The Last of Us is a 2013 action-adventure game developed by Naughty Dog and published by Sony Computer Entertainment. Players control Joel, a smuggler tasked with escorting a teenage girl, Ellie, across a post-apocalyptic United States. The Last of Us is played from a third-person perspective. Players use firearms, improvised weapons, and stealth to defend against hostile humans and cannibalistic creatures infected by a mutated fungus. In the online multiplayer mode, up to eight players engage in cooperative and competitive gameplay.
The game's development began in 2009 after the release of Naughty Dog's previous game, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. The studio split into two teams for the first time, with one developing The Last of Us and the other Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception. Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson portrayed Joel and Ellie through voice and motion capture, and assisted creative director Neil Druckmann with developing the characters and story; Joel and Ellie's relationship became the focus of development, with all other elements crafted around it. The score was composed and performed by Gustavo Santaolalla.
The Last of Us was released for the PlayStation 3 in 2013 to critical acclaim for its narrative, gameplay, visuals, sound design, score, characterization, depiction of violence, and portrayal of female characters. It became one of the best-selling video games, selling over 1.3 million copies in its first week and 17 million by April 2018. Its year-end accolades include Game of the Year awards from several gaming publications and awards ceremonies. It is considered one of the most significant seventh-generation console games and among the best video games.
Naughty Dog released several downloadable content additions; The Last of Us: Left Behind adds a single-player campaign following Ellie and her best friend Riley. A remastered version, The Last of Us Remastered, was released for the PlayStation 4 in 2014, and a remake, The Last of Us Part I, was released for the PlayStation 5 in 2022 and on Windows in 2023. A sequel, The Last of Us Part II, was released in 2020. Other The Last of Us media includes a comic book in 2013, a live show in 2014, a television adaptation by HBO in 2023, and a tabletop game by Themeborne in 2024.
Gameplay The Last of Us is an action-adventure game played from a third-person perspective. The player traverses post-apocalyptic environments such as towns, buildings, forests, and sewers to advance the story. The player can use firearms, improvised weapons, hand-to-hand combat, and stealth to defend against hostile humans and cannibalistic creatures infected by a mutated strain of the Cordyceps fungus. For most of the game, the player takes control of Joel, a man tasked with escorting a young girl, Ellie, across the United States. The player also controls Ellie throughout the game's winter segment and briefly controls Joel's daughter, Sarah, in the opening sequence.
In combat, the player can use long-range weapons, such as a rifle, a shotgun, and a bow, and short-range weapons such as a handgun and a short-barreled shotgun. The player is able to scavenge limited-use melee weapons, such as pipes and baseball bats, and throw bottles and bricks to distract, stun, or attack enemies. The player can upgrade weapons at workbenches using collected items. Equipment such as health kits, shivs, and Molotov cocktails can be found or crafted using collected items. Attributes such as the health meter and crafting speed can be upgraded by collecting pills and medicinal plants. Health can be recharged by finding edible items or through the use of health kits.
Though the player can attack enemies directly, they can also use stealth to attack undetected or sneak by them. "Listen Mode" allows the player to locate enemies through a heightened sense of hearing and spatial awareness, indicated as outlines visible through walls and objects. In the dynamic cover system, the player can crouch behind obstacles to gain a tactical advantage during combat. The game features periods without combat, often involving conversation between the characters. The player can solve simple puzzles, such as using floating pallets to move Ellie, who is unable to swim, across bodies of water and using ladders or dumpsters to reach higher areas. Story collectibles, such as notes, maps and comics, can be scavenged and viewed in the backpack menu.
The game features an artificial intelligence system by which hostile human enemies react to combat. If enemies discover the player, they may take cover or call for assistance and can take advantage of the player being distracted, out of ammunition, or in a fight. Player companions, such as Ellie, can assist in combat by throwing objects at threats to stun them, announcing the location of unseen enemies, or using a knife and pistol to attack enemies.
Multiplayer The online multiplayer mode, called Factions, allows up to eight players to engage in competitive gameplay in rearranged versions of multiple single-player settings. The game features three multiplayer game types: Supply Raid and Survivors are both team deathmatches, with the latter excluding the ability to respawn; Interrogation features teams investigating the location of the enemy team's lockbox and the first to capture said lockbox wins. In every mode, players select a faction—Hunters (a group of hostile survivors) or Fireflies (a revolutionary militia group)—and keep their clan alive by collecting supplies during matches. Each match is equal to one day; by surviving twelve "weeks", players have completed a journey and can re-select their Faction.
Players earn "parts" by marking or killing enemies, healing or reviving allies, crafting items, and unlocking the enemy lockbox. Parts can be spent mid-match on weapon upgrades and armor and are converted to supplies at the end of the match; additional supplies can be scavenged from enemies' bodies. Players also earn points as they play, which can be spent on weapons or skills to create custom loadouts. Players could originally connect the game to their Facebook account, altering clan members' names and faces to match their Facebook friends. Players have the ability to customize their characters with hats, helmets, masks, and emblems. The multiplayer servers for the PlayStation 3 version of the game were shut down on September 3, 2019.
Plot
In 2013, an outbreak of a mutant Cordyceps fungus spread through bites and airborne spores ravages the United States, transforming its human hosts into aggressive creatures. In the suburbs of Austin, Texas, Joel (Troy Baker) flees the chaos with his brother, Tommy (Jeffrey Pierce), and daughter, Sarah (Hana Hayes). As they flee, Sarah is shot by a soldier and dies in Joel's arms.
Twenty years later, civilization has been destroyed by the infection. Joel works as a smuggler with his partner, Tess (Annie Wersching), in a quarantine zone in Boston, Massachusetts. They hunt down Robert (Robin Atkin Downes), a black-market dealer, to recover a stolen weapons cache he traded with the Fireflies, a rebel militia opposing the Federal Disaster Response Agency (FEDRA), an organization which controls the quarantine zones. Its leader, Marlene (Merle Dandridge), promises to double their cache in return for smuggling a fourteen-year-old girl, Ellie (Ashley Johnson), to Fireflies hiding in the Massachusetts State House. Joel and Tess discover Ellie is infected; she claims she is immune and may be able to help develop a cure. At the State House, they discover the Fireflies have been killed and Tess reveals she has been infected during their journey. Believing in Ellie's importance, Tess sacrifices herself against pursuing soldiers so Joel and Ellie can escape. Joel decides to find Tommy, a former Firefly, in the hope he can locate others.
With the help of Bill (W. Earl Brown), a smuggler and survivalist in Lincoln, Massachusetts, Joel and Ellie acquire a working vehicle. Driving into Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Joel and Ellie are ambushed by bandits and their car is wrecked. They ally with two brothers, Henry (Brandon Scott) and Sam (Nadji Jeter). After they escape the city, Sam is bitten but hides it from the group. As his infection takes hold, Sam attacks Ellie, but Henry shoots him dead before taking his own life out of grief.
In the fall, Joel and Ellie find Tommy in Jackson, Wyoming, where he has assembled a fortified settlement near a hydroelectric dam with his wife, Maria (Ashley Scott). Joel unsuccessfully leaves Ellie with Tommy, ending in a confrontation about Sarah. Tommy directs them to a Firefly enclave at the University of Eastern Colorado. There, they discover the Fireflies have moved to a hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah. The two are attacked by bandits and Joel is severely wounded while escaping.
During the winter, Ellie and Joel shelter in the mountains. Joel is on the brink of death and relies on Ellie to care for him. Ellie encounters David (Nolan North) and James (Reuben Langdon), scavengers willing to trade medicine for food. After David reveals the university bandits were part of his group, Ellie becomes hostile. She leads David's group away from Joel but is captured; David intends to recruit her into his cannibal group. Ellie escapes after killing James, but David corners her in a burning restaurant. Joel recovers from his wounds and sets out to find Ellie. He reaches her just as she hacks David to death with a machete, an act that traumatizes her, and Joel comforts her before they flee.
In the spring, Joel and Ellie arrive in Salt Lake City. Ellie is rendered unconscious after almost drowning before a Firefly patrol captures them. In the hospital, Marlene tells Joel that Ellie is being prepared for surgery: in hopes of producing a vaccine for the infection, the Fireflies must remove the infected portion of Ellie's brain, which will kill her. Unwilling to let Ellie die, Joel battles his way to the operating room and kills the lead surgeon. Joel carries the unconscious Ellie to the parking garage, where he is confronted by Marlene, whom he shoots dead to prevent the Fireflies from pursuing them. On their way back to Tommy, when Ellie wakes up, Joel lies and tells her that the Fireflies had found other immune people but were unable to create a cure and have stopped trying. Ellie later expresses her survivor guilt. At her insistence, Joel swears his story about the Fireflies is true.
Development
Naughty Dog began developing The Last of Us in 2009, following the release of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. For the first time in the company's history, Naughty Dog split into two teams; while one team developed Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception (2011), the other began work on The Last of Us. Game director Bruce Straley and creative director Neil Druckmann led the team responsible for developing The Last of Us.
While at university, Druckmann had an idea to merge the gameplay of Ico (2001) in a story set during a zombie apocalypse, like that of George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968), with a lead character similar to John Hartigan from Sin City (1991–2000). The lead character, a police officer, would be tasked with protecting a young girl; however, due to the lead character's heart condition, players would often assume control of the young girl, reversing the roles. Druckmann later developed it when creating the story of The Last of Us. Druckmann views The Last of Us as a coming-of-age story, in which Ellie adapts to survival after spending time with Joel, as well as an exploration of how willing a father is to save his child.