Why TLOU is Different from Other Zombie Stories

The Last of Us has permanently cemented itself in my mind. Having played both games for the first time back-to-back recently, it’s become all I can think about. I’ve also been habitually comparing it to other zombie stories I’ve experienced recently: I Am Legend, Resident Evil, Dead Space, The Walking Dead, World War Z, and more. 

I’ve concluded that TLOU is different from all of these stories. On the surface, it seems rather generic; described on paper, it doesn’t seem like anything special, maybe a bit more heart to it. But the game looks at conventions of the zombie genre, breaks it down, and creates something genuinely fresh that can only be truly understood after playing it. Whether or not you’re a fan of survival horror games or zombie media, it’s a story that will stay with you forever. 

This is my essay on why The Last of Us Works as a zombie story, and why it is the apex of the zombie genre. 

20 Years Later:

I find that zombie stories tend to be set shortly after whatever apocalypse has occurred; oftentimes, we get to experience the apocalypse along with them. The reason is obvious: having the story take place during the onset of a zombie apocalypse, or right afterwards, creates a sense of overwhelming chaos. It adds to the fear that anyone can die at any moment. 

The Last of Us does something similar by depicting Sarah’s death during the first night of the virus, but that’s not really what the story is about. The Last of Us isn’t about Joel losing Sarah, it’s about him gaining Ellie. That prologue, set during the onset, is less to create shock and fear, and more to set up an emotional arc. 

By setting the story 20 years later, The Last of Us immediately sets itself apart from other zombie stories. Our young father is now a grizzled middle-aged man, his grief long since turned to bitterness. Joel knows how to fight the Infected, because he’s been doing it for two decades. Our protagonist is not a young, fearful man, but a battle-hardened survivor who induces fear in others. 

From a practical standpoint, setting the game long after the apocalypse was smart. 20 years is a long time, long enough that children and teenagers born after the outbreak are commonplace; having no perception of the world before the virus hit, these kids feel sheltered compared to their older counterparts. It necessitates Joel’s role in Ellie’s life, as a wise mentor to educate her not only on how the world is now, but what it once was. It also creates levity in situations that desperately need it, and it helps us grow fond of Ellie. 

20 years in the future, nature has retaken the world. The urban, desolated areas of most zombie stories are replaced with lush forests, flowing rivers and herds of wildlife. It gives the series it’s own unique visual identity. When I think of The Last of Us, one of the first things that comes to mind is the gorgeous Autumn section from the first game, or the lush forests of Part II. 

The Presence of the Military:

Zombie stories tend to get right to the chase. 

I’m reminded of The Walking Dead, where a single month has passed between Rick being shot and waking up from his coma, but it seems all signs of life have disappeared. There is nothing resembling a government or military, just walkers and survivors. In The Last of Us, militaristic groups (including the actual US military) are a massive presence as early as the prologue. 

Notably, Sarah’s death is not caused by the Infected, but by people. A stray car first t-bones the Miller family, breaking her foot; and then a soldier shoots her to death on orders from his superior. 

With this in mind, Joel’s pure contempt for humanity feels justified. This ice-cold hatred stands in stark contrast to the protagonists of other zombie stories, and it establishes how in The Last of Us, humans are--and will always be--the real monsters. 

This sets us up for the first chapter of the game, which takes place in the Boston Quarantine Zone, aka a QZ. Unlike most zombie stories, the main characters aren’t trying to establish a safe haven for the non-infected; the military beat them to it 2 decades ago. As I’ll explain later, this opens up the door for unique character narratives not often seen in the genre. 

This theme is furthered in Part II. For most of Part II, you are fighting other people--armed to the teeth with machine guns, bows and arrows, machetes and grenades--more often than the Infected. Again, it separates The Last of Us from its contemporaries, and that extra focus on the darkness of humanity adds fuel to the themes of both games. However, that’s not to say the Infected are anything to scoff at. 

The Virus:

This could have been an entire essay on its own. The virus is the most well-developed and fleshed out in any zombie story. It’s a mutated version of the real-life cordyceps virus, a fungus that takes over the motor controls of insects; this detail immediately grounds the story in reality. 

Being that it is based on a real fungus, the virus isn’t necessarily associated with death. Like 28 Days Later, the virus takes over someone’s motor functions without actually killing them, leading to in-game speculation by Ellie and Sam that the person might still be in there, just unable to control their own body. I can get behind something like this a lot more, whereas in other zombie stories, there’s always a small part of my brain that’s struggling with the prospect of a virus that breathes life into a corpse. 

Finally, like actual viruses, the cordyceps virus evolves over time, something lots of other zombie stories don’t usually show. Credit where credits due: Resident Evil, Dying Light, Dead Space, and Half-Life actually do show such variants in zombies. Maybe it’s just nostalgia, but none have quite unsettled me as much as the variants in TLOU. 

In-game, the cordyceps evolution manifests as Infected coming in four types (later 5 in Part II), depending on how long they’ve been infected. Different types having varying levels of durability, hearing, sight, and speed. 

Again, this is still nothing new. World War Z’s original script portrayed zombies as moving much slower in the cold, and in the final product their behavior changes to avoid already-sick humans. Dying Light has zombies become far more aggressive in the night, adding to the horror. But TLOU’s multiple zombie variants ties back into the time skip: by making the game take place so long after the initial outbreak, we see the cordyceps infection at various stages of development. 

(minor spoilers for The Last of Us Part II) As a side-effect of the story being set 20 years in the future, most information about the infected is rather commonplace. This allows for Joel to immediately teach Ellie how to defeat different kinds of infected, and it means when new enemy types do appear, like the Shamblers or the disgusting Rat King, it is all the more impactful because such things were never even thought possible. 

Don’t get me wrong, I will always remember Walkers from The Walking Dead, White Walkers, Darkseekers from I Am Legend, and Nemesis from Resident Evil, but I don’t think anything will top the pure horror I experienced when I laid eyes on the Rat King, simply because it was so unexpected for its universe. 

Dynamic Duos:

One thing that The Last of Us does that I love is settle on a middle-ground with its characters. 

Many zombie stories tend to fall into two main groups:

• Games like Dead Space and Resident Evil, as well as books like I Am Legend, tend to feature one single protagonist that we follow for the whole story. This creates a nerve wracking, isolated setting, but one that isn’t super good with worldbuilding. 

• Comparatively, stories like The Walking Dead feature massive casts of characters, whose various subplots all combine into what feels like a testament to humanity’s will to survive. 

The Last of Us takes a middle ground. Yes, there is a rather large cast of characters, especially in the second game, but on a moment-by-moment basis, we’re usually just following two: Joel and Ellie. 

This creates that aforementioned feeling of nerve wracking terror and isolation, while still allowing for this story to feel larger than any one individual. 

Atypical Zombie Stories:

At its core, The Last of Us is a zombie story that is not about zombies at all. 

For the most part, The Last of Us takes advantage of the fact that it is in a post-apocalyptic zombie setting to tell stories not about the Infection, but about the deep bonds between people. 

Those long stretches of the first game, where it’s just Joel and Ellie? Those exist because the first game is really all about Joel finding a daughter in Ellie. Adding more and more characters hinders that, hence why their allies don’t stick around for too long, and removing one of them would disrupt that dichotomy. The Infection and Ellie’s immunity are just plot devices to move the characters closer and closer to that emotional climax. 

That relationship continues posthumously in Part II. Again, Part II is set in a zombie world, but it’s not a zombie story. It’s a story about revenge, learning to forgive oneself, and the destructive effects of living in the past. None of those ideas are really specific to the zombie genre, but they work by utilizing elements common to the genre, such as a “gifted” individual with immunity, or a militaristic group that weaponzies the undead. 

The Last of Us is an emotionally, narratively rich game with a detailed world and compelling factions. There were a million different directions they could’ve taken this story. But the direction they settled on--of prioritizing Ellie and Joel’s daughter-father bond above all else--is what cements this game as a work of art.  

Emotional Resonance:

I’ve spent most of this essay discussing the narrative choices made by TLOU that allow it to stand apart and flourish, but for this final design choice I want to focus on something more broad and abstract, something not unique to TLOU but seen clearly in every Naughty Dog game of the last decade. 

Naughty Dog games have very powerful emotional storytelling, that gets us attached to characters and then puts them in these intense, high-stakes situations. This allows us--the player--to resonate with them on an emotional level. Ideally, all games should do this, but Naughty Dog in particular has nailed it with their Last of Us duology. 

The first game slowly builds affection for Ellie, with the player controlling Joel, climaxing in my favorite video game ending, where he saves her from the Fireflies. By this point, you’ve spent 16+ hours caring for and protecting Ellie. When you see her in mortal danger, the intent of the developers is for you to go into fight-or-flight mode. Nevermind the fact that I’m an 18-year old boy, I felt my parental instincts kick in, and the overwhelming thought in my head was: “I gotta save my fucking daughter.”

That is the power of these games. TLOU2 achieves something similar. 

For better or for worse, this intense, powerful emotional resonance between player and character occurs in the opening hours of the second game. Joel’s death kicks off the narrative, and by doing it in an unceremonious, horrifying way to such a fan-favorite character, we are immediately filled with an unholy rage that drives us--and Ellie--to get revenge, and it’s that rage that fuels Ellie throughout the game’s narrative. I felt as if I were a child watching the death of my own father. One of the first things I did upon finishing the game was tell my dad the entire story, and then give him a big hug. 

I’ve never been in the skin of a character in the same way that I was with Ellie in Part II. Unlike Joel, where the game's circumstances allow you to really jump in his head during that last mission, if you’re so inclined; Part II achieves this same moment of emotional resonance at the start. 

That fire that once burned so bright, the desire to avenge Joel, had turned to a dull spark 25 hours in as I slaughtered countless lifelike enemies, knowing that it wouldn’t bring back my beloved father. And--love it or hate it--I think that exhaustion is what Naughty Dog intended. Like Ellie, we become tired of revenge, and like Ellie, we realize that there is so much more. 

Conclusion: 

To conclude, The Last of Us and its sequel have both made a mark on not only my mind, but the zombie genre as a whole. Yet I’m not sure we’ll see anything like it anytime soon. 

The 20 year time-skip allows us to witness both society and the cordyceps evolve over time; the military is still around, but doing more harm than good, which creates interesting, creative new situations. These writing choices pave the way for a character-focused story that’s more about the journey than the destination. 

Even though the plot of The Last of Us, on paper, is about creating a cure and saving the world; the actual story is about a girl finding her father, and a man finding a daughter. The ability of both games to plunge us into either side of this relationship and experience all the emotions that come with familial love; is nothing short of masterful. 

Thank you.