Lot's Wife Edition 4

Lot’s Wife • Edition Four
The Last of Us - A Towering Wo
Words by Austin Bond
cw. violence, death, and SPOILERS
Our story opens on ‘Outbreak Day’, when a fungus outbreak has started to
infect (i.e. zombify) the human population. Our protagonist is Joel, a father
trying to escape the Texas suburbs with his young daughter, Sarah. He doesn’t
hesitate to shoot a rabid-looking man running towards her, and once on the
road, he ignores his hitchhiking neighbours; all that matters is his daughter.
Traffic stalled, the pair scramble through chaotic crowds and dodge the growing
numbers of ‘infected’. They make their way up the hills outside the town, Joel
carrying Sarah in his arms, before a US soldier halts them, rifle raised. Through
a little voice in his ear, the soldier receives a grim order, something about
‘controlling the perimeter’. The soldier challenges his superior for a moment:
‘She’s only a child, sir! They aren’t infected! Do I still… yes, sir.’ The soldier
readies his weapon. Joel realises what is happening, and in one motion dives to
the ground and pushes his daughter away from the line of fire.
He scrambles up. His brother has arrived in time to stop the soldier, but
something is terribly wrong. He hears her frightened sobs, sees where the bullet
passed through her. He clutches his dying daughter, and his panicked pleas turn
to raw sorrow.
This is the opening sequence of The Last of Us, a 2013 video game developed by
Naughty Dog Studios. In 15 breathless minutes, players form a deep emotional
connection with Joel and, as the player controlling his actions, feel the maw left
in his heart. From here, Naughty Dog Studios will expand its intense, characterdriven
storytelling, taking Joel – and the player – on a journey of hope and
redemption.
With rich characterisation and a morally complex narrative, The Last of Us
more than earns a place in the canon of great post-apocalyptic works. Indeed,
it is easy to see why Naughty Dog’s harrowing tale is often regarded as one of
the greatest video games of all time, heralded by fans as proof that games are as
much an artform as any other.
The main plot begins twenty years after the heartbreaking prologue, with most
of the population now ‘infected’. The world has been largely reclaimed by
nature, and the humans too have reverted to their base, wolfish ways. Most of
the world is left to anarchy, with pop-up juntas controlling disparate quarantine
zones challenged by a rebel faction known as the Fireflies. Joel is now a smuggler
in what remains of Boston, with the decrepit city and gloomy atmosphere
evoking Alfonso Cuaron’s Children of Men. The story takes shape when he is
tasked with smuggling a very different ‘package’: Ellie, a girl only slightly older
than Sarah. Ellie, he learns, is immune to the zombie-like infection. He must
safely transport her to Salt Lake City, where the Fireflies have scientists ready to
develop a vaccine. And so begins an odyssey across a ruined America, filled with
brutal zombies and even more brutal humans.
While there are plenty of brain-chomping obstacles to overcome, The Last of
Us is ultimately about the relationship between Joel and Ellie. Although he
initially views Ellie as nothing more than cargo, Joel’s cold demeanour thaws
over time and they form a close bond. In this regard, The Last of Us takes
influence from Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, foregrounding a father-child
relationship against a ruined Western landscape.
Playing as Joel, we too start to form a bond with Ellie. This is in part because
the relationship builds in real-time, unfolding naturally through dialogue as
you, the player, guide Joel through the world. For example, as you are climbing
through the rubbles of Pittsburgh, Ellie finds a joke-book, leading to the
following exchange:
Ellie: Okay, we need to lighten the mood. Ready? “It doesn’t
matter how much you push the envelope, it’ll still be stationary.”
Joel: What is that?
Ellie: It’s a joke book. No Pun Intended: Volume Too by Will
Livingston.
Joel (sighing): Let’s keep going.
Ellie: “A book just fell on my head, I only have myself to blame.”
Oh wait, I said it wrong! Hold on, let me read it again. “A book
just fell on my head... I only have my shelf to blame.»
Joel: That’s awful.
Ellie (playfully): You’re awful.
While there are various scares and set-pieces, the story never loses sight of this
relationship at the centre. Indeed, as their bond develops, it becomes clear that
Joel views Ellie as a surrogate for the daughter he lost, and a new opportunity to
find meaning in this harsh world.
Ellie is the key for a cure, and the game ostensibly is a quest to save the world
from this deadly infection (timely, I know). However, the narrative subverts
our expectations of the genre by asking: does a world so brutal even deserve to
be saved? The various characters Joel and Ellie encounter in the game - military
factions only concerned with obtaining power, a lone wolf living a paranoid and
solitary existence, charming scavengers who (in an inevitable post-apocalyptic
trope) are revealed to be cannibals - go to such extreme lengths to survive
that they lose what makes them human. Elsewhere, when our heroes stop in
a thriving settlement built by Joel’s brother, we are presented with a vision
of humans starting anew, rather than preserving old systems of conflict and
oppression.
This thematic concern comes to a head in the game’s stunning climax. Having
made it to the Fireflies in Utah, Joel and Ellie are separated so her immunity can
be researched. She remains unconscious throughout, having passed out from a
near-drowning. Kept under guard, Joel is then told the doctors will operate on
Ellie shortly to develop the cure, but there is a cost: she will die in the process.
Worse yet, the scientists have given Ellie no say in the matter.
Philosophy students will of course recognise this as the ‘Trolley Problem’, which
asks if it is morally justifiable to kill one person to save ten (or a million, or all of
humanity). One may intuitively feel such a sacrifice is necessary for the greater
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