If you haven’t heard, Sony and Naughty Dog are re-releasing The Last of Us. No, not Part 2’s PS5 re-release. Not Part 1, either. Nor the PC port. This one’s a compilation of both games, Part 1 and Part 2 Remastered, in a collection called The Last of Us Complete. This is coming right in time for the second season of HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation, because of course it is.
The Part 1 re-release also coincided with the first season.
Let’s get the obvious complaint out of the way first: we really do not need this many versions of The Last of Us. I know, I know, it’s a whole $10 cheaper than if you bought both remasters separately. Yes, $10 goes a long way in this economy. And yes, remasters and remakes bring in the money necessary to fund single-player games. But good god, it’s impossible not to roll my eyes whenever this specific game is rereleased. It’s Sony’s pride and joy, its critical darling, the game that ill-advised non-gamers hold up as the one real example of video games as works of art, but come on. The jokes write themselves.
The Last Of Us Is Done, Finished, Complete
But a new thing that players are now panicking about is the title of the collection: Complete. This implies that The Last of Us Part 1 and 2 is a full story, and that the series won’t be receiving another game. This is it.
This feels like fans making a mountain out of a molehill, to be honest. We’re basing this all off marketing for a collection. Complete does ring of finality, and Neil Druckmann has said that a Part 3 isn’t guaranteed, but it’s a rerelease. It’s all marketing jargon. Let’s stop wetting ourselves for a second and consider that maybe it isn’t that deep.
And if it is that deep, here’s my take: it doesn’t matter, because the collection is complete. I simply do not care for a Part 3 any more, and that’s coming from a big fan of The Last of Us.
You Can Get More Druckmann Philosophy Without TLOU
Like many people, the duology has been a big part of my life and how my understanding of video games as a medium has been shaped. Its reflections on cycles of violence, when taken on its own terms, are valuable and meaningful. It presented us with complicated, nuanced, morally grey characters that called into question if protagonists must always be heroes, and used our expectations against us. People still debate the ethics of its characters’ choices years after launch.
But like so many before me have, and many after me will, I reiterate that The Last of Us is complete as is. The series isn’t like God of War, which has breadcrumbed what its sequel will entail and suggested that its story is far from over. This isn’t Horizon, which has an increasingly bigger world to explore with each subsequent instalment.
The Last of Us Part 2 ends on a damning note, a moral to take home, no suggestion of a future or where Ellie’s path will take her. The loneliness is the point. Violence kills love. This is the natural stopping point, the result of Ellie’s single-minded focus on revenge. Some, like our own Jade King, might suggest that she deserves a Part 3 to explore her redemption arc, but I disagree. The Last of Us as it stands tells a story of action and consequence. We have seen the consequence.
And perhaps more importantly, I don’t need to hear more about cycles of violence from Neil Druckmann, fictitious or otherwise. We’re already going to have to deal with his take on religion, and cycles of resulting discourse, through Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, as if The Last of Us Part 2 wasn’t enough of that.
If you really want that, Neil Druckmann is still here. But important stories reflecting the themes we love so much about The Last of Us don’t have to be told through that series. Many of us are attached to Ellie and her struggle. We might want to see her find redemption, but that still ignores the fact that the duology is complete as it stands. The duology is complete. We should let it, and Ellie, rest.
The Last of Us
