The Last of Us: the world after the end

With The Last of Us: the world after the end our weekly column continues # fridaynostalgia dedicated to retrogaming. Here is the story of an action game capable of redefining the narrative within the abused "zombie apocalypse" genre. A game capable of capturing the heart in the midst of violence. Just in the days when the world was amazed to admire the trailer for the second chapter, we tell you how it all began.

If you missed the previous articles dedicated to the retrogaming you can easily find them all at this link. You will find Final Fantasy, Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Winning Eleven and many other goodies collected just for you!

When, in 1968, Rosemary gave birth to the infamous "Night of the Living Dead", probably not even he could imagine the extent of the phenomenon he was starting. The zombies, monsters borrowed from legends Haitian voodoo, entered their new iconic form of resurrected dead in perennial search for fresh human flesh to devour. Over the years, zombies have become, from time to time, a metaphor for the Bolshevik enemy, for consumerism capable of transforming people into "walking Dead“, Of the fear of the different in all its forms.

Over the years, even the zombies have evolved, becoming as fast and violent as in the films of Danny Boyle, or organized and capable of simple thoughts in their Romerian parable. The series "The Walking Dead“, (Taken from a very successful comic) in 2010 completely shifted the center of the narrative. Wandering monsters began to pay attention to the real monsters, or the surviving human beings. On this new narrative line the house N, in 2013, would have produced one of the greatest videogame masterpieces of all time: that The Last of Us able to mark an entire generation of players starting from a literature saturated with these issues. How did they do it? We will try to explain it in this article.

Joel's story ...

It all begins on an unspecified night, during one of the first stages of the infection that would have condemned mankind. The father of the family Joel, in the midst of the chaos of the town where he lives, he tries to rescue himself and his little daughter Sarah. Overcome dangers and infected, in a succession of emotions and action, when the critical situation seems to have passed, Joel helplessly witnesses the death of his daughter at the hands of a zealous military, who had been ordered to shoot down anything that stood in front of him. He is thus catapulted into 2033, far from this episode destined to mark our protagonist forever.

Never recovered from the disappearance of his daughter, Joel has become a smuggler, able to sneak out of the city centers structured in real military dictatorships, fortified and guarded. Outside the world has gone into ruin and nature is slowly taking back its streets, cities and buildings. Moving around inhabited centers is not easy due to the military presence, while outside monsters of all kinds infest the areas, making the life of those looking for resources a nightmare. In this bleak scenario, to Joel and his partner Tess he is given a task that will change his life forever.

… And Ellie's

During one of his missions Joel comes in contact with Marlene, leader of the "lights". An armed resistance against the current military dictatorship. Marlene entrusts Joel with the task of taking a girl named out of town Ellie, a task that Joel accepts only at Tess's insistence. During their journey, Joel will discover that the child has been infected but, unlike everyone else, she does not exhibit the symptoms of the mutation. There may be within her body a cure able to restore hope to humanity. Joel and Ellie begin a journey across North America, moving from one base of the Lights together, trying to survive the military, gangs and monsters that haunt those lands, looking for a resistance that may no longer exist.

What began as a job, accepted for pure gain, becomes a bond, a reason for living. Joel finds in Ellie the daughter she had lost, while Ellie finds, for the first time in her life, a father to take care of her. Their relationship takes over everything else, which becomes just a background to the story of this unusual family. In the spring the two finally reach the last base of the Lights, where the doctors take care of the girl to extract a cure from it. When Joel finds out that the girl she would not have survived at the operation, he completely loses his reason. She kills the leader of the lights and any soldier in between, taking her away and telling her that they really wouldn't need her. Joel tells her that there were already other people immune and that the Lights had long since given up seeking a remedy. The ending is as dramatic as it is full of love. The love of a father who is willing to sacrifice the whole of humanity and to lie to the one he loves, to preserve her future.

A tense gameplay ...

The Last of Us is a third person action horror. We take on the role of Joel and Ellie in the various missions. Joel is very strong, uses almost all weapons and is skilled in combat body to body, he has a high waist and getting the best of him isn't easy at all. Ellie, on the other hand, is a child, she is very quiet, uses mostly bladed weapons and is skilled with the bow. She knows how to defend herself when cornered, but she is not a fighter in the true sense of the term. They both have strengths and weaknesses, both of which are necessary to resolve various situations and continue in the story. Fighting with Ellie is totally different than fighting with Joel. Often to overcome obstacles we will find ourselves a see them collaborate, in a series of scenes that increase the affinity between the two.

Monsters are varied, from simple ones runner, humans recently infected and able to still see and move at great speed, ai stalker, more aggressive and dangerous than runners who usually hide to attack their victims. Then there are the clicker, now blind, but endowed with a very fine hearing with which they identify enemies. These monsters are very resistant to damage and killing them is a feat. Finally there are the blower, the toughest and most dangerous monsters in the game, practically deadly in close combat. As if that were not enough the world is populated by bands of bandits, hunters, soldiers, always ready to kill others to steal equipment and supplies. Surviving humans is almost more difficult than facing the hordes of monsters.

… And exciting moments

What The Last of Us is truly perfect in is in the wisdom with which the various moments of the game are structured narration. We move from phases of pure action to moments in which the stories of Joel and Ellie are the masters. Moments of memories, of emotions, of sharing. The game alternates some mechanics stealth, in which you have to hide and kill enemies without being discovered, at moments when the adrenaline skyrockets, making us find ourselves in situations capable of hitting us straight to the heart. All this has turned out to be a journey into a paternal feeling, a close fight to save and give a better future to the people we love.

This narrative power, which finds its apex in the writing of the two protagonists, has managed to transform a video game with mechanics already seen and reviewed, based on themes seen and reviewed into something unique, exciting and never taken for granted or trivial. A respectable technical sector was the icing on the cake. Admiring a sunset, a ride or a snowfall, through the eyes of the two protagonists, gave us moments of pure poetry, something that really made us find "beauty" in a world that is now lost.

Some curiosities

In the expansion "Left Behind”We will find ourselves living two episodes linked solely to little Ellie. In the first of her we will discover her childhood, between an orphanage, escapes with her best friend, up to the episode that led her to become infected and lose the one who until then had been her only family. In the second instead we will have to try to clean Joel after a bad fall. We will need bandages, kits and medicines and to get them we will have to go beyond our limits. Much greater dangers await us to save Joel.

The idea behind “The Last of Us” was born during an episode of the series BBC Planet Earth. This episode showed an ant infected with a Cordyceps. This particular fungus chooses certain insects as carriers for its spores. It manages to induce a state of psychotropic alteration thanks to which these animals end up dying where the fungus can thrive. The creators of the game wondered what would have happened if these spores had chosen humans as carriers. Hence the idea of ​​ainfected humanity from spores, in which nearly 60% of the world's population has died and those who are left struggle and live on a tightrope.