The Last of Us: A True Modern Western

As I mentioned in my first blog post, I'm an avid gamer. You probably also noticed that in the bottom of said post, I had said that my second favorite game of all time is Naughty Dog's The Last of Us. This game is simply incredible in all senses of the world (and if you have a PS4 or PS3, you MUST play it), but especially because of it's deep narrative. The story starts with a man named Joel, a single father living at home with his daughter, when all of a sudden, a fungal infection starts spreading rapidly across the US (it's revealed to be a humanized form of the cordyceps fungus). Like a traditional zombie story, if you are bitten, you are infected. Joel is forced to transport a girl named Ellie, who is apparently immune to the fungus, and Joel must take her across most of the US, from Boston to Utah, where a group is trying to find a cure for this infection.

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Joel is a perfect example of a modern cowboy, and The Last of Us is a perfect example of a modern western. Firstly, they are, in fact, moving west throughout the entirety of the game. They didn't even try to blur the lines on this one, Joel's goal is to successfully move west throughout the US to reach a hospital in Salt Lake City, UT. Like other typical cowboys, Joel is a masculine white male. He often acts tough and hardened, and has to endure a lot of brutality throughout his life, especially in the time the game takes place. By bringing Ellie to Utah, he is trying to bring order to the lawless land of infected that the US has become. If a cure can be found, order can then be restored in the country, since the infected will all theoretically be either cured or killed.

Traveling most of this journey on his own, it can be safely assumed that Joel is quite self-sufficient, often even crafting weapons and other items along his trek, such as first aid kits bandage himself. Unsurprisingly, the environment surrounding him is quite hostile, with essentially everything trying to kill him and Ellie. Life has been reduced to shambles compared to what it once was, and the country is trying to sort life out once more and regain balance.

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The story fits essentially every trope you've come to know from the Western genre, yet manages to modernize it with great success. Joel is every bit a cowboy as any other one that's ever existed, and the story is a Western through and through, without a single doubt in my mind. If you get the chance, please check out this fantastic game, you won't regret it. Here's a trailer to leave you with a taste of what the game is all about (WARNING: GRAPHIC).