The last of us

The Last of Us is a third-person action-adventure ^[10] . For most of the game, the player controls one character, Joel, and Ellie and other Joel’s moons are controlled by AI . The game is divided into extensive levels - for example, such as a city block or an abandoned metro line - at each of which the player is given the task of reaching a certain point, overcoming obstacles and destroying opponents encountered at the level or avoiding them unnoticed ^[11] . In one of the episodes of the game - “Winter” - Ally becomes a game character ^[12] .

When confronted with opponents - which can be both victims of cordyceps and hostile people - the game character can use firearms like a pistol or shotgun, a bow with arrows, and improvised melee weapons - for example, pipe trunks or baseball bats. Ammunition for firearms is rare, which forces the player to use them sparingly. The game also allows the player to throw small items like bricks and bottles to stun the enemy or distract his attention ^[13] . Special workbenches allow you to improve weapons if there is a certain number of parts. The player can also create a consumable item from the materials collected along the way - Molotov Cocktail , knives or first-aid kit. Pills and medicinal plants allow you to increase the characteristics of the character, for example, increase the number of health points or the speed of creating objects ^[14] .

Although a player can engage in battle with opponents, in many cases it is more advantageous to remain undetected in order to sneak up on an enemy or pass him without a fight. A special “hearing mode” allows the game character to find opponents with the help of sensitive hearing and spatial orientation skills - the game in this mode displays weak contours of enemies visible to the player even through walls and obstacles ^[15] . The dynamic system of shelters gives the player the ability to move characters across levels from one shelter to another, without falling into the eyes of opponents ^[16] . The game also contains peaceful episodes in which there are no opponents - at this time the characters can, for example, talk to each other ^[17] . From time to time, the game may offer the player simple puzzles - for example, transporting Ally, who is unable to sail on a raft through a reservoir, or using stairs and movable trash containers to find a way to climb to an elevated place. During the game, the player can collect a variety of items - notes, cards and comics; already collected items can be viewed at any time through a special menu ^[18] .

Artificial intelligence that controls opponents can behave differently depending on the situation: having discovered game characters, enemies can call comrades for help or take shelter; opponents can take advantage of the player’s vulnerable position and attack when the character has run out of ammunition or is distracted by anything else. Ellie and other Joel’s companions can help him in battle - throw bricks and bottles at the enemy, report on enemies hidden from the player, use a knife and firearms to conduct the battle ^[19] .

Multiplayer

The game has multiplayer, which is optional for passing. Before the start of the game, the player selects either “Hunter” or “Cicada”, after which his clan is automatically created. The player’s task is to live 12 weeks (84 days or a battle ^[20] ), feeding his clan, playing multiplayer ^[20] . There are 3 modes: “Raid”, “Survival” and “Interrogation”. “Raid” and “Survival” - 8 players are divided into two teams, killing the opposing team. The game "Raid" will end if one of the teams nullifies the score and becomes the winner. “Survival” differs from other modes in the absence of rebirth, so the game will end if one of the teams kills all members of the other team in 4 rounds ^[20] . “Interrogation” - the team tries to find the opponent’s safe by interrogating him. The team that quickly opens the safe in 15 minutes wins. As the game progresses, tasks will periodically appear (such as “Kill 15 rivals” or “Execute 10 rivals”), with which you can increase the clan’s strength. But there will be tasks in which the player’s clan is killed. If members of the clan die, then you have to start again to choose a team ^[20] .

Setting

The main part takes place 20 years after the global catastrophe - a pandemic caused by the mutated fungus cordyceps . According to the plot, cordyceps, which enters the human body through inhalation of fungal spores, blood or the saliva of an infected person, causes irreversible changes in the human body, causing the victim to lose his mind and turning it into a kind of zombie . The pandemic led to the fall of civilization, the death of most of the US population and the entire Earth; some survivors live in isolated quarantine zones protected by the military. Cities outside the quarantine zones have turned into dangerous ruins inhabited by insane infected, bandits and cannibals. The terrorist organization "Cicada" ( Eng. Fireflies ) is trying to raise the population of quarantine zones to rebel against the military, and also does not abandon attempts to develop a vaccine against infection ^[21] .

History

Prologue : The prologue occurs during the start of a pandemic. Joel Miller is a single father living in Austin , Texas , with his twelve-year-old daughter Sarah. After attacking their home by infected neighbors, Joel, his brother Tommy and Sarah try to escape from the panicky city by car, but have an accident. As a result of the accident, Sarah gets a leg injury, and Joel has to carry it in her arms, running away from the infected ones pursuing them. At some point, the heroes come across a US Army soldier who, having received an order to destroy both, opens fire on them to defeat. Tommy rescues Joel from imminent death by shooting a soldier, but the soldier ends up in Sarah. The girl dies in the arms of her father ^[22] .

Summer : Twenty years later, Joel and his partner Tess trade as smugglers on the outskirts of the quarantine zone in Boston , trying to get even with the gangster who deceived them Robert. After removing Robert, the heroes encounter the leader of the Cicadus, Marlin, who invites Joel and Tess to secretly take teenage girl Ellie Williams out of the perimeter guarded by the military. Ellie is found to be immune to infection — she was infected, but did not die and did not turn into a monster, and Cicad scientists intend to use this unique phenomenon to develop a vaccine. At the appointed meeting point - the Capitol - the heroes discover that a group of Cicados was shot by a military detachment, and Tess was infected, as one of those infected during a skirmish in a museum that had happened earlier had bitten her. The military surround the Capitol. Tess begs Joel to take Ellie and find Tommy so that Cicad's vaccine development plans are not in vain. To buy time for Joel and Ellie, Tess, not wanting to end her life as an infected woman, engages in a suicidal battle with the military. Joel and Ellie decide to look for other Cicadas, including Tommy, Joel’s brother, who is located somewhere in the west, since he himself was once a member of the group and knows the way to their main base. In the town of Lincoln, Massachusetts, they meet with Joel's acquaintance, Bill, who finds a car for them. In Pittsburgh , the city that, after the fall of the military administration, turned into a gangster outlaw, the heroes are ambushed and saved thanks to the help of the traveling brothers Henry and Sam. After the death of the infected Sam, Henry commits suicide, and Joel and Ellie move further west ^[23] .

Autumn : After a few months, Joel and Ellie find Tommy. Tommy, having broken with the Cicadas, is trying to rebuild an old hydropower plant in Jackson County, Wyoming , with his wife Maria and several other families. Joel and Ellie on a donated horse get to the University of Colorado , where, according to Tommy's instructions, the Cicadus laboratory should be located, but they find the university abandoned. Heroes learn that the Cicadas evacuated the laboratory in Salt Lake City , Utah . After this, the characters are about to leave, but they are attacked by aggressively-minded survivors. The partners manage to kill all the aggressors and escape from the university, however, during a hand-to-hand clash with one of the bandits, Joel falls from the balcony onto a piece of armature sticking out of the ground and is seriously wounded ^[24] .

Winter : Ellie, hunting deer in a snowy forest, encounters other hunters - David and James, who exchange penicillin for Joel. David, showing a strange, unhealthy interest in Ellie, invites her to join their group, who settled in the town next door. It turns out that Ellie's new acquaintances are cannibals , and it was the group of David Ellie and Joel who was killed at the university. Once captured, Ellie tries to escape and ultimately kills David in a one-on-one battle in a burning restaurant building. Somehow recovered from wounds and illness, Joel helps her out, and they continue their journey ^[25] .

Spring : Heroes get to the end of their journey, Salt Lake City . In the flooded tunnels on the way through the city, Joel and Ellie almost drown, but they are rescued by the Cicadas under the command of Marlene, who also got west from Boston. Marlin tells Joel that to develop a vaccine, doctors will have to extract cordyceps from Ellie's brain, which is guaranteed to kill the girl. The rebellious Joel kills the guards and takes Ellie from the operating room; although Marlene is trying to negotiate with Joel the world, the hero kills her, believing that she will try to chase and capture Ally again ^[26] .

Epilogue : Joel and Ellie return to Wyoming, to the commune of Tommy. Joel, trying to justify herself in front of her adopted daughter, convinces Ellie that she is not the only possessor of immunity, and that the Cicadas have stopped trying to create a vaccine, since their studies have yielded nothing. Ellie answers him with a story about how she was bitten, and asks Joel to swear that his story about the Cicadas is true. To which Joel replies: “I swear” ^[27] .

Naughty Dog Studios has been working on The Last of Us since 2009 in a secrecy; the game being developed was to be announced only at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in 2011, and until that moment be kept secret ^[28] . Since the studio was also engaged in another large-scale project at the same time, Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception , studio managers Evan Wells and Christoph Balestra decided to split the studio into two teams that could completely devote themselves to developing Uncharted 3 and The Last of Us, respectively ^{[29 ] [30]} . The development of the game was led by Bruce Strehli, who had previously performed the same role in the development of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves ; To work on the game, Naughty Dog was also joined by designer Mark Richard Davis, who previously participated in the work on Enslaved: Odyssey to the West ^[31] .

According to the screenwriter and creative producer of the game, Neil Drackmann, after completing work on Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Naughty Dog considered the possibility of restarting the Jak and Daxter series , and the initial development team gathered for this project, which later developed into The Last of Us . During the discussions, the developers came to the conclusion that their ideas go too far away from the classic look of Jak and Daxter. The head of the studio gave the green light to the development of a new game on a completely new idea ^[32] .

The concept that formed the basis of The Last of Us was invented by Drackmann even before joining the studio: according to his recollections, while studying at Carnegie Mellon University, he took part in a seminar led by film director George Romero , and participants were invited to develop game concept about zombies. The development of Drackmann was inspired by Romero’s own famous film “The Night of the Living Dead ”, the mechanics of the computer game Ico and Frank Miller 's graphic novel “ The City of Sins ”. According to its plot, the player had to control an elderly policeman protecting a young girl from zombies; at a certain point in the game, the policeman should have become ill with his heart, and already the girl under the control of the player had to protect her companion. In the final, the policeman had to be bitten, and the heroine would have to shoot her friend. Romero did not approve of this idea; later, after graduating from university and getting a job at Naughty Dog, Drackmann tried to convert it into a comic strip called The Turning . The hero of "Transformation", a former prisoner, lost his daughter and atoned for his sins, protecting his step-mother. Even later, Drackmann and Strelie jointly developed the idea of ​​the game "Mankind" ( Eng. Mankind ), already quite strongly resembling the final version; in this concept, the virus that turned people into zombies affected only women, and Ellie was supposed to be the only possessor of immunity to it. Thus, the zombie enemies in the game were supposed to be exclusively women. The scriptwriters abandoned this idea after the protests of female Naughty Dog employees, who considered it misogynistic ^[32] .

Cordyceps is not an imagination of game developers. This is a really existing ergot fungus Cordyceps unilateralis that parasitizes insects. When fungal spores enter the body of an ant, caterpillar, fly or spider, they begin to literally sprout in the body of the insect. Cordyceps affects the nervous system of its victim, releasing substances of the alkaloid group ^[33] . As a result, the insect ceases to take care of its needs and does what the fungus needs, for example, looking for a suitable place of residence for it. Cordyceps is not a parasite in humans, but the plot of The Last of Us is based on the fantastic assumption of such an infection. The scriptwriters came up with the idea to introduce cordyceps into the game after watching the BBC Channel ’s Planet Earth documentary , where, in particular, it was shown how the behavior of an ant infected with a parasite fungus changes and the insect turns into a kind of zombie ^[34] . The GamesRadar website noted the similarity of the game with the films “ Road ”, “ Human Child ” and “ Day of the Triffids ”, comics and the television series “The Walking Dead ” ^[35] . Following an interview with developers, Game Informer magazine pointed out non-fiction books Alan Weissman and Polio: American History by David Oshinsky, road books by Cormack McCarthy , Last City on Earth by Thomas Mullen and City " David Benioff , films" Old Men Can't Get Here "," Iron Grip "and" Cursed Path " ^[36] .

The game was especially influenced by an episode from the studio’s previous game, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, where the main character, Nathan Drake and English-speaking Sherpas Tenzin, overcame obstacles while exploring ice caves. Although this episode was relatively small in the game, the scriptwriters tried to show the growing friendship between Drake and Tenzin. The idea of ​​showing the emergence and strengthening of relations between the characters through gameplay became the basis for the creation of Joel and Ellie and their relationship. Drackmann especially mentioned the Coen brothers' film “The Old Men Are Not Here ” as a source of inspiration: in particular, he was struck by the lack of a soundtrack - silence behind the scenes, according to him, made the tense atmosphere “almost tangible” ^[37] . During the development of the game, Drackmann and Strehli studied a large number of post-apocalyptic books and films, but found more useful non-fictitious events, such as the worldwide Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 or the US polio epidemic in the 1880s. It was as a result of studying historical books that the scriptwriters abandoned the idea of ​​a villain who would have to pursue heroes throughout the game, and found a more attractive situation in which the game would be deprived of uniquely bad or uniquely good characters, and the player could not be sure that Joel and Ellie always do the right thing ^[38] . Among computer games, the sources of inspiration for The Last of Us were games such as Ico and Resident Evil 4 : the first as a model of interaction between the characters, the second as a model of exciting action. The Last of Us designer Ricky Cambier noted that the developers tried to create a game dedicated to survival, as realistic as possible, in which the actions of the heroes would be close to reality ^[39] . Drackmann noted that the script The Last of Us was supposed to "raise the bar" for other developers of computer games, because, in his opinion, the standards in this industry are not as high as they should be ^{[40] [41]} .

Naughty Dog separately requested that focus groups be held with female players when it became known that the firm that conducted the focus groups recruited only male players. According to Drackmann, the studio deemed it necessary to intervene in this process, receiving complaints from female players; Drackmann called conducting focus groups when a developer collects players, shows them game materials and receives answers to quantitative and qualitative questions about the game as a particularly important development moment, and using only a male audience for this is “a relic of the past, which should soon be gone” ^{[ 42]} .

To write the soundtrack for the game, the two-time Oscar winner was invited for the best music by Gustavo Santaolalla ^[43] .

At E3 2012, a demo with The Last of Us gameplay was first publicly shown. It presented a combat scenario and the first tools necessary to protect against small gang groups ("hunters").

Prior to the release of the game, some journalists pointed to the outward similarity of Ally’s character with Canadian actress Ellen Page ^{[44] [45]} ; Page herself joined these allegations, claiming that her appearance was “ripped off” for the game without her knowledge ^[46] . Paige voiced and served as the model for creating the character of the heroine in another game, Beyond: Two Souls , which was being developed simultaneously with The Last of Us . After showing the trailers of this game with the character Paige, Naughty Dog changed the appearance of Ellie, making it more similar to the appearance of Ashley Johnson , voiced by Ellie ^[47] ; the developers rejected the suggestion that this change was in any way connected with Page and her participation in Beyond: Two Souls , declaring it to be a “coincidence” ^[48] .

After the release of the game a new scandal erupted. The phone numbers of the pest control service present in the game turned out to be real numbers: by dialing them, the caller enters the “ phone sex ” service. Neil Drackmann acknowledged the problem, stating that these numbers were added by mistake ^[49] . Naughty Dog has released a special patch that removes these phone numbers.

Downloadable content for the game was released almost after the release of the game. Season Pass includes access to all downloadable bonuses ^[50] . By the release of the game, two DLC packages were released. The Sights and Sounds Pack included a soundtrack, a dynamic theme for the PlayStation 3 system, and two avatars. In the “Survival Pack” bonus costumes for the player were added, which were opened after completing the plot, bonus experience points and early access to the multiplayer ^[51] . The “Abandoned Territories” package was released on October 15, 2013. It contained four multiplayer maps based on locations from a single player campaign ^[52] . The Nightmare Bundle, released on November 5, 2013, has a collection of ten hats, nine of which can be purchased separately ^[53] .

Supplement The Last of Us: Left Behind adds a single-player campaign, which is a prequel to the main plot of The Last of Us with the participation of Ally and her friend Riley. DLC was released on February 14, 2014, and May 12, 2015 as a separate game ^[54] . On May 6, 2014, the third package with five DLCs was released: in “Grounded” a new complexity (“Realism”) was added to the main and additional history, in the “Reclaimed Territories Map Pack” and “Situational Survival Skills Bundle” eight special skills were added for multiplayer, and in the "Survivalist Weapon Bundle" added four new types of weapons. ^[55] . The Grit and Gear Bundle package, released on August 5, 2014, added new masks, hats and gestures ^[56] . November 11 of the same year, the publication of "Game of the Year Edition" ^[57] .

The Last of Us Remastered

On April 9, 2014, Sony announced an updated version of The Last of Us for the PlayStation 4 . On July 29 of the same year, an updated version was released ^[58] . The Last of Us Remastered has better graphics, combat mechanics and a higher frame rate ^[59] . Remastered also includes advanced sound parameters, comments from actors and a photo mode with which you can take very colorful screenshots. In the updated version, the Left Behind add-on and some multiplayer maps are pre-installed ^[60] .

Original Soundtrack

The official soundtrack includes 30 tracks. The music was written by Gustavo Santaolalle, for whom this was a debut in the video game industry. The album was released on June 7, 2013, seven days before the release of the game.

In the first week of sales, copies of The Last of Us sold about 1.3 million, becoming one of the best-selling games of 2013 ^{[61] [62]} . Three weeks after the release of the game, the circulation of sold copies amounted to more than 3.4 million, thereby becoming a fast-selling game for the PlayStation 3 of the same year ^[63] . The game also became the best-selling digital game on the PlayStation Store for the PlayStation 3, but later this record will be broken by Grand Theft Auto V ^[64] . As a result, the game became the tenth best-selling game of 2013 ^[65] .

By August 2014, sales of the game amounted to 8 million: 7 million on the PlayStation 3 and 1 million on the PlayStation 4 ^[66] . By April 2018, The Last of Us had total sales of 17 million on both consoles ^[67] . Is the third best-selling game for the PlayStation 3 in the UK , has been the leader of the charts for about six consecutive weeks ^[66] . The game also topped the charts in the USA ^[68] , France ^[69] , Ireland ^[70] , Italy ^[71] , Sweden ^[72] , Finland ^[72] , Spain ^[73] and Japan ^[74] .

On June 5, 2013, the first reviews of the game were published. The game received high marks from magazines and online publications covering the gaming industry. The largest resources, such as Eurogamer, IGN and Edge, put the maximum points to the game, leaving rave reviews.

Russian publications also for the most part left positive reviews. So, the site PlayGround.ru rated 10 out of 10, writing in its review the following: “A game from which it is impossible to break away even for a minute. Minuses? They tried to find. They didn’t find it ^[83] .

“Gambling” , putting a maximum of 10 points, summed up this result: “Games of the level of The Last of Us are released not every year, or even every decade. She doesn’t just squeeze the maximum out of the outgoing console. Naughty Dog invented a miraculous formula that is very difficult to derive at home: history and gameplay exist here in absolute symbiosis ” ^[84] .

The Last of Us received the “Action of the Year” (2013) awards from the Igromania magazine ^[96] and Game of the Year (2013) from the Igromania.ru website ^[97] .

The Absolute Games website set the game to 95% - “Excellent”, making the following conclusion: “ The Last of Us raises the bar for the quality of artistic content, focuses on the notorious“ atmosphere ”, and it works pretty damn well, because it imitates the great ones. Of course, she does not forget to be an excellent game at the same time - her mechanics, although rustic at first glance, are carefully thought out and thoroughly tested - the game flows like music, and by the second third of the story the pleasure of it becomes almost continuous. All this is due to the ability of developers to directly connect gaming reality to our nervous systems. What is left here? Only climb higher and explode with compliments ” ^[88] .

At the 31st Golden Joystick Awards ceremony, the game received prizes for the best new game and best plot, and Naughty Dog was recognized as the best developer for The Last of Us ^[98] .

At the VGX 2013 ceremony, the game won the Best PlayStation Game nomination.

At the 2014 Screenwriters Guild Award Ceremony, the game received a prize for best video game script ^[99] .

At the DICE Summit Awards 2014, the game received 10 awards, including the prize for the best game of the year ^[100] .

The game won five BAFTA 2014 awards out of 10 categories ^[101] : “Best Game of the Year”, “Best Story”, “Best Sound”, “Best Actress” and “Best Action / Best Adventure Game” ^[102] .

The game received three awards at the Game Developer Choice Awards - for the best game of 2013, as well as for the best design and best narration ^[103] .

At the Golden Joystick Awards 2014 ceremony, the Left Behind addition received prizes in the nominations for “Best Game Moment” and “Best History” ^[104] .

In an interview with Eurogamer, screenwriter and creative director of The Last of Us, Neil Drackmann, confirmed that there was a possibility of a continuation, however, he did not specify whether this would be a direct continuation of the first part or a completely new game in the universe ^[105] . In June 2015, at the MetroCon event, actor Nolan North , who participated in dubbing David from the original game, indirectly confirmed the development of the sequel ^[106] . However, in an interview with PlayStation Magazine, Neil Drackmann stated that the studio did not develop the sequel ^[107] .

However, on December 3, 2016, the official announcement of the release of the game on the PlayStation Experience took place ^[108] . During a speech, Neil Drakmann said that the game will use one of the most advanced facial animation capture technologies in the world ^[109] .

On June 12, 2018, the sequel was presented at the Sony E3 2018 ^{[110] [111]} exhibition, where the game’s gameplay was first presented. Interestingly, critics praised the new graphics and fighting shown in the trailer, saying that The Last of Us Part II would surpass its predecessor in some criteria ^{[112] [113] [114] [115]} .

In January 2017, The Last of Us Part II received its first award from the PlayStation Blog in the category “Most anticipated game of the year” ^[116] . Later that year, the game brought its developers the Most Wanted Game Award from Golden Joystick Awards ^[117] , and Most Anticipated Game at The Game Awards ^[118] . On July 2, 2018, another prize was awarded in the nomination “Special Award for Graphics and Sound” at the “ Game Critics Awards ” ^[119] . While the second trailer caused a flurry of joy among fans, he also attracted some criticism from experts for his brutality ^{[120] [121]} . Jim Ryan, president of Sony Interactive Entertainment Europe , defended the trailer, saying the game was “made by adults for adults.” ^[122] Drackmann explained: “We are making a game about a circle of cruelty, and we are making a statement about violent actions and influence, which is ... [idea] was that the player felt“ offended ”by someone, so that this feeling made him think about his own actions in reality ” ^[123] .

On November 25, 2013, Sony Pictures Entertainment registered the domain names for the potential movie The Last of Us ^[124] . On March 6, 2014, it was announced that Screen Gems would be distributing the film. Neil Drackmann, screenwriter and creative director of the original game, will be responsible for the script. Naughty Dog co-owners Evan Wells and Christoph Balestra, The Last of Us game director Bruce Strehli, and well-known film director Sam Raimi will also act as a producer ^[125] will also take part in the production process. Neil Drackmann later stated that the plot of the film would be based on the plot of the game ^[126] . However, after that, for a year and a half no work was done on the film adaptation of the game, and according to Drackmann himself, the film ended up in “ production hell ” ^[127] .