2011 VGAs: The Last Of Us Finds Horror’s Roots

It begins with an idyllic scene, the trees waving in a light breeze, branches tickling the air as sun streams down between them, light penetrating their leaves and casting them in luminescent green. This peaceful lull does not last, however, the beauty of nature juxtaposed with the house it has destroyed, furniture old and covered in dust, vines overgrown within the walls as well as without. A body lays limp on a bed as a young girl runs past, footprint marked in a puddle of its blood.

This girl is Ellie, and she and Joel—whom we first see delivering a baseball bat to a large hooded man’s face—are survivors of a natural uprising, trying to escape an abandoned city—one of many—overrun by nature. They scrounge for supplies, even a single bullet a tremendous find, and do battle with fast-moving, humanoid creatures with pulsating, bud-like heads. Avoidance appears to be the order of the day, Joel and Ellie only combating these monsters when all other paths are closed to them.