The Last of Us: Game Diaries, Part III
There was a lot of dying. Survival is hard.
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I don’t have much to say about the gameplay that I haven’t said in previous game diaries. This third play session was mostly about trying to make it to the next checkpoint and needless to say, it wasn’t easy. Story-wise, not much happened. Joel needs a truck, but first he needs parts. Before he can get parts, he needs to cross the suburbs. The suburbs are now as full of infected as they once were with people. There was a lot of dying. Survival is hard.
It makes me wonder what people are out there having babies in the midst of the apocalypse. Even without factoring in Ellie’s Cordyceps immunity, her existence is a miracle.
Shortly after Joel and Tess start the process of smuggling Ellie out of the city, they’re stopped by a patrol. Ellie helps the group escape by stabbing one of the soldiers in the leg, and while players have previously heard some of her more colorful language, it’s the first look at how scrappy she really is. Naughty Dog is incredibly skilled at letting you know who characters are right away, and it makes subsequent characterization rewarding and interesting.
I keep returning to the moment in the Capitol Building where Tess says, “We’re shitty people, Joel,” and Joel says, harshly, “No, we are survivors.” They say this like those are mutually exclusive things. Joel’s insistence that he is a survivor first and foremost is an interesting insight into his personality. It’s too quick a denial; in that moment you understand Joel’s guilt for surviving as long as he has, especially without Sarah. You understand that he does, in fact, feel guilt for the maybe-probably-not-so-nice things he has done in order to survive.
Like the rest of the game, the suburbs are linear. Players have to stealth through a string of backyards and homes that are, of course, chock-full of infected. It’s necessary to get to the high school, where there may or may not be a working car battery (spoiler, there’s not) and a boss fight (spoiler, there is). The last house is suspiciously full of supplies — foreshadowing the aforementioned boss — and is the most explorable of any in the neighborhood.
Walking through the house’s upper floor, players learn a little more about what the onset of the Cordyceps virus was like, something that is largely unknown to the player because of the twenty-year time skip at the beginning of the game. In a child’s room (a young child, judging by the decor) you can read about the kid’s aunt dying, being forced to get rid of pets, and the family making plans to escape. When Joel turns away from the diary, Ellie is standing there. Players can trigger a conversation with her, in which she breaks Joel’s command to never talk about Tess and apologizes for her death.
Each feels survivor’s guilt in their own way. It’s a feeling that is often intensified by the sheer emptiness of The Last of Us’s environments. Finding notes people left for their loved ones starts to make even me, a real human person, feel guilty about fictional lives cut short. It may be nonsensical, but it’s an effective storytelling mechanism. I don’t feel the level of survivor’s guilt Ellie feels, but as witness to Tess’s death I understand it.
The family in the house almost certainly didn’t make it to a quarantine zone. When you wander into the master bedroom, there’s a neat stack of suitcases tucked into the corner. When you wander back downstairs, you notice a play mat set up for an infant.
Having control over a character forges an intrinsic connection between the player and that character. It’s why Sarah’s death felt so painful, and it’s why we care whether Joel lives or dies. Ellie is an outsider — a child and an insolent one at that, a liability to characters we’ve come to care about. Ellie is also resourcefully stab-happy and desperate to be useful. For the most part, this means she does what the adults tell her to do, but in safe zones she’s curious, outspoken, and engaged in the world around her.
Previously I wrote about how The Last of Us doesn’t reward you in the traditional sense. Rather, it offers characterization, plot development, and moments of beauty and peace to balance the graphic content present in the rest of the game. Seeing the sun rise over the Capitol Building, before was, in the larger context of the game, insignificant. It was also the first memorable moment of beauty in the game, and of Ellie acting like the child she is.
When you pause to think, “wow, what a beautiful sunrise,” and hear Ellie echo a similar sentiment, it brings you closer to her as a character. Her wonder is your wonder because the game offers moments like that so rarely. When Tess is bitten and Ellie feels guilt because she couldn’t have done anything, you share it with her. It’s an effective way to build player connections to the characters, and beyond survival, the connections are the point of the game because they’re what keep us human.
Next: The Last of Us: Game Diaries, Part IV >
I’m streaming The Last of Us on my Twitch channel. You can check out the Part III of the broadcast here.
