Game: The Last of Us (Remastered)
Developer: Naughty Dog
Platform: Playstation, PC
Target audience: Fans of narrative-driven action games, players interested in dystopian settings, and those exploring the intersection of ethics and survival in gameplay.
The Last of Us is a game that is truly built by not only the incredible story and narrative elements, but the seamless ways that those elements are integrated with gameplay mechanics. Few games make you care about the world as much as you do in tLoU. I had never played this game before and knew almost nothing, except that it had been adapted into a TV show—that alone told me what I needed to know: a game that can be turned into a piece longform narrative television is a story-important game. You’re not going to make a Candy Crush TV show. I suppose you could, but it would be bad. 
The narrative elements throughout are emotionally anchoring. I only played the first two chapters (about an hour and a half), and I was already connected and locked in to what was happening. In improv, we talk about this concept of “platform” as a method to begin a story—it’s a “normal world” that is able to be altered to create narrative changes. We see two examples of this off the bat in tLoU. The first chapter, you play first as Sarah, the daughter of the protagonist, but it seems at first that she is the protagonist. You’re immediately connected to her by being her, and this mechanic builds out the world in a dynamic way. So many little things add to the worldbuilding in the specific moments of this prologue. You’re woken up in the middle of the night by a phone call from your uncle, and your task is to find your father. But there’s no big red arrow pointing you in the right direction, or any indication of instruction on where to go to find him, you’re immediately just disoriented—which I think is a dramaturgical (like rhetoric for theater and non-text-based narratives) decision to heighten the intention of both the world ending, as well as having just woken up from a deep sleep. This is furthered again by another subtle mechanic, when you move the character around (also the first time in the game that you’ve had control), she’s not moving in a straight line, she’s stumbling around, it’s almost hard to go anywhere, because of how tired she is. 
This level of immersion and attention to detail is what turns this game from great to GOAT status. I always like to look at the different settings and menu options, and I was surprised to find a hugely robust set of audio options, both for accessibility purposes, and immersion purposes. I was playing in Green Library, so I had headphones on — I was able to switch the audio azimuth to reflect that I was not watching on a television, but on headphones. This is a setting I’ve never seen before, and it’s another mechanic designed specifically for immersion. 
Let’s talk about the ethics of embodiment. In tLoU, survival is in your body. Mechanics like crafting medkits or shiv upgrades are based entirely on physicality as a concept, and preserving yourself. And certain traits are literally biologically fucked—infected humans lose their minds and bodies to the fungus. When you’re infected, you’re no longer yourself, and the game gives you no tools to save or redeem those people. They’re not treated as sick people. They’re obstacles. Kill or be killed.
It would be cool to explore the gray zone—maybe add mechanics where, at great risk, you could attempt to treat early-stage infections, or maybe meet people trying to resist the change. It would give the player the idea that these bodies aren’t just monstrous—they’re tragic. That would deepen the ethical tension, and add emotional weight to every encounter. Maybe it happens, and I didn’t get that far in the game.
