So, yeah, that’s your reward for playing the game: Joel wins, you don’t. The ending is cynical and ambiguous, but befitting a game that mostly traffics in gray areas. It’s a spectacular conclusion at that, understated, cathartic, and, most importantly, earned by all the events that have led up to it. It also doesn’t hurt that it’s an actual ending: as Kirk Hamilton laid out a few weeks ago, the finality The Last of Us offers is uncommon in the sequel-driven industry of gaming, one of the many other forward-thinking ideas the game presents for both the industry, and storytelling within it. (In all this, I neglected to mention that the game even finds time to elegantly include a gay character without A) making them a caricature, or B) overemphasizing the detail just for the sake of making a big deal out of it. For an industry that usually won’t touch non-heteronormative sexuality with a twenty-foot pole, that’s a big little win, one of many The Last of Us brings to the table.)
Is it, then, the Citizen Kane of video games, as some are trying to argue? Well, Kane is basically a perfect movie, and The Last of Us, for all its successes, still has plenty of faults. The gameplay has too much action in it, the AI can be disastrous, and the story’s connective plotting is haphazard at times. All the same though, The Last of Us might prove to be something better than the Citizen Kane of gaming as it is: it might mark a big step towards gaming as it could be, gaming where it’s not just the little guys who can get away with building a game around a story, and restraint is a choice, not the result of running out of funding. When just trying to move the medium a few inches forward presents a huge business risk, it’s a sad indictment of the state of gaming, so for making that effort, and succeeding on many of its more progressive ideas, Naughty Dog has my respect, and thanks.
But it wouldn’t be true to the spirit of The Last of Us to end things on a positive note; it’s an apocalyptic game for an apocalyptic time in the industry, and will most likely go down as a glitch inside the construct of video games as a whole. Others may try to imitate its success, but it’s difficult to envision this combination of writing, performances, and gameplay (not to mention Gustavo Santaolalla’s incredible score) all coming together again as a major tentpole release. With so much money, and so many jobs riding on the line, it’s hard to blame publishers and developers for doing whatever it takes to just survive in this industry, instead of working to better the medium. Bu that’s a Joel mindset, and it’s one that inspires the same feeling of quiet melancholy you get from playing The Last of Us. In lots of ways, this industry is in desperate need of more Ellies, and less Joels.
