The Last of Us Part I is incredible, superfluous, and necessary all in one complicated remake package.
After taking a few years off from gaming, I bought a PS4 in 2014. It came bundled with a free copy of The Last of Us Remastered, a game I didn’t know much about outside of its sterling reputation among critics. Less than a week later, I found myself staring at my TV, my mouth hanging open as I processed the game’s stunning final hour. “So, this is what video games can do,” I thought to myself. My previously narrow view of the medium as escapist entertainment was smashed wide open like a golf club to a skull.
A lot has changed about video games between then and the release of The Last of Us Part I, Sony’s new PS5 remake of a PS3 classic that got a PS4 upgrade. While it was a revelation even still in 2014, developers have since taken its coveted blood and injected it into everything from God of War to Tomb Raider. Returning to the PS5 glow-up eight years after I first played the remaster feels a bit like going back to 1985’s Super Mario Bros. While many games I play today have its DNA, it’ll always be patient zero.
The Last of Us Part I shows that Naughty Dog’s gritty action game is still an enduring classic that hasn’t aged a day. Though that’s largely because Sony won’t allow it to, as evidenced by a mostly superfluous remake that doesn’t meaningfully improve on the game’s perfectly modern (and much cheaper) 2014 remaster. However, the project does once again push the industry forward in an important way: by raising the bar for accessibility in gaming’s past, present, and future.
The Last of Us Part I is a difficult game to critique for a variety of reasons that’ll become clear shortly. No matter how many philosophical gripes I have with the entire idea of the remake’s existence, it’s still the best version of what I’d consider the finest video game of the 2010s. Purely focusing on the text, it remains a phenomenal experience that few games have fully replicated — including its own sequel.
The game tells the story of Joel, a father surviving alone during a zombie-like apocalypse after his daughter is killed. Long after that tragedy, Joel takes on a job to transport a piece of precious cargo across the country. That cargo is Ellie, a young girl who is seemingly immune to the disease that turns humans into fungus-infested “clickers.” Perverting the fatherly ideal of the “protector,” Joel begins to treat Ellie like an unwitting surrogate daughter on his journey to deliver her to a group called the Fireflies.
The brilliance of The Last of Us has always been in the way it preys on the player’s perception of video game protagonists. We assume Joel is a hero, because games largely place us in the game of the righteous good guy. The Last of Us pushes players to reexamine that idea, using the concept of the unreliable narrator to flip our once-accepted truths about video game language on their head. It’s an idea that only works as well as it does because of its interactive nature that puts the player in control of Joel’s actions – something the series’ upcoming TV adaptation will have to work around.
The enduring power of its devastating story is contingent on the moment when players look down and see the blood on their own hands. It lures players in with sickly satisfying stealth kills and gun combat (complete with gory violence that’s all the more glorious with enhanced visuals and a crisp 60 frames per second) before leading them to a horrific finale that re-contextualizes the entire game. Some find it to be a cheap trick. Others continue to miss the point entirely by rallying behind Joel as a lovable hero. Regardless of where you fall, it’s still the rare big-budget video game that’s cognizant of how play itself can deliver the message.
It’s especially illuminating returning to the game after 2020’s The Last of Us Part II, a game this re-release is clearly capitalizing on. The sequel is bloated compared to its predecessor’s sleek story. It tries to ask messy questions about the cyclical nature of violence, but can’t help but include a New Game+ mode where you get to keep all your cool guns in another playthrough.
