so inconsistent with the other environments. The peaceful moments bring a noticeable balance to the game.
I think Ellie and I felt similar senses of wonder in reaching a part of the city we’ve never been to. Where Joel has at least made it outside of the city to get supplies from Bill, an ally and smuggler, Ellie is in entirely new territory. In this way, I think the game fosters a sense of empathy with both main characters. We’ve been with Joel during difficult losses and understand why he does what he does, and I think similarly Ellie and the player are approaching the unknown. It makes connecting with her character a little easier, and I’m looking forward to seeing where the game goes as everyone gets further out of their comfort zone.
Next: The Last of Us: Game Diaries, Part III >
I’m streaming The Last of Us on my Twitch channel. You can check out the Part II of the broadcast here.
