‘The Last of Us’ is Bad, Actually – A Look at Games Immune to Criticism

The Last of Us is a game responsible for nearly an entire generation of people connecting the dots between video games and art, myself included. But over the past eight years, I have watched as The Last of Us (TLOU) slid from the top list of games that I’d reference when describing the storytelling capacity of the medium. Upon replaying The Last of Us five years after its release, I had the fresh intention to scour every nook and cranny of the game’s world, garnering a deeper appreciation for the craftsmanship involved. When I started to realize how poorly the original TLOU held up, however, I began to wonder why the game so effectively pulled me in just a few years prior. I ultimately decided that the primary reason people are (or at least I was) enamored with TLOU is because the introduction and conclusion of The Last of Us are nearly flawless. Thus, the question arose upon my reflection: is a strong introduction or conclusion enough to qualify a game (or story) as “good”? 

The game’s opening hour, roughly speaking, is one of the most intimate and emotional beginnings to a story that I can think of. Anyone that I have spoken to who has played The Last of Us is quick to reference this intro as a core reason for their appreciation for the story – and rightly so. The conclusion of TLOU, though I have heard fewer opinions about it, is also handled in a way that I still appreciate today. It ends on an ambiguous note, which is something incredibly rare for mainstream video game releases. 

The more I have reflected upon it, the more I have settled into the opinion that The Last of Us is an example that strongly affirms the question about introductions and conclusions. Yes, TLOU serves to answer, a story makes its biggest impact right when you start and right when you finish it, while all the rest in between is forgivable. But I’m highly skeptical of this simple notion when discussing games as art, particularly when games are exceeding 50-100 hours in length to tell their stories. I don’t want to dismiss the many discussion-worthy moments in the middle of TLOU — be it the oft-praised giraffe scene or otherwise – but I don’t think those middle parts, namely the actual gameplay loop, are why this game became so influential on the medium.  

Fast-forward to The Last of Us Part II, a sequel that simply should not exist — hell, probably would not exist — but for the dollar signs lighting up the eyes of Sony executives. (Please, no third TLOU game, have mercy.) At the risk of repeating myself, suffice it to say that The Last of Us Part II instantly became the biggest disappointment in my gaming memory. From an overly-bloated story and annoyingly predictable plot contrivances (“Oh no! Looks like the way is blocked. Better find a way around.”) to some whacky and inexplicably out-of-character decisions throughout the narrative, I do not respect the writing or storytelling in the sequel. No doubt, The Last of Us Part II is an incredibly well-made game; I have written at length about the few story beats that worked well for me, as well as bent over backwards to complement the environmental design, etc. But I do not understand people who think The Last of Us Part II was a necessary story or that its characters were believable, likeable, or even tolerable, in terms of how they (fail to) fit the narrative.  

This is all a long-winded way of saying that, at first, I used to buy into the hype surrounding The Last of Us, but that, over time, my opinion has diminished. Through a replay which revealed the cracks in the original, as well as the inexorable embitterment I now feel towards its sequel, The Last of Us has lost its luster for me. And so, Mother’s Day rolls around this year and I see a small handful of fans posting about Ellie, arguably the protagonist of The Last of Us Part II, doting on her role as a mother in the sequel. One tweet in this vein prompted GB “Doc” Burford, whose writing on Death Stranding I have cited in my articles before, to drop a hot take on Twitter that I will reproduce here:  

Unpacking the Mother’s Day Tweets

The image in question is a still image of Ellie kissing the neck of her partner Dina, whose child Ellie cradles in the crook of her arm as if he were her own. In true AAA fashion, or so the idea goes, this image is an example of how lifelike graphics can trick us into thinking that characters are either relatable or well-written. While the person who posted this initial Mother’s Day image was doting on it as though Ellie was a mother worth sincerely celebrating, Burford clearly had no patience for such a vacuous interpretation.  

In the middle of the night, towards what feels like a potential ending to The Last of Us Part II, the game presents us with a cutscene (meaning there is nothing we can do as a player to impact or influence this decision) where Ellie has inexplicably decided to abandon this little happy family shown in the image. When I first played this scene, I didn’t lament her decision so much as I lamented the game’s itching need to send us down another unnecessarily obvious “revenge is bad” rabbithole. Returning to Burford’s tweet, the idea that we can look to Ellie, Dina, and the baby JJ, as anything remotely heartwarming or aspirational is absurd. As he writes, practically five minutes after this screenshot, Ellie “abandons the other to go do murder for no reason, destroying their relationship entirely,” leaving me scratching my head at how anyone could have palleted the nonsense writing behind such a hand-wringing plot device.  

To Burford’s initial tweet, he is picking apart an aspect of what I have previously described as “abrupt and unconvincing” about the latter plot of The Last of Us Part II, namely Ellie’s rapid changes of heart. One such change involves a scene where Ellie is shown to the player as happy, building a family, settling down, and finally unwinding from the cycles of violence she has found herself locked within. Ellie explicitly destroys this peace in what feels like the reverse of a deus ex machina. So when players affectionately reflect on this little “happy family” for Mother’s Day, according to Burford, they have entirely lost the plot. Either these players weren’t paying attention, they weren’t thinking critically, or they have fundamentally misunderstood Ellie’s character – perhaps all three.  

There is no way we can look at Ellie as a good mother, nor one worth celebrating on Mother’s Day. It’s a farcical suggestion at best. To give the devil his due, however, Ellie is undoubtedly a likeable character. In that respect, she simultaneously serves as one of the only examples many people have of LGBTQIA+ representation in gaming, so I am hesitant to completely dismiss people’s yearning to clutch onto her. 

Critical Acclaim and Fandom Culture for TLOU

Burford’s initial tweet might be provocative in origin, but it sparked a peculiar backlash from The Last of Us fans, so I find Burford’s subsequent thread worthy of unpacking. For the sake of brevity and steering this article towards something productive rather than veering into the gutters of Twitter replies, allow me to somewhat paraphrase the thread of Burford’s follow-up thoughts before arriving at my finally-cemented opinion about The Last of Us. 

Burford immediately summarizes Dina’s ultimatum about Ellie’s middle-of-the-night decision to abandon the otherwise happy family being celebrated for Mother’s Day. This ultimatum is simply a promise that, if Ellie leaves Dina, she will not have a family or home to return to, even if Ellie accomplishes her revenge. I find myself vindicated by Burford’s next exasperated thought, that “gamers will literally watch two characters emoting hard and ignore the context and actions of their behaviors to stan them,” which is to say, blindly supporting them without caveat or nuance — just because they look pretty on screen. As Burford continues, “it’s wild.” The sentiment leading to the initial Mother’s Day tweet, in other words, has completely ignored the context and actions of Ellie’s irrational behavior purely because people are easily tricked by the graphical fidelity allowing these characters to be almost lifelike with their emotive output.  

I felt vindicated by the latter thought in which Burford echoes a sentiment that pervades my polemic on The Last of Us Part II, “this ripoff of [The Walking Dead] is one of the most critically acclaimed games of all time for the vapid argument that,” and here is where our critical words are identical, “revenge is bad.” Burford proceeds to roast Niel Druckmann, creator of The Last of Us, as well as fans who embrace Joel and Ellie as “good” people. These fans, according to Burford, “ignore that [Joel] literally doomed humanity because he’s a selfish monster,” and because they can’t look beyond the “expensive graphics” in which these characters expressed a loving bond. They hugged each other, so they must be good people, right? 

Obviously, leading up to this point, Burford is trading somewhat in provocation; he wants to get people’s attention as much as he wants to make a convincing argument. This argument can be respectfully boiled down to one of his later tweets in the thread, “gamer desperation to be respected without engaging in any kind of media literacy results in people getting mad at anyone for suggesting games… might have a bit of work ahead of them.” Burford continues, “every game has to be this huge monumental work of genius that no other media could touch,” and when people criticize any game they love, fans of the game explode and vilify its critics — as we saw with the cantankerous reception to The Last of Us Part II.

How Gamers Conveniently Ignore TLOU‘s Flaws

I have been lucky enough to avoid most major backlash for the articles I write and gaming opinions that I share on this website. Despite my luck, not a day goes by in gaming discourse where I fail to witness this sort of petulant exchange mentioned by Burford. When people see substantial critique levied at works of art they love, there is a non-zero chance that they will angrily lash out. It’s this reactionary attitude, the biting of the proverbial hook, that I think Burford’s thread is ultimately critiquing.  

To bring Burford’s thread to its full-circle conclusion, he reflects on the overall purpose of the thread when he writes, “but the thread itself was inspired by the suggestion that this [image of Ellie, Dina, and JJ depicts] a happy couple. This made me chuckle, so I made a tweet ruefully pointing out that immediately after this sequence, one of the characters leaves to do murders, ending the supposedly happy relationship.” Burford continues, “and that led to ‘isn’t it interesting how gamers, on the whole, will take isolated moments and focus on them and ignore the rest of the narrative to imagine a version of the character that doesn’t exist?’ because that’s so… weird, right?” I know I’ve been harsh on The Last of Us Part II, but even if I liked the game, I think Burford is accurately describing the general sense of “discourse” around games with universal praise like the original The Last of Us. People idolize Ellie – look at the fan art! — and that idolization leads to these made-up, fantastical versions of characters, versions that you cannot honestly find in the source material unless you deliberately or willfully ignore important plot points. This unthinking acceptance is vapid at best, pernicious at worst, as far as Burford and I are concerned.  

Burford’s thread continues for considerable length, but there are a few remaining clarifications necessary to be made for this conversation. One of his clarifications involves the attitude of gamers in question, which he summarizes in the following ways: “’I have to misunderstand this work to idolize these characters’ is the problem”; “’these characters should not be idolized, based on the game itself’ is the commentary”; “‘you don’t get it, I can keep idolizing them’ is rooted in [willful ignorance, and] that’s the whole problem!!” As someone who takes games seriously, who writes about them with critical depth, and who wants to see this medium thrive beyond where it is now, I fully agree that Burford’s commentary here was necessary, however condescending or harsh. I don’t think anyone starts idolizing these characters with “willful ignorance,” as Burford describes, but I think all who maintain these characters to be worthy of idolization absolutely commit that epistemic sin. 

For the sake of this discourse analysis, as well as a meta-examination of The Last of Us’ enduring critical legacy, we will end the close reading of Burford’s thread there. There’s plenty more fodder for anyone interested in reading his Mother’s Day thoughts further. Suffice it to say that Burford has found a nerve of sensitivity within The Last of Us’ fanbase. Just a glance at his replies reveals an abundance of users with Ellie, Abby, or Joel avatars, which is to say that people who object to his thread are not doing so impartially. Burford’s thread, rather, has ignited a protective indignation on behalf of superfans, die-hards, and ostensibly many of the people who made the critical reception to The Last of Us Part II so fraught with toxicity for anyone so bold as to critique it as imperfect. You cannot criticize a game like The Last of Us or its sequel and expect to get away with it. 

Picking Apart The Last of Us

I was so entertained by Burford’s Mother’s Day thread that I decided to reread his lengthy teardown of the original The Last of Us. Upon my first read, many months ago, I immediately shared this article with Epilogue writer Andy Webb, whose love for both The Last of Us games is unrivaled in my group of friends who care about games. Upon this reread, I decided that some of Burford’s initial insight added depth to the above Twitter thread, and might be useful for reframing the entire conversation around this sacred gaming cow, The Last of Us.  

One of Burford’s objections to the original The Last of Us game is philosophical in origin, as he begins his article by referencing a traumatic event from his youth. This reference culminates in the lesson learned that he summarizes as follows: “Every time disaster takes something from us, human nature sets in and we band together to do whatever we can to survive. We’re social creatures at heart, and when we’re afraid or hungry or scared, we band together. When people around us lose their homes, we band together to fix it. When disaster strikes, we are there for each other.” 

People who have played The Last of Us at least once should immediately be able to map some of these generalizations onto the asymmetrical philosophical assumptions inherent in both games. These assumptions are cynical, namely that humanity will fracture and turn hostile against itself in the event of disaster like a zombie outbreak. How could you conclude otherwise, Burford might suggest, when so much of the original TLOU game slowly walks us through military occupations, quarantine zones, cannibal camps, and other horrific social scenarios? Even if TLOU completely earns its spotless critical praise, even fans of the game have to concede that TLOU assumes the worst about humanity in general. 

I am skimming over much of Burford’s actual article, which is packed with anecdotes, analogies, and references to other games. Instead, I want to focus only on the aspects of this article that directly attack TLOU, a game that has become, “Immune To Criticism” (Burford’s words). To this effect, I think the most immediately efficient sentence in his entire piece is this useful vector for the following critical discussion: “The Last of Us is only significant in how much money went to its creation, and there are a million other creative voices who could have used that money to say something more meaningful.” 

This statement could be laden with caveats and throat-clearings, but it isn’t. And perhaps Burford is right. I cannot immediately locate reliable figures for TLOU’s development cost, but it’s safe to assume a wide window of anywhere between $25-100 million. And when I think back on the time period in which TLOU released, even my critically unpolished lens was able to discern the industry’s abundant oversaturation of the zombie genre. If anything, and this was certainly true at the time, The Last of Us was remarkable because it somehow didn’t feel trite; even as it flagrantly recycled tropes, themes, and motifs from the genre, it felt fresh because of its then-unique implementation as a video game.  

If The Last of Us isn’t meaningful, as Burford argues, then we should delve further into what he means. Precisely, he elaborates that, “there are differences in the way stories are told depending on the medium, and certain stories are appropriate for some mediums and not others.” That is, maybe TLOU can borrow from its direct film roots without looking like a copycat. It did, in fact, and received innumerable awards as a result. Burford’s critique, as it unravels, starts to underscore the fact that The Last of Us didn’t use its medium – interactivity – in any artistically interesting way, even as it borrowed its otherwise remarkable plot and characters.  

Ludonarrative Concerns in The Last of Us

One of Burford’s next noteworthy points leaves my realm of expertise (writing about texts) and shifts into the essence of game development. Naughty Dog, developer behind The Last of Us, as well as the massively successful Uncharted franchise, which I have written about, as well as one of my favorite childhood games, Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy, has earned an unquestionable reputation within Sony’s stable of game developers. According to Burford, it seems that a lot of TLOU’s seemingly infinite praise is a result of this name recognition and reputation more than anything else. He writes of Naughty Dog’s games in general, “they’re inadequate video games that, made by anyone else, would have been critically reviled.” Instead of having something important, urgent, or new to say with their games, “the studio’s success is due more to a gigantic budget that allows them to brute force success more than anything else.”  

The reason I am quoting Burford as though he were the arbiter of these TLOU hot takes is because I have been wrestling with my thoughts about the game for many years now. Since I began taking games seriously in late 2017, writing about them critically as early as January 2018, I have not been able to rekindle the initial “woah” factor that my first playthrough of The Last of Us left me with. Something about the actual gameplay is just unpleasant to engage with. Whether it’s the back-to-back cover-shooting rooms, the lamentable box and pallet puzzles, or just the disconnect between the human story beats and the inhuman gameplay actions (ludonarrative dissonance, anyone?), I cannot in good faith say that I think The Last of Us is a game at the pinnacle of the medium. Hell, the more I think about it, the more I realize how many dozens more hours I spent in the multiplayer “Factions” mode of TLOU and how much engagement I received when there was no pretense of actual story.  

On one hand, I want to praise this game because it once meant a great deal to me; if nothing else, it piqued my interest in games and storytelling years before that interest became a central focus of my life. On the other hand, I cannot praise this game today because so little of it holds up to my scrutiny. This internal battle about TLOU has been frustrating and dissatisfying when I’ve attempted to articulate it, which is why I find the following paragraph from Burford’s article so enlightening, for it perfectly articulates (rhetorically) where my problems with the game arise. 

“So, go back and play The Last of Us, but mute the game and skip every cutscene. Turn off the subtitles. Just… play the game, think through every single encounter. Look at how they’re constructed and what’s happening in terms of level and encounter design. Ask yourself about the verbs — what do you find yourself doing?” 

When I began talking and writing about games critically, I framed my project in terms of “ludonarrative,” how games tell stories. This framing is in direct opposition to the oft-repeated term, “ludonarrative dissonance,” how gameplay and stories clash with each other to deleterious effect. Burford doesn’t explicitly name those terms here, but that’s exactly what his emphasis on verbs is aiming at. When you ask yourself about the verbs in TLOU, what you are doing as a player should, in theory, support or reinforce the story being told by the game (usually cutscenes). As I replay and critically reappraise it, The Last of Us completely fails, even as it serves as an intentional counterexample to the easier-to-critique Nathan Drake: a happy-go-lucky protagonist who, in gameplay sequences, is a mass murderer.  (This “ludonarrative dissonance” does not diminish my enjoyment of the popcorn-action of the Uncharted series, but when a game like TLOU tries to embody a challenge to such critiques, it better well do a damn-good job.) 

I won’t reiterate each of Burford’s critiques here, as he picks apart enemy encounters, stealth, one-hit-kill enemies, and other such aspects of TLOU that he describes as “emblematic of all the worst bits of last-gen game design.” There’s nothing, he writes, that this game does well as a linear story-driven video game – a claim that even I struggle with swallowing completely.  

Why People Love The Last of Us

Burford’s next segue of analysis returns us to the Mother’s Day Twitter thread, the impetus for me rereading his article in the first place. In eerily similar language, Burford writes, “People love this game not because of the mechanics — which are honestly just not interesting enough to write home about or build an article on — and they don’t love it because it’s original. They love it because it looks nice and it emotes good [sic].” This final point about visual fidelity and accompanying emotional depiction is precisely what misled that poor fan to naively celebrate Ellie as a commendable mother. The more I think about it, and especially with the news of a remake on the horizon, the more I agree with Burford: this game made a splash in the industry because, like all Naughty Dog games, it was at the cutting edge of what the (Playstation 3 at the time of release) hardware could do. That alone is remarkable. It just happened to have compelling acting to match what you saw on screen. 

In a similar fashion, Burford reminds us of Joel, who, by all accounts except that of die-hard fans, is a contemptible person. “Joel doesn’t just kill people,” writes Burford, “he makes them suffer.” That distinction is incredibly easy to overlook and ignore, and I am fully guilty of this naïve first-pass reading of his character. When I played TLOU in 2013, I, too, was swept up by Joel’s and Ellie’s beautiful – however complicated – relationship. I have written about how my favorite aspect of the original TLOU was that relationship. But I have not written about my second-pass reading of Joel’s character; namely, that he is a sadistic mass murderer who doomed humanity for selfish and insecure reasons. This second-pass reading doesn’t suddenly undermine my fondness for him or my protective feelings for Ellie (at least in the first game), but it caused me to approach any remotely sympathetic character in The Last of Us Part II wish severe skepticism and scrutiny.  

In the way that Burford ridicules and dismisses the Mother’s Day fan who posted the image of Ellie, Dina, and JJ, I see him making a similar move here with Joel and his respective fans. “People see that he bonds with Ellie,” continues Burford, “so they decide he’s a good dad, even though he’s literally a psychopathic murderer. When Joel emotes sad, they assume he is sad for a good reason.” Again, I am guilty of this. When I first played TLOU, I didn’t ultimately care about the rest of humanity, I cared about Joel and Ellie’s relationship – the aspect of this broken world I had spent a dozen or two hours protecting. The fact that many people react similarly to various relationships like Ellie’s and Dina’s in the sequel should come as no surprise, but it still does – I guess, because I can’t help but glare at the flaws. 

I feel like Burford addresses my previous first-pass reading of The Last of Us directly when he writes, “When you make a character who can perform pain, who can grimace and groan and express, you can create a powerful sense of empathy. When we see a person look sad, we feel sad for them, especially if we spend time with them, like the audience does with Joel. If we don’t think about the game, if we just go along with the vibes, then The Last of Us is a touching story about a sad man trying to reconnect with his humanity after a tragic loss, elevated by performances not often seen in games.” 

How The Last of Us Creates Empathy

Joel’s and Ellie’s characters accomplished exactly this when I first played The Last of Us in 2013. Their characters created empathy. I felt sad for them. I spent time with them. I didn’t think so much as vibe. Thus, when the credits to The Last of Us first rolled for me, I absolutely walked away thinking it was a touching story with all the details Burford ends his paragraph describing. Burford continues these thoughts to pick apart the beloved giraffe scene from TLOU, which even I don’t have the heart to dismiss here.  

To conclude my discussion of Burford’s article — which, if you haven’t read at this point, is your homework assignment after finishing my piece – I’d bring your attention to the sort of penultimate ‘moral’ that Burford’s writing arrives at: “[The Last of Us] might be popular immediately, but it isn’t human. It has nothing valuable to say about people — in fact, it might actually help people start to take for granted [the worst parts] about humanity.” This sentiment circles right around to his childhood anecdote at the top of the piece, which highlights Naughty Dog’s cynical assumption about how humans respond to disaster – either by killing each other, as Naughty Dog would have it with TLOU, or by banding together to overcome any obstacle, as Burford’s anecdote illuminates.  

I don’t have a good reason to disagree with Burford when he describes The Last of Us as “unthinking” and “derivative” in the same breath. The more I think, the more I derive, the more I agree with this analysis. Are Naughty Dog “genre imitators”? Almost certainly, but I don’t think there’s an inherent problem with taking direct influence from the works of others. Is there manipulative “shameplay” that practically gaslights the player into their emotional response to works like TLOU? I think so, and I have decried as much about The Last of Us Part II in my writing. 

But is TLOU remarkable because Naughty Dog had the money to make it, and “nothing more,” as Burford claims? I hesitate on this final point because I clearly remember my initial response to playing TLOU. Even if only once – and diminishingly so ever since – TLOU stirred something in me, causing me to ignore my concerns that metastasized in the sequel. Even if I don’t love The Last of Us anymore, it deeply mattered to me at one time, and I don’t want to arrive at the destination, as Burford has, that this game is only notable for its budget. I didn’t feel that way, at least, when the credits first rolled.  

Is The Last of Us Bad, Actually?

I have not written this article, using Burford’s words as my cypher, with the intention of tarnishing anyone’s appreciation of The Last of Us or its sequel. I do think, however, that this cultural example of discourse on Twitter – of games immune to criticism, of willfully ignorant fans, and of the need to inject vibrant, urgent critiques into gaming discourse as a whole – serves as a useful touchstone about how we can have better conversations about games. Better in the sense that we can pick apart even the works of art that stir our emotions, make us feel unfamiliar things, and leave a lasting impression on our lives.  

I won’t go as far as Burford to say that The Last of Us could potentially serve as a slippery slope to reinforce and enable fascistic attitudes, but I also don’t think he’s making a wild jump with this claim. Naughty Dog’s games all betray an implicit ideology that, if uncritically received by millions of players, has a very real potential of steering many people off course, morally speaking. As someone who started playing The Last of Us Part II without fully articulating these worries, but feeling them nonetheless, I have found it a valuable exercise to walk through Burford’s lengthy critiques and stack my own impressions up against them. Even where we disagree, I feel like Burford always teaches me something. And that’s the kind of gaming discourse that, unlike most of Twitter, is worth salvaging.

I hope that, however vicariously, this article has opened the door for more people to pause and reflect before gushing about the next major AAA release, Naughty Dog or otherwise. The Last of Us is an interesting piece of art because it sparks conversation, if nothing else. But to overstate its place in the medium is, I think, misguided. Hopefully the next time such a discourse emerges, it will be with these hesitant, upstream considerations in mind.  

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