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Naughty Dog’s “The Last of Us” is a beautifully crafted video game series with a story that puts its players on an emotional rollercoaster. The video game was titled “Game of the Year” two years in a row, with its sequel winning the same award in 2020. It has also won a multitude of smaller awards such as Best Narrative, Best Audio Design, Most Anticipated Game and Best Action/Adventure. The game lives up to its reputation, with breathtaking visuals and an extensive plot.
It should be known that spoilers are contained ahead. The story follows our main characters, Ellie and Joel, as they try to survive a post-apocalyptic world filled with zombies, or “clickers” as they are called in the game. Ellie is special however, as she is immune. Both games follow characters struggling to survive, and show how a society might function in a dystopian world. People want a cure, factions emerge, groups fight for resources and relationships are strained.
This, of course, only scratches the surface of the game’s deep and complex story, but the main focus of this article is to explore Ellie’s character and her emotional downfall.
A major plot point is the death of Joel. In the second game, Joel is taken out by the Washington Liberation Front, a well-armed, militaristic group. Joel’s death affects Ellie immensely. It completely ruins her; She saw Joel as a father-figure, and in turn, Joel saw her as his own child. This relationship between them caused complications throughout the story, especially when Ellie believed Joel would take his parental position too far. Despite their arguments and fights, they were extremely close and connected by their experiences in the first game, more than either of them were brave enough to admit.
Abby, the character who killed Joel, becomes the keystone of Ellie’s revenge. Ellie blames herself for his death and goes out to avenge Joel. This is an extensive part of the second game, and Naughty Dog portrays someone blinded by revenge in a hauntingly gorgeous way by making the player wonder if Ellie is going too far in the name of justice.
Throughout the story, Ellie is feared, violent, persistent and quite the badass. She doesn’t hesitate, has a reputation of being dangerous and is all around brutal. Her relentlessness is a feature that harms her companions, as well as herself. She doesn’t let herself slow down and fully loses herself in her quest for vengeance. I think this is such an important part of the game, as it shows what grief can do to someone. Ellie’s gradual descent into obsession with not only Abby, but also retribution, doesn’t become apparent until it’s too late, and the line between her and the “enemy” becomes blurred. Ellie’s morals and ideology become corrupt as she does things that an earlier Ellie deemed “inhumane.”
Throughout the game, Ellie is left guilty of her own actions, but unfortunately, drives her loved ones away. She is unable to let go of her hatred for those who killed Joel, leaving her with no one but herself to deal with the consequences and guilt. It is a cruel sort of irony that her biggest fear was ending up alone and that is exactly what happened by her own doing.
The bigger irony in the story, a part that I feel is what makes this game worth all the awards, is that Abby was only trying to do the same thing. Joel killed Abby’s father and Abby was avenging him. Abby and Ellie are two sides of the same coin, and as you play as both characters throughout the game, one could argue that Ellie herself is the villain. Ellie’s character reflects the people she spends the entire game hating. It creates a complex dynamic and makes the player think about “justified” revenge. It humanizes Abby, making Ellie’s character all the more convoluted.
This being said, Ellie still had a softer side that was portrayed beautifully in the game. She broke down, wrestled with herself over the loss of Joel and went through a process of coming to terms with her actions. Moreover, she made jokes. A fan favorite part of Ellie’s character in the game is her corny jokes and puns. It creates a somewhat uncanny dynamic between violence and light-heartedness. At the beginning of the game, shortly after Joel’s death, Ellie is seen crying into one of Joel’s jackets in his empty house. It is one of the sadder scenes in the game, but it shows Ellie’s humanness. She is still a person and feels deeply. Ellie is shown loving people constantly, from her partner, Dina, to a close friend, Jesse.
We know she is capable of love and happiness, and that’s what makes her descent all the more devastating. She is shown shaking and trembling after a violent action, with people by her side to calm her and tend to her. The eventual loss of this support system pushes her deeper into obsession, with no one able to pull her out of a hole she only digs deeper into. There are many parallels throughout the game. One scene is shown with Ellie surrounded by a lively group in a colorful house, and later the house is grey and depressing, with Ellie alone.
At the end of the game, Ellie gets as much closure as someone like her can get. She and Abby fight, both with severe injuries. While Ellie defeats Abby, her memories of Joel resurface during this extremely intense moment, and she lets Abby leave. I see this as a metaphor of Ellie letting go of her resentment and allowing herself to finally feel the emotions she has kept in, due to her blind rage. Ellie finally sees the consequences of her actions and realizes how she drove her loved ones away in her pursuit. While depressing, it’s a grave reminder of how actions affect people directly, especially when we aren’t looking for it.
“The Last of Us” has many reminders for the real world about relationships, emotions and society. Ellie’s eventual acceptance of Joel’s death, her actions and the world she lives in bring the game to its multifaceted ending. Ellie’s loss of humanity and herself during her pursuit of justice makes her one of many characters with conflicting sides. Naughty Dog deserves all its praise. They have created an amazing game with beautifully complicated characters, and they are only getting better.