Arianna Pal, X F
The TV series “The Last of Us”, formerly known as the game “The Last of Us”, a third-person perspective game released in 2013, is a new series on HBO GO, which shot up to instant fame due to the game fans and the new watchers, who were amazed by the plot and the amazing side by side scenes that Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann succeeded in making.
The action-adventure game begins with a normal night in Austin, Texas, or so it seems, where the protagonist, Joel Miller, and his daughter Sarah Miller were staying at home on an ordinary day. The outbreak of the Cordyceps fungus begins and Joel, his brother Tommy, and Sarah flee the infected area. The main story and Joel’s backstory begin when Sarah is shot by a soldier when they try to flee the city. She dies in Joel’s arms.
Time skips to twenty years later, when civilization adjusted to the infection, fighting Cordyceps zombies being a regular day-to-day chore. The action takes off when Joel meets Ellie, a girl that would promise to double his cache and bring him and his partner more weapons. He finds out about Ellie’s “infection” and discovers that she is immune.
After his partner tragically dies, he decides on helping Ellie with finding a cure, which means finding “The Fireflies”, a group pronounced for freedom and safety in the zombie apocalypse they were living in.
Ellie and Joel travel through the whole country trying to find someone specialized enough in finding a cure, killing zombies and fighting other groups of smugglers. The climax of the plot is when fighting a group of smugglers, Joel falls and gets impaled by a metal bar. Ellie starts taking care of him and fighting for antibiotics and succeeds in keeping Joel alive.
They find The Fireflies in Salt Lake City, where they research Ellie and find out that they are able to find a cure, but it would end up in the death of the girl. Joel, upset by the suggestion, makes the decision to save Ellie from The Fireflies and go back to his brother’s city, Jackson.
Nevertheless, the story continues in The Last of Us 2, where the focus stands on Ellie’s adventure to Seattle, where she has to solve some unfinished business.
Along with the genius plot, the game is filled with amazingly written characters, greatly programmed fights, weapons and outstanding graphics. Though you might know the story the game presents, there are some differences that can be spotted watching the show, the main one being the twenty-year time jump, the opening of the game being in 2013, and the one on the TV show in 2003. There are other major differences, like different locations, different characters and different relationships between some characters. Though I would suggest finding out on your own, it can be very fun to spot the creativity of the series writers.
In my opinion, The Last of Us is an amazing game, which definitely deserved the recreation of TV screens. If you enjoy plot twists, action and zombie apocalyptic scenarios, this will definitely be for you. I would say this is one of the only game series in which the sequel is better than the actual game, with the complexity and amazing graphics it offers, yet both games are worth giving a chance, thus I wholeheartedly recommend that you do so!