I’m a gamer. I remember being about 4 years old and finding out that my neighbor (who must have been 14 or so) got a Nintendo Entertainment System. One morning, I decided I wanted to play it so I got up, got myself dressed, left the house, knocked on his door, and his mom let me inside. Now, it was also 6 in the morning and my parents didn’t know I had left the house. My neighbor, a long-time chef at the University of Richmond, called my mom and let her know that I had escaped without them noticing.
This is actually one of my earliest memories. Maybe shortly after that (in order to prevent me from walking out the front door without permission) we got our own NES. I remember standing at the foot of my parents’ bed with the duck hunt gun, reaching up as close as I could to the small TV that was on their credenza. I remember being frustrated by a Rambo game and wondering, “Who the heck is Rambo?” I remember Ninja Gaiden. And Mario.
Over the years, I got more gaming systems. One year, it was a Sega Genesis with Sonic and that awful Lion King game that was unbelievably difficult. One Christmas, it was a Nintendo 64 with Mario 64 and Waveracer, which was my first introduction to motion sickness due to standing too close to the TV. I remember that morning vividly. A few years later, it was the original Xbox. I remember playing Halo and being introduced to this new world. I also remember my dad playing Halo 2 at 9PM and waking up to him still sitting in the chair, end credits rolling, at 6AM. He looked at me, handed me the controller, and said, “Don’t ever let me play this again.”
Well played, Dad.
Eventually I started building my own computers and diving deeper into new worlds and experiences. Wandering around in the Elder Scrolls: Oblivion and accidentally becoming a vampire; being shocked by the realistic graphics of the smoke grenades in Call of Duty 2; playing Doom 3 with the lights off and regretting it; exploring the world of Red Dead Redemption 2 and the tragedy of Arthur Morgan. These games were fun, but they were also experiences with stories. They were visual novels. They were moments in time where I can remember exactly what was happening in my life and who my friends were and what we were doing.
Now, video game adaptations for the big screen have always been a consistent pattern: excitement followed by a “huh?” when they inevitably turned out to be awful. Doom was bad. Hitman was bad. Mortal Kombat was bad in the way that I love. Max Payne. Warcraft. Etc. The past few years, there have been some exceptions like Silent Hill, Resident Evil, Detective Pikachu (I’m not kidding), Sonic (they are actually hilarious), etc.
But recently, one has trumped them all and I have a feeling it will be the de facto king/queen of video game adaptations.
The Last of Us
HBO Max
Full disclosure: I’ve never actually played The Last of Us. I never had a Playstation and missed that boat. Thankfully, the PC edition will be out soon and I’ll have a chance to play it and experience the story. By all accounts, the Last of Us Part I and Part II are the pinnacle of game writing and storytelling. I know there was some debate over the ending of the entire story (I spoiled it for myself, but I won’t do that here), but it is still widely regarded as a high point for video game storytelling and experience.
I convinced my wife to watch the show with me, which is a minor miracle. She asked, “What is this even about? Is it one of your dumb science fiction horror zombie shows?” I replied, “Well….technically yes, but it’s more. So much more.” She gave it a chance and we finished out the 9-episode arc last night, a testament that it is so much more than a story about “zombies”.
The premise of the entire show/game is that a fungus, cordyceps to be exact, has started to infect the brains of people and turn them into literal zombies. The way cordyceps works in real life (my words…I’m not a scientist and my last biology class was in 10th grade) is by infecting a host. It is a endoparasitoid and infects insects (typically), taking over their bodies a little bit at a time. Now, imagine this fungus has developed the ability to infect humans and there is no vaccine to combat it because it is fundamentally different from the bacterial and viral infections we have been treating for decades.
The outbreak is swift and the collapse of the entire world is also swift. But really, this is just the “what” of the story and provides the vehicle for the actual story to take place: the one between Ellie and Joel. Ellie doesn’t have a family and (this isn’t really a spoiler….but spoiler alert) also can’t be infected by cordyceps. Joel also doesn’t have a family and has been tasked with getting Ellie to a hospital out west to see if a vaccine can be produced. Ellie is the cargo, and Joel makes it abundantly clear that that is all she is to him.
But things happen along the way. Every episode is, in a way, a little self-contained story of Joel and Ellie (mostly) and the people they meet along the way. Some of them are good, and some of them are bad, but the root of each story is Ellie and Joel and their increased reliance on each other. It is, at its heart, a story about a father and a daughter, a man and a teenage girl, who need each other maybe more than the world needs a cure. They need each other in ways that are sometimes disfunctional but relatable, because we are human and humans are not perfect. Our own traumas and issues and past relationships inevitably inform new relationships, sometimes for the better and sometimes….not.
Faulkner has been quoted saying, “The only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself.” This show embodies this principle. Joel is in conflict because of his past, the horrible things that have happened to him and the horrible things he has done. Ellie is an orphan and has lost many people in her life. She’s never had a father. This sets the stage for Joel and Ellie and their relationship, which unfolds slowly but surely. We start to see glimpses of who they could be; that they are both good people living in a world that requires awful choices.
I won’t spoil anything, but the show is beautiful because it focuses on these two people, played by the mazing actors Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey. Their chemistry on screen is superb and it seems like we are in a Pedro Pascal renaissance between this, Narcos, The Mandalorian, and that weird Nic Cage movie that he randomly shows up in. The production value is what you’d expect from HBO and it is clear that this will be their flagship series (next to House of the Dragon) for the next few years.
The show balances the horror of the setting with the heart of the people, finding the humanity that can still exist in a world that is broken beyond repair (at least anytime soon). It reaches sentimental moments that feel earned rather than manipulative. It gets under your skin and will make you want to simultaneously turn it off/keep watching.
I’m excited to play the game this year and (hopefully) watch season 2 next year. Don’t miss this one.