Before we get too caught up within the ways in which the prologue foreshadows what’s to come back, it’s essential to acknowledge the ability of the various little particulars that make these intro scenes so immersive. Consider, as an example, the design of Joel and Sarah’s home. From the broken-in leather-based sofa, to the tiled kitchen ground and the litter across the workplace, their home seems like a lived-in, uncannily mundane dwelling you may discover in any suburb throughout the nation. It’s so mundane, in reality, that you just variety of need to take a step again to understand the position it performs.
That seemingly easy home offers the sport world a palpable sense of scale. When Sarah watches an explosion occur on a reside newscast after which sees the identical explosion gentle up the night time sky when she turns to look out of the upstairs window, it embeds us within the recreation world and makes us really feel like we’re in a actual place versus a collection of designed environments. We don’t know precisely what the risk is but, however we all know that it’s actual and we all know it’s all too near this place of consolation and love that’s shortly turning into compromised.
The journey is essential, too. We begin in Sarah’s bed room, discover the home, and drive into city, all by way of Sarah’s eyes and with none cuts or load screens. This was a powerful technical feat on the time (that is a PS3 recreation we’re speaking about), however once more, what’s actually significant right here is that we’re spending that point as Sarah. We get the prospect to actually know her, or, on the very least, this concept of who she was that Joel clearly holds onto for the remaining of the sport.
What would compel a man to single-handedly doom the world? That’s the query that The Last of Us‘ incredible ending forces us to confront, and it’s the query the prologue is supposed to assist reply. In the bigger scope of the story, Joel shedding Sarah informs the whole lot he (and, by extension, we because the participant) are about to do. As Joel grows nearer to Ellie, his desperation to not lose her like he misplaced Sarah in the end drives him to promote the world to avoid wasting Ellie’s life (or quite, hold her in his life). Her sacrifice was the important thing to halting the fungal outbreak, however he simply couldn’t let her go, even when it meant sacrificing the lives of others.
Joel is a man, not a monster. He’s clearly succesful of love and is a dutiful father, to say the least. But he makes so many unethical, egocentric selections all through the story that it turns into troublesome to defend him as a good particular person. It’s simple to grasp and even sympathize along with his actions, but it surely’s far tougher to justify them. The revelation that slowly emerges on his journey with Ellie is that he’s, for lack of a higher time period, one of the villains of the story. That’s a onerous tablet to swallow for anybody who skilled the sport’s intro and carries the ache of Joel’s loss simply as he does.
But keep in mind initially of the sport when he, Tommy, and Sarah drove by that pleading household on the facet of the street though they’d room within the automobile? Maybe that’s the second when the sport was attempting to inform us that, on some degree, Joel has been that man all alongside. Maybe it’s not all he’s, and possibly that’s not the perfect half of him, but it surely’s a half of him that may find yourself making a essential choice. It’s these little, haunting touches that make The Last of Us’s prologue an distinctive piece of standalone storytelling, a excellent instance of foreshadowing, and one of the perfect online game intros ever.
