Naughty Dog
The Last Of Us

First of all, let's get the bad out of the way: "The Last of Us" is a (great) good game?
Certainly. Is it a masterpiece? I beg to differ on this.
The work of the Californian dogs on PS3 was unveiled back in 2011 during the Spike Videogame Awards, and from its announcement, it seemed surprising.
The Indiana Jones-like atmospheres and the frenetic rhythms that established Naughty Dog with the Uncharted saga are abandoned in favor of a claustrophobic, reflective, oppressive survival horror.

The first change of pace, as said, is found in the setting: you play as Joel, a poor unfortunate soul who ends up working as a smuggler along with his partner in misfortune, Tess, to survive in what remains of Boston, after an infection caused by terrible parasites, the Cordyceps, decimated the world's population two decades ago, turning the infected into monstrous beings driven only by the satisfaction of their primal urges and stripping away what little humanity remains to those who survived the infection.
Out there, beyond the fence separating the Boston quarantine zone from everything else, nature has forcefully regained its dominance over the world. Pristine forests stretch, ruins, crumbling buildings, rivers flow along "beds" of highways and abandoned towns, almost as if they were relics left to testify "what was there before"
A symphony of silences pierced by the harrowing cries of the atrocities produced by nature itself.

We could succinctly define that the setting chosen for this The Last of Us is to I Am Legend as Uncharted was to Indiana Jones. And we wouldn't be wrong in making this comparison, as the atmosphere experienced during our relentless pilgrimage among these "remnants of humanity" is very similar to Will Smith's film. However, unlike the film shot by Francis Lawrence, here we're not alone: we have a goal, a leitmotiv that animates the entire adventure.
The goal is to escort a fourteen-year-old girl, Ellie, apparently immune to the Cordyceps infection, to the headquarters of a mysterious organization called the Fireflies, intent on producing a vaccine capable of giving new hope and vital energy to all of humanity, or at least what's left of it.

Ellie and Joel; the Ying and the Yang.
Their adventures, their pilgrimage, the evolution of their relationship, and the many "supporting characters" they will meet during the adventure constitute the core of The Last Of Us.
Each with a story to tell, they will have the opportunity to enrich the experience of Joel and Ellie, and at the same time, that of the player, to best characterize the game world now in ruins.
And to accompany the inner growth and journey of the two protagonists, of course.
And here we can safely say that the narrative structure of the production takes on the features of a The Road by Viggo Mortensen.

The true focal point, therefore, is not the experience or the journey itself, but the psychological evolution of the protagonists, their relationship, and the changes they will have to face.
Joel will have to confront the ghosts of his past, Ellie the responsibility that her role as the "last hope of humanity" entails.
The journey, the supporting characters are a "glue." The stars of the "video game" are simply them and the evolution of their relationship.

Analyzing the narrative structure from this perspective, it cannot be denied that Naughty Dog, with The Last Of Us, hit the target dead on.
The title presents an episodic structure organized into four macro-episodes, and from this point of view, narratively, it doesn't differ much from any random Uncharted.
More micro-episodes or micro-events connect with each other to form a true "big" global episode. The stroke of genius, and we repeat, lies in the brilliant intuition of managing to make the episodes independent but functional at the same time.
Every episode in which the plot unfolds is entirely understandable if disconnected from the previous ones (apart from, of course, rare exceptions), but they all serve to understand the psychological evolution of the protagonists, which is the real engine of the plot, in the end.
Moreover, since it's about Joel and Ellie's journey, a narrative structure organized in episodes is more functional than a continuous narrative flow given the specific type of events that are being narrated.
So, kudos to Naughty Dog for succeeding in crafting an excellent "video-movie."
As I read some time ago around the web: "the ending of The Last of Us is the best entertainment product ending I've seen in quite some time, and surprisingly The Last of Us is not a movie."

However, as already mentioned, at least in my view, The Last of Us is not a masterpiece. The sore points are all found in the gameplay of the title. It must be acknowledged that The Last Of Us is born from the ashes of Uncharted but at the same time tries to differentiate itself as much as possible. After all, if you live in a world populated by monstrosities similar to zombies, you certainly can't afford to grab a rifle and blow brains right and left, right?
For sure.
It becomes clear from the very first moments of the title a strong shift towards the stealth component.
There are even some variants of enemies, the Clickers, who have lost their sight entirely but have strengthened their hearing. So it is easy to understand how, in the sections where these enemies are present, one will necessarily have to resort to almost "Solid Snake" tricks: grab a brick and throw it away to lure Clickers in the opposite direction from yours to clear your path or rely on the R2 trigger press for the "hearing of Joel," which will allow us to visualize the "movements" of these formidable opponents or combine the resources found like a pair of scissors and tape to make a formidable knife to kill a clicker by sneaking up behind it silently. In short, there are "stealth" sections where The Last of Us works and does it damn well: the clickers' ability to kill you with a single hit is totally functional to the experience, increasing the tension and forcing the player to use their wits, as going in all Rambo-style in such sections never leads to the desired outcome.
In large environments teeming with such opponents, The Last Of Us almost turns into a dynamic puzzle game: it requires planning actions by the player, knowledge of the environment and, in addition, the incredible variety of approach methods combined with the numerical superiority of opponents allow creating different ways to overcome the same section continuously.

However, there are also situations that work "less well" in The Last Of Us: in particular, we refer to those situations where human opponents are encountered. Although these have a more advanced behavioral routine (or AI, if you will) compared to Clickers, they do not have the same one-hit-kill ability. So in the unfortunate event of being discovered by them, get ready to show your gunslinger skills. Certainly, even in these situations, the general scarcity of ammunition and the numerical superiority of our opponents help not to turn this The Last Of Us into a horror-flavored Uncharted clone, but it must also be said that quite often these sections turn into massive player escapes in vast game environments searching for ammunition or "this or that" object to eliminate opponents. Sure, even in this case, a certain approach variety will be guaranteed in confronting enemies and -yes- you can count on Ellie's support or use various resources found in the scenarios to be combined through a fairly successful crafting system to make smoke bombs, knives, nail bombs, and who knows what other mischiefs, but it should be noted that very often some game design choices make this approach variety superfluous because, in short, there is a feeling that, unfortunately, in these phases, it feels like playing an arena or horde mode of any multiplayer title.
An impression confirmed when the player decides to engage in melee combat: in this case, pressing three simple buttons in the form of a Quick Time Event is enough to take down opponents (...)

A final weight on the quality of The Last Of Us's gameplay is the game's duration, cross and delight of the entire production: fifteen hours to complete the offline mode alone. Certainly an excellent result given the genre, but it should be considered how the lack of variety in situations can make the title "heavy" in some aspects.
The player's interest doesn't wane thanks to the superb narrative structure, which makes The Last of Us a real in-game movie, sure, but how enjoyable is it to repeatedly perform the same actions for more than ten hours, even if different action modes are allowed in each area?
This The Last Of Us isn't as linear as an Uncharted, on the contrary, by virtue of its multiple approach to various sections, we might almost define it as an action sandbox, but how considerately fun or functional is it to the experience? I maintain that a greater variety of situations would have benefitted the entire experience.

For fairness, it should be said that the Naughty geniuses have tried to "mix the cards" at least, but they did it, maybe due to obvious technological limitations, in the wrong way: "taming" the narrative to serve the game mechanics rather than vice versa.
Making playable what was usually non-playable, but adhering to already present mechanics, and not, for example, introducing new game mechanics to face new situations.
The greatest merit of this The Last of Us from a purely gaming standpoint is in how the Californian dogs made narrative sequences playable that, in video game history, were usually presented as cutscenes, thus impersonal.
So a hunting session is experienced directly by the player instead of narrated.
An exchange of banter between Joel and Ellie becomes a dialogue while wandering freely in the vast game environments and not a cutscene. A heart-pounding chase or a sniper shooting spree from a rooftop is played by the player for what it is.

It can be said, therefore, from this point of view, that The Last Of Us makes narrative and gameplay one as never done before, and today this is undoubtedly its greatest merit. But we could also say, perhaps more rightly, that "The Last of Us" brings this narrative solution traceable even back to the time of the first Half Life to a new level.
We could say that "The Last of Us" is decidedly different from an Uncharted.
We would be right, but in our hearts, we would know we are lying because we felt a slight (slight) sense of deja-vu while experiencing the adventures of Ellie and Joel.
We could say that "The Last Of Us" is a masterpiece, one of those titles destined to enter the history of video games and stay there until the end of time.
But even here, something restrains us from expressing this judgment, partly because The Last of Us is not entirely free from flaws, partly because it doesn't bring anything revolutionary or innovative to the modern video game scene.
So how to define this "The Last Of Us"?
Well, the answer may be more straightforward than it seems and can be found at the beginning of this paragraph, namely: a great game and surely Naughty Dog's masterpiece.