Even among the “enemies” and friends, we see Asian, Latinx, and Black characters. Another major character, Lev, is transgender. When my daughters played, I felt it was good for them to have the agency of being Ellie as she fought back during her crucible moments.Īnd as we learn over time, Ellie is not someone the haters would call a “sympathetic” character, as she is gay, and her love interest in Part II, Dina, is bisexual. It was not just a teenage girl being escorted on a mission by a middle-aged man. I think a father and a daughter playing this game together could understand the bond between Ellie and Joel, even if the characters didn’t see it themselves.ĭruckmann said the intention was always to have a story with dual protagonists, each with strong arcs that affected the other. That is no longer true, as a number of game companies have made a point of creating lead female characters.Įllie was a role model for my kids, and my second daughter avidly played through all of The Last of Us as well, as I watched and advised. Back in 2013, and certainly before that, launching a game with a female protagonist was considered a commercial risk. I played the first game with my eldest daughter, and it was good to show her the character of Ellie at a time - even though it wasn’t all that long ago - when we didn’t see many female protagonists who were normal people (neither superheroes nor highly sexualized) and could handle their own. After all, in the journey across the country, they came across very few humans worth saving. Joel couldn’t save Sarah, but he was going to save Ellie, given the choice between humankind or her. The scene in the beginning came back to me in the end, like a bookend. It becomes a question of how far a father is willing to go to save their kid. At the end of the first game, Joel faces the moral dilemma of whether to sacrifice someone he has come to love as a surrogate daughter in the name of stopping the plague. She becomes the hero, co-creator Neil Druckmann told me, by bringing the older man back to life. In her time with Joel, Ellie brings out his remaining humanity. Yet he takes on the mission of transporting this 14-year-old girl halfway across the country on the chance that her immunity might provide a cure for the plague. He has little humanity left, and he might as well be a zombie. Joel’s 12-year-old daughter Sarah is killed. As Tommy and Joel flee the outbreak of the zombie plague in their hometown, they run into a soldier who follows orders and fires at them. Each duel is like a brutal life-or-death struggle.
The graphic violence is horrific, but more often than not Joel commits violent acts in the name of protecting Ellie, and later on it is Ellie protecting Joel. I played the first game and was deeply touched by the story of the teenage girl Ellie and gruff smuggler Joel - two survivors of the zombie apocalypse who spend their days just trying to stay alive. Since the game is such a raw experience, I think it helps to talk about it after you play it, and we hope this story helps you understand it better.
We put together this video, which she edited. One solace was that I played this one together with my middle daughter, Danielle Takahashi, who was too young for such a serious game when the first one debuted in 2013. It was eerie playing a game about a post-pandemic zombie apocalypse during a pandemic, with emergency vehicle sirens going off in the background in real life. And the tale matches the action’s intensity. The action is intense, grueling, and raw.
It’s rare to find a work of art that is such a big commercial success, and I thought it was worth examining what made the story so moving. The original moved over 17 million copies, generating more than $1 billion at retail. The Last of Us Part II has sold more than 4 million copies. Join gaming leaders online at GamesBeat Summit Next this upcoming November 9-10.
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