The Last of Us
Tereza Čtrnáctá
Apocalyptic world with zombies and death on every corner, I guess everyone has heard of this at least once in their life. But in this article you have an exceptional opportunity to get familiar with something more than just a zombie series. It's one of the best apocalyptic and philosophical series I've ever seen in my life, it's The Last of Us.
It's a two-part video game series and this Monday (Jan 16th 2023) HBO released the first episode of the TV series called also The Last of Us and basically it's a remake of this video game. The game and series are both rated 18+, because of high presence of violence. Despite this fact, It taught me that life isn't always easy or fair, but you need to accept it and deal with it, because some things cannot be changed, although how much we want. The show also shows that everyone has two sides, even though we don't have to be able to see both of them, they still exist.
FUN FACT: The most frightening fact you would never think of is that the fungus that causes humans to turn into zombies exists in the real world. It's called Ophiocordyceps unilateralis or so called zombie fungus. It only infects ants in rainforests, because the fungus needs lower temperature and human body is to hot for them, but scary is that because of global warming funguses could someday in future evolve to be able to live in higher temperatures, which means one day they could infect even us. That's why this game is so different from others, because there is a real chance that in future it could really happen to us.
The story takes us to the USA 20 years after the start of the zombie apocalypse. From that time things didn't get any better, vice versa, there still no cure, life standards are even worse and I'm not even talking about civil rights, because in martial law they basically don't exist. The main character here is Joel, a 52 year-old man, a black market smuggler who is requested to smuggle a 14-year-old girl (Ellie) from a city, but at that time he has no idea of her importance. Joel is rough, however deep inside he's really broken, but no one knows that ( well, except from his brother who lives far away). To better understand Joel's character, during the start of the apocalypse his 12-year-old daughter Sarah died in his arms and that's a huge and unbelievable loss a parent could ever experience.
After one accident Joel finds out that Ellie is immune and only hope on earth to find a cure. During the travel they experience many adventures and Ellie really grows to Joel's heart, because (even though Joel doesn't want to accept it) he takes her as his daughter or at least something not so far from it. When they finally reach the requested location, where the fireflies (rebels) are working on the cure, Joel is forced to make an extremely hard and questionable decision that takes this game to completely another level. With Ellie they're finally able to make a cure and maybe save all of humanity, but the problem is it would kill her.
How would you decide?
Information resources: my own gaming experience , https://www.hbo.com/the-last-of-us , https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8084208/
Picture resources: https://www.psgamer.cz/clanek/nejnovejsi-trailer-na-serial-last-of-us-valcuje-youtube, https://www.wallpaperbetter.com/en/search?q=the+last+of+us, https://www.gamesradar.com/the-last-of-us-tv-show-cordyceps-explained-fungus-real/</p>, https://www.wired.com/story/last-of-us-does-the-impossible-hbo/</p>, https://www.theguardian.com/games/2022/jan/27/now-that-ive-finally-played-the-last-of-us-who-wants-to-talk-about-that-ending</p>, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1tx643blfI, https://www.gamezone.com/originals/dissecting-joel-from-the-last-of-us/</p>, https://www.fanbyte.com/games/news/i-cant-handle-sonys-meme-gifs-after-this-last-of-us-part-i-atrocity/</p>, https://www.fanbyte.com/games/news/i-cant-handle-sonys-meme-gifs-after-this-last-of-us-part-i-atrocity/</p>