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While playing and after finishing The Last of Us, all I could think about was a book. When Naughty Dog began development Amazon must have seen a miniature sales spike for Cormac McCarthy's The Road; the mind's eye imagines a bulk order from California, and subsequent rows of well-thumbed paperbacks.This is a great thing! Videogames are wedded to the idea of dystopias anyway, and I'd much rather have one influenced by The Road than Fallout. What is interesting are the aspects of this world The Last of Us absorbs, and those it decides to leave behind - choices driven by a clear-eyed focus on what a videogame 'should' offer its players.
The most obvious example is everywhere: stuff. Rags, nails, blades, scrap metal, candy, bullets, tape, booze, toolkits, sugar, and comics. Scarcity of resources in The Last of Us is something that was emphasised by its developers pre-release, and is driven home by a narrative filled with examples - rations, the Hunters that strip unwary travellers of their possessions, and the little hunting cameo. Except in practice this world is abundant, something exemplified in the multiple sweeping animations of Joel's hypnotic hands. I find his occasional comments on this good luck pretty funny, because they always remind me of CJ in San Andreas saying "I'll ha' that."
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