[This is the second article in a three-part series titled The Last of Us Turns One, which celebrates the week of the game’s one-year anniversary. You can check out the first part here. Spoilers for the main campaign and Left Behind DLC are imminent.]
Ask anyone what their favorite moments in The Last of Us are and I’m sure you’ll get lots of different answers. That’s because there are just so many enduring moments and pieces of dialogue in the game that would resonate with different people, making it hard to find one definitive answer. In celebration of the game’s one-year anniversary, I figured it would be nice to take a look at 10 of the most meaningful and powerful moments in the game that have touched me in some way or another.
Note that my picks will come from both the main campaign of the game as well as the Left Behind DLC. Listed below, in ascending order, are my choices for the top 10 most memorable moments in The Last of Us.
10. “How about something a little more your size?”
This takes place in the middle of the summer chapter of the game. Joel is of the mindset that Ellie’s just a child and that she shouldn’t be trusted with a weapon while the latter insists that she can take care of herself. She ends up proving herself capable of handling a rifle to defend Joel as he takes out a bunch of hunters, and this helps to change his mind. This scene stuck out to me because it was the first sign of mutual trust between the pair, and it was something that would only grow in strength as the game continued on.
The entire exchange between the two before this scene where Ellie tries to convince Joel that she is indeed capable of looking out for him is almost similar to that of a child seeking a parent’s approval. Ellie’s look of subtle elation in that scene says it all: she’s genuinely glad to have earned a little of Joel’s trust, and this is what sets the foundation for their relationship.
9. Sarah’s death
To be honest, the whole “hero loses a loved one and turns into a cold-hearted murderer” trope is getting really old. I love Joel as a character, but you can’t deny that the man’s a walking cliché. Still, you have to give Naughty Dog credit for how well they presented this scene.
You only get to play as Sarah for about 10 minutes or so, but that short amount of time was all Naughty Dog needed to get you invested in her as a character. You see fragments of her life all over her room and you see the loving relationship she has with her father. And then, all of a sudden, Sarah gets shot and you can only watch in shock as Joel tries so desperately to keep her alive. The game doesn’t even give you time to grieve over her either. The Last of Us immediately cuts to the game’s title sequence and you’re thrown headfirst into the 20-year apocalypse. This scene, as clichéd and predictable as it may be, hits all the right notes and doesn’t fail to tug at your heartstrings.
8. “It can’t be for nothing.”
When Ellie and Joel finally reach Salt Lake City, they’re greeted by a beautiful view of a herd of giraffes. This takes place really late in the game and Joel realizes that he cares about Ellie a lot more than he does for some silly cure that might save mankind. When he tells her that they could just leave, Ellie looks at him and says: “After all we’ve been through, everything that I’ve done… It can’t be for nothing.”
That one line just proves what a strong character Ellie is. She doesn’t believe in doing things halfway and this scene shows how driven she is towards her goal. As Joel would say later in the game, “It was her. She fought like hell to get here.” To me, this scene is memorable because this is the point that best exemplifies the notion that Ellie is the true hero of the game, and that her strength of character is greater than Joel himself.
7. “The tests just keep getting harder and harder, don’t they?”
Now here’s a moment that you could easily miss if you don’t explore the game’s environments thoroughly. In the final stage of the game, in the Firefly hospital, you’ll have the opportunity to pick up a few of Marlene’s own audio logs that are scattered around the area. These provide you with some insight into her own feelings about the idea of sacrificing Ellie for a chance to engineer a vaccine.
In these audio logs, she apologizes to Anna, Ellie’s mother, and voices her frustration and sorrow at the very notion of killing off a young girl just to save mankind. At the end of one of the audio logs, she releases a tired sigh and whispers: “The tests just keep getting harder and harder, don’t they?” and she shuts off the recording. Not enough credit is given to Marlene as a character and there just aren’t enough players who really appreciate the conflicts she goes through in the story. I think it would’ve been a lot more interesting if Joel actually reacted to these audio logs as he found them.
6. The carousel
Left Behind does a fantastic job of foreshadowing the game’s outcome with this short little chapter. Anyone who’s played the game knows that Ellie’s friend, Riley, gets bitten and doesn’t make it. The relationship between the two girls is illustrated through all the different things they do together in the various set pieces of Left Behind but this one stuck out the most to me.
Riley starts up the carousel and Ellie rides one of the horses, but as soon as Riley tries to get on, the carousel shuts down completely. Naughty Dog could have very easily allowed Riley to enjoy one round on the carousel but instead, they chose to stop the sequence immediately after she gets on. Given my knowledge that Riley gets infected and dies in the game, I could only read this scene as a dark foreshadowing of things to come. A carousel ride is simple and innocuous, but my own foresight in knowing how this story ends turns it into something a little darker.
5. “What’s option three?”
Left Behind ends on a rather morose tone when Ellie loses all hope after she realizes that she and Riley have been infected. Even after Riley’s beautiful speech about how they shouldn’t ever give up any time they have with each other, it’s still easy to see that Ellie’s lost a lot of her will to live. Her first option is to take the easy way out and kill herself while her second option is to just keep living until the infection dies. Ellie doesn’t find any solace in these choices and asks for a third option, and Riley just looks at her sadly and apologizes.
This was a particularly memorable moment for me because this was a really low point for Ellie. Watching her lose control of her emotions as she panicked about her infection before finally breaking down into tears was both heartbreaking and powerful at the same time.
4. “What are you so afraid of?”
From the game’s opening, we all know that Joel’s been traumatized by the death of his daughter and is therefore afraid of getting attached to Ellie. When he tries to leave her with Tommy, Ellie retaliates by lashing out at him and demanding an explanation. I think we can all agree that Ellie’s a strong character, but this scene really does a good job of showing how vulnerable she can be when the threat of losing a loved one looms over her.
Ellie goes on to tell Joel that everyone she’s ever cared for has either died or left her, and that she’d only be more afraid if he left as well. This is just another one of the more powerful moments in The Last of Us that never fails to remind us just how human the characters in the game really are.
3. Ellie kills David
I won’t lie; the David boss fight is one of the most frightening segments I’ve ever encountered in a video game. I’d say it’s right up there with the Abstract Daddy encounter in Silent Hill 2 and its easy to draw comparisons between him and David. In The Last of Us, we get hints of David being a creepy pedophile, not unlike Abstract Daddy who symbolizes Angela suffering sexual assault at the hands of her father when she was younger. The game portrays David as a sick killer who won’t hesitate to murder Ellie once he spots her. After you’ve defeated him, you then have to take control of Ellie to grab the machete so she can defend herself.
When I completed the fight, I breathed a sigh of relief once I saw that Ellie had grabbed the machete to fight back against David. But my relief quickly turned into horror when I saw that she had started hacking away at David’s face non-stop. That horror quickly turned into sadness when it really hit me just how much hardship this 14 year-old girl had gone through. The whole sequence of Ellie killing David, followed by Joel finding her and leading her out of the diner is one that will haunt me for a long time to come.
2. “Okay.”
Surprised that this isn’t number one? Me too, actually. While writing up this list, Joel’s lie was all set to take my number one spot but then I realized that there was one other moment in the game that was more important to me than this one was. But more on that later.
Joel’s lie was a representation of just how much he cared about Ellie. He lied to her because he didn’t want her to live with the guilt of the choice that he made for her. Lots of people believe that Ellie accepted the lie because she loved Joel enough to trust that he made the right decision for her, but I choose to interpret it the way Neil Druckmann did. This whole time, Ellie’s always gotten easily attached to people who were stronger than her, mentally and physically. There was Riley, Marlene, and now Joel. She’s always loyal and protective over them but I’d like to think that Joel’s lie has changed this somewhat dependent side of her. By realizing that her own choice and agency in the matter was taken from her, Ellie finally understands that she needs to become her own person and break away from the people she depends on the most, regardless of how much she loves them.
The amount of emotion conveyed in the game’s final seconds is so overwhelming and its an ending that really stays with you long after the credits have finished rolling.
1. “Don’t go.”
For some reason, homosexuality is still regarded as a controversial issue in society today. You rarely see minority representation in video games because many developers believe in appealing to the largest common denominator. But over here in Left Behind, the emotion shared by Ellie and Riley is so pure and so simple. Ellie asks Riley not to go with the Fireflies, Riley throws her Firefly pendant aside and Ellie, now overwhelmed with joy, just kisses her like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
The game doesn’t even make a big deal of it either. It’s like the game was saying: “Yeah, they kissed. They really love each other. Now let’s continue with the story.” I like that. I like that a triple-A title like The Last of Us decided to just let the story go where it was meant to go, and allowed a romantic relationship between the two girls.
This, to me, was the most important moment in The Last of Us because it showed that Naughty Dog wasn’t afraid of making the game they wanted to make. We need more developers like Naughty Dog who can take risks and turn a video game into something really great, something that really resonates deeply with players everywhere. The kiss between Ellie and Riley came so naturally and you could just feel how deep their feelings really ran towards each other. That kiss was beautiful and I can’t help but giggle in delight every time I replay this DLC and watch that cutscene.
And there you have it! These are my picks for the top 10 most memorable moments in The Last of Us. I’m sure everyone has different moments from the game that they found memorable so leave a comment down below and let me know what your favorite moments from the game are.
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