The final sequence of The Last of Us is probably one of the reasons why the Naughty Dog title has remained so imprinted in everyone’s memory.
An ending that players were able to come back to relive, or to discover for the first time, also thanks to The Last of Us Part I , the remake of the title that you find on Amazon.
And that many will surely experience for the first time thanks to the TV series being worked on at HBO which, if it is the same as the poster , really promises sparks.
We recently found out that Joel and Ellie’s first story could have ended very differently , but thankfully Naughty Dog has given us the ending we’ve all seen.
There will be heavy plot spoilers for The Last of Us from now on . Continue reading only if you have completed it (or you don’t care to spoil the surprise).
What makes the ending of Naughty Dog’s work powerful is the fact that, knowingly, Joel decides to condemn humanity to a life without an antidote to the cordyceps plague, to save Ellie from a deadly operation.
A decidedly human choice, condemnable but absolutely understandable, that Joel makes in favor of Ellie who has now become his daughter in a complete way.
An ending that, however, for some is still incomprehensible or difficult to understand. Troy Baker returned to talk about it during a speech at the recent Milan Games Week .
With an evident emotional transport , Joel’s interpreter in the videogame series gave a further point of view on the theme:
“When we were doing the first chapter I was at a disadvantage compared to Neil [Druckmann] ,” begins Troy Baker.
Druckmann was already a father at the time of making The Last of Us therefore, specifies Baker, while he was only acting, for Neil Druckmann the possibility that Joel could lose his daughter was a real feeling with which to empathize.
In fact, Troy Baker admits he couldn’t really understand that sentiment at the time. Only now does he realize how much Joel’s choice at the end of The Last of Us is actually very normal, even for him who is now a father :
“I know that if I had an opportunity to save him [my son] I would do anything. So when people ask me, “Why didn’t Joel save the world if he could?” my answer is always the same: “he did, only that for him the world was that little girl”.
A decidedly convincing and understandable explanation, not much to say. Which makes it on par with the emotional finale of The Last of Us Part II , which a psychologist recently wanted to explain in detail.
