From Companion to Character: The Last of Us’ Ellie
The Last of Us is a game based around what is considered to be one of the cardinal sins of gaming: the escort mission. Joel, protagonist and player character, must protect and transport a young girl, Ellie, across the country. The game is their journey to endure and survive until the fateful end. The player, as Joel, must see to it that Ellie makes it through. She is as much as a character as she is a plot point or a gameplay device. During the game’s opening chapters she does little to differentiate herself from any other companion character. It is as the game progresses that she grows in her own right eventually supplanting Joel as the player character.
The player quickly becomes adjusted to playing as Joel, a survivor. His violence and predatory nature is easy to translate into a gameplay mechanic. Naughty Dog links the narrative to the gameplay by allowing the player to experience the world as Joel does. The player must survive. And they must protect Ellie. It is a slow build, through both narrative and gameplay, to develop a relationship between Joel and Ellie and the player. Naughty Dog attempts to ingratiate her on the player and Joel by making her helpful in combat situations. This way she becomes less of a hindrance and more of an equal companion. However, looking from the outside in as the player does, by the time Joel and Ellie leave Boston together; one is left to wonder why he didn’t just leave her on the side of the road somewhere.
It is in the following chapter, Bill’s Town, that Ellie begins to come into her own. This is witnessed from the outside by the player as the environments of the game begin to mimic that of which typical teenagers are exposed to. Beginning with a music store, the player and Joel see how much a normal person Ellie is. She casually flips through old records bemoaning the fact that no one will be able to listen to them anymore. The hard survivor hasn’t arrived yet and in its place is this typical girl. It is a moment of clear insight that the player understands particularly in comparison to the many repressed emotions of Joel.
The standout moment of Bill’s Town is also where the greatest development between Joel, Ellie and the player occurs. In an abandoned high school the game’s leads must fight their way through a large pack of infected culminating with the first encounter with a Bloater. The player is again witness to Ellie’s growth from the outside as she fights her way through high school like we all did once. The shambling, frightening and aggressive infected are only a few steps away from some of the worst that an actual high school has to offer. Ellie, at age fourteen, enters the high school at just the same time as a typical freshman would. She fights her battles and makes it out the other side of the high school relatively unscathed. This is fundamental to her growth as a character and the relationship she is to form with Joel and the player. To watch her struggle and suffer and fight through high school is more ingratiating than finding extra med-kits could ever be.
A portion of The Last of Us is dedicated to the city of Pittsburgh and the survivors that have built a life there. They are hunter/scavengers for the most part and antagonistic to the game’s leads. There is however one place that Joel and Ellie come across that the residents of Pittsburgh hadn’t found yet; the remains of a high school prom. All the party decorations hang sadly on the walls after twenty years of decay. What is left of a photo station with Hawaiian back drop is abandoned in one corner. Walking over to it prompts a conversation with Ellie. She exclaims: “Woah! Look at that.” And again she becomes the typical teenager enjoying the prom that was denied to her. Ellie’s continual maturation mirrors that of current teenagers through similarity of location. The next logical step after high school is prom. What makes this section different from those before it though is its lack of combat. The wonderful party atmosphere is counterpointed by the emptiness of it all; a large room with no people. Ellie can walk through the prom, but she can never really go. The normal aspects of teenage life are denied to her. It is this juxtaposition of what the player and Joel understand as routine that further gives Ellie growth. It highlights her maturity and adaptability to this new, brutal world. It is here that Ellie as a survivor begins to take shape within the mind of Joel and the player.
After high school and prom comes college naturally. It is the next step on the accepted path set up by a society that no longer exists in The Last of Us. Yet, the University chapter in the game serves as Ellie’s graduating step in the maturation process. It is here that she becomes the survivor; it is at college that Ellie learns how to live in this world. Both Joel and Ellie have journeyed far to get to this point in the game and it is their hope that the university will be their final destination. Ellie places her hope on this place, believing it can offer her a chance to make her life and the life of those she cares about better. Entering on the campus for the first time she is as excited and jittery as college freshman on move in day. That hope is quickly crushed however as Joel and Ellie find the place abandoned. Her anger at the situation is readily apparent yelling how “they all turned into fucking monkeys!” It is with this final defeat that Ellie is transformed into a survivor like Joel. Hope becomes secondary when the one and only focus is the purity of survival. Living is just a consequence of surviving.
It is shortly afterward that the campus is swarmed by another group of survivors, a different group of hunter/scavengers looking for their own way to survive. During this confrontation Joel is badly injured and the game leaves his survival ambiguous for a short while. For the first time Ellie becomes the player character. She is now a survivor and therefore suitable for the player. Like with Joel, the player quickly adjusts to being survivor Ellie. Survival is the central concept marrying gameplay and story. It is what makes the game so cohesive and adds definition to the experience. Ellie, after passing through the hollow graves of normal teenage life, completes her own growth and goes from companion to character. This is a moment of great impact to the game, the culmination of what The Last of Us had been building from the beginning. The relationship between Joel and Ellie evolves into a father-daughter style mostly through the use of well implemented cutscenes. It is purely through gameplay that the relationship between Ellie and the player is developed. Players have survived through high school and fought their way to adult life in college. Ellie has done the same and by the time the player assumes control of Ellie they will fight just as hard to survive.
Eventually it is revealed that Joel is still alive. But the importance of playing as Ellie, even when she is no longer playable, is not lost on either the player or Joel. By solidifying the relationship between the player and Ellie, the player is now able to look at Joel with a new perspective. Reassuming the role of the original survivor it is impossible to ignore the time that Joel needed to be protected. Ellie comes into her own as a survivor and a protector. Caring for Joel when he is unable to care for himself, she becomes the stronger character. The relationship between Joel, Ellie and the player is rearranged in such a way that Ellie is no longer a hindrance, Joel is not as strong as originally perceived and the player knows what it takes to be a survivor.
The Last of Us takes what is one of modern gaming’s worse offenses and remakes it. The escort mission is entirely different when the player plays as both the protector and protected. Ellie grows from a purely companion character to that of a fully realized playable character. Her growth mirrors that of a standard teenager through the use of similar environments to that a current teen would encounter. But above all else, it is not the environments themselves that cause her growth; like Joel and the player, it is what she experiences while there that culminates in her becoming mature. The relationship that is created between Joel, Ellie and the player is founded on a similar understanding of what it takes to survive through that portion of life; fighting your way through high school, that one night of prom and the excitement and emptiness of college. The Last of Us makes both the player and Joel relate to Ellie by connecting to everyone’s adolescence.
Note: This piece was originally written with the intent of having it published on AWESOMEoutof10. The site may be no more, but credit is still due.
http://www.creativeuncut.com/art_the-last-of-us_a.html
http://guides.gamepressure.com/thelastofus/guide.asp?ID=20674
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