Cartridge Club #55 - The Last of Us

The Last of Us is an action-adventure survival horror video game developed by Naughty Dog and published by Sony Computer Entertainment. Players control Joel, a smuggler tasked with escorting a teenage girl named Ellie across a post-apocalyptic United States.

Introductions

Panel  

Mighty Q Dawg

Twitter: @MightyQDawg

Kathryn

Twitter: @k_song

Ryan

Twitter: @itsrocketsauce

Cartridge Club Intro/Outro Music

Ser Flash

Twitter: @Serraxor

Cartridge Club Logo

Will Pruitt

Twitter: @willopruitt

Level 1  

P2(Mark) gives a quick overview of The Last of Us and panel discusses their memories of the game and first impressions.

Developer: Naughty Dog

Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment

Director: Neil Druckmann, Bruce Straley

Platform(s):

PlayStation 3

PlayStation 4

Release Date:

June 14, 2013

Genre: Third Person Shooter

Level 2

Discuss story of the game: Set in the post-apocalyptic United States, the game tells the story of survivors Joel and Ellie as they work together to survive their westward journey across what remains of the country to find a possible cure for the modern fungal plague that has nearly decimated the entire human race.

Characters:

Joel (Troy Baker) - The protagonist of the game. Joel is a survivor of the Cordyceps Brain Infection outbreak, taking residence in the Boston Quarantine Zone. Embittered and hardened by the death of his young daughter Sarah, Joel operates as a black market smuggler, dealing in contraband, taking numerous de-humanizing jobs over the years to survive in this new post-pandemic world. He has only few moral boundaries left to cross. Unfortunately for him, he is thrust into the middle of the nightmare that the world has become, when he is asked by the leader of the Fireflies, Marlene, to look after Ellie. Throughout the game, Joel slowly develops an unbreakable bond with Ellie and a desire to once again open up his emotions that he had suppressed for so many years.

Ellie (Ashley Johnson) - The deuteragonist of the game. Ellie is a brave 14-year-old girl that has grown up in this harsh world and it is all she has ever known. Ellie is immune to the Cordyceps strain and because of this, the Fireflies, an anti-government organization, seek to reverse engineer a vaccine through her. She and Joel travel across the post-pandemic United States to reach the Fireflies. She helps the player through the game in many ways, lending a hand in combat and assisting through areas of the game that would otherwise be inaccessible. She frequently expresses curiosity about the remnants of a world that no longer exists.

Tess (Annie Wersching) - Tess is Joel's 'partner-in-crime'. They operate in the black market of a city under martial law and have earned a reputation for their ruthless behavior. She and Joel have a trust that runs deeply between them. Tess goes with Joel to drop off Ellie to the Fireflies at the Capitol building in Boston, in exchange for getting back the guns that were stolen from them. Against all odds, the trio make it to the Capitol Building only to find that the Fireflies are dead, and Tess reveals that she was bitten by a Runner an hour before. She holds off some soldiers after she makes Joel promise to bring Ellie to Tommy, Joel's little brother.

Bill (W. Earl Brown) - Bill is a paranoid survivor who appears early in the game and helps Joel and Ellie. Bill takes refuge in a town that he has completely booby trapped. He seems to be a bit eccentric, perhaps deranged, but offers to aid Joel and Ellie in finding a car. He is excessively bitter towards Ellie due to the fact that she was hostile towards him from the start. Bill possesses gay pornography, and showed heavy emotion for his friend Frank's death, implying that he was romantically involved with Frank.

Marlene (Merle Dandridge) - The leader of the Fireflies and Ellie's surrogate parent. In exchange for their guns back, Marlene tells Tess and Joel to take Ellie to the Fireflies at the Capitol building in Bost