On the eve of The Last of Us Remastered, I decided to repost my thoughts on playing the original game for the first time on the PS3.
These days, most video games are spoiled before they come out because people can get a hold of them before they’re officially released, thanks to things like eBay and stores who don’t keep track of street dates and the like. I had a plan when I got The Last of Us. Work that day, go home, and not go to sleep until I finished. I knew I could do it, too. I had a bunch of Monsters and I was ready to rumble.
Or so I thought. The opening sequence for the game took me and shook me in about a thousand different directions. In every game trailer, in every behind the scenes video for the game, we’d never had any allusions to seeing a younger Joel in the game. But there he was, leading a seemingly okay life in small town Texas. With his daughter, who looked nothing like the girl we’d gotten to know so far thanks to the same trailers and behind the scenes videos.
My heart began to sink as I played, knowing this wasn’t going to end well for her. The weight in my chest soon matched Joel’s when Sarah caught a bullet in her stomach and soon died. I thought I was going to have to stop playing right there for a moment, but, like Joel, I soldiered on to the best 13 hours I’d ever spent on a video game. I laughed, groaned at Ellie’s bad jokes, marveled at the ‘what if’ world they created, and tried to whistle along with Ellie. When she was being chased by David and trapped in the restaurant that was on fire, I played that entire sequence thinking my heart was going to beat out of my chest because she had to be okay.
I couldn’t fail Ellie after not being able to protect Sarah.
The end of the game was one of the most talked about this year, and I didn’t even figure out why until a few weeks later. I hadn’t been able to pick up the game again; part of me didn’t want to. During my first play at the very end, I crouched next to the operating room door for a good twenty seconds or so, trying to steel myself for what was waiting for me. Did they already have her head cracked open? In that case, then what? Was I done? Was the game going to smash to black right here?
Thankfully, it wasn’t done, but I wasn’t ready for what was there, regardless. They were just preparing for surgery, but after 11 hours of playing, my nerves were on fire and I did the first thing that came to mind and shotgunned the doctor who was the closest to Ellie, as well as one of the nurses. (I later saw on a Let’s Play that you could scalpel the doctor, and the others didn’t get in your way of taking Ellie. Whoops.) The other cowarded in the corner, so I grabbed Ellie and started running for it. This is it, I thought. We’re going to make it.
Except I had no clue where I was going. The hallways were dark, and I was as frantic as Joel. When I missed one of the doors I had been looking for the first time and the Fireflies caught up to us, I panicked, thinking that’s how the story was supposed to go. I had failed, and now I was dead.
I’d never been as glad as I had been for a checkpoint. I got Ellie out of the hospital and we went back to Tommy’s. Did the game end on one big cliffhanger and would I have liked to see more? Absolutely. But that was also the glory of the ending. Everyone had their own interpretation of what ‘Okay’ meant. Would Ellie be okay? Or was she really not immune? Would the infection rear it’s ugly head years later?
I chose to believe in a hopeful ending, that yes, she would be okay, that she, mostly without knowing it, helped Joel to come to terms with his guilt, and in that same way, he’ll help her come to terms with her guilt of surviving Riley.
Or, I could be just an optimist. But I believe that was the real message of The Last of Us – hope. Not just enduring and surviving. Hoping.