Game Reviews Gaming 22/06/2020

How Ellie Changed Throughout The Last Of Us Series

This article contains spoilers for The Last Of Us Part 2

For many of us, the 19th of June 2020 could not have arrived any sooner as it was the arrival of what is probably 2020’s most anticipated video game. You know which one I’m talking about… The Last Of Us Part II. Now as I’m sure you all know I’m no stranger to the survival horror genre so I couldn’t wait for this game to come out. In fact, I even wrote about it earlier last year and what I hoped to see from this new chapter in my review of The Last Of Us!
However, instead of rushing to get a review done and post it as soon as possible (since I am not as lucky as the reviewers who got early copies), I decided to dedicate the weekend to get to know Ellie a little better.

When I finally decided to give the first installment of The Last of Us a try it was on Christmas Eve with the entire family at home, cooking and getting ready for Christmas. I decided that I would give the survival horror a try while everyone was in the house, that way I did not have to be alone if I encountered something scary.
It was an exciting first 20 minutes into the game as my entire family watched me play and witness the loss of Sarah. I still recall my mom telling me to switch off ‘this horrible game’ as she was crying. How could I switch it off after what I just witnessed!?! I needed to continue.

Born into a world overrun by a deadly fungus infection that turns people into blood-hungry zombies and the uninfected survivors into paranoid madmen driven to kill in order to survive, Ellie finds herself fighting for her survival along with help of Joel. Ellie was first introduced to us after we helped Marlene escape to a safe place due to a gunshot wound. As we got through the door the young girl was at her side, knife in hand ready to fight, followed with some very colorful language. This is completely understandable if we take into consideration the world Ellie was being raised in. In fact, it’s exactly how I would expect a young teenager to react when being brought up in a world of violence and cruelty. And so her story with Joel starts as she gets dumped with the old man as he is tasked to keep her safe and help get her to the Fireflies hideout. They start their journey with a rocky relationship that looked like it was deemed to fail as both Joel and Ellie seriously distrusted each other. However, throughout the game we see Ellie rely on Joel and somehow learn to become a kid again. She is given the opportunity to learn about the things she missed as a child, like comic books, music, movies, and having a father figure to look up to.

I was worried to play Part II since the first game left us with a bit of a cliff hanger when Joel decided not to tell Ellie the truth and I was left wondering how she would have reacted. Would the truth harm their relationship? Despite the question burning a hole in my head, I was actually quite happy not knowing. I guess I was afraid to say goodbye to the little girl who had to survive a world where everyone looked out for themselves, how killing was the only way to survive and how she used it to make her strong. I wanted to hold onto that “awwww” moment we had with Ellie and Joel when they watched a wild giraffe. I didn’t want that somehow innocent side of her to disappear.
Somehow through all their struggles, we bonded with both characters. Against all the odds they became a weird family. Joel taught Ellie how to survive and became a much needed father figure to a girl all alone in the world, and Ellie cracked through Joel’s hardened exterior to teach him that it was okay to love and truly gave him his reason to live back. So when the roles got reversed and the protected became the protector in the first game and we finally got to play as Ellie we simply couldn’t help but love her character even more as she shows us how much she has developed on her journey with Joel.

Starting up the second game and seeing the title screen was kind of a scary unwelcoming ride because I honestly did not know what to expect from the game. When the first trailer got released I was excited and ready for the new chapter, but as Naughty Dog kept releasing new content I couldn’t help but be a little bit worried as it looked like we were about to lose our ‘innocent’ little girl who was now all grown up and seemed to be carrying a heavy burden. Her eyes in the trailer showed she was ready to do whatever it took to avenge the ones she loved.
The trailers and fan theories that came from them were all lies and, like a child biting into a raisin cookie mistaking it for the chocolate chip kind, I fell hard for the lies. For months I was dismissing everyone’s suggestions about the game and what the story meant. So when I finally started experiencing the story for myself I was at the edge of my seat! I was crying, angry and even felt hatred towards characters BUT that’s storytelling!! I couldn’t break away for a single moment and was so lost in the story that I even had to be reminded that I needed to sleep.

For me, my fears of losing the Ellie I once knew were totally well-founded as we see Ellie change in a split second. Losing her humanity as she plummets into new territory of unrelenting hatred. I feel like it was to be expected, the writers of the story really know how to pull at our heartstrings. In an instant, her character became dark and hateful as she struggles to come to terms with what just happened. She lost someone so close to her, someone who had become a part of her identity, and she had to watch them die in such a brutal way… even worse, she never got to patch things up with them. They never got to fix their broken relationship and I think that’s what she regrets and somehow she feels that by killing the person that took this healing opportunity from her will somehow fix it.
I won’t lie, my response upon seeing the cutscene was that I wanted to kill them all! Every single last one of them! How dare they do that to Ellie!? After the shock of what I had just witnessed, I paused the game and tears just started flowing.

I know it wasn’t intentional but we are all going through some dark times right now and the theme of The Last Of Us mirrors this in a way. The developers don’t shy away from this darkness and instead embrace it and develop it. I think it’s incredible how they have taken the theme of violence as the main drive of the game and truly shown how brutal it can be. On top of this Ellie’s voice actor, Ashley Johnson, grasp of what Ellie felt was portrayed so accurately in every facial expression, in every piece of dialogue that she had me actually feel her pain.
I genuinely think Ashley Johnson needs to win some kind of award for best performing character for 2020 or I’ll be really angry! What she did with Ellie was insane and it can be shown throughout the entire game. I somehow can no longer recall the image of a little girl, knife in hand, ready to help Joel. All I see now is this young woman ready to tear down the world with her own hands in order to get the closure she dreams about.

I was angry at the story for not giving Ellie the happiness I wanted her to have, I would have liked to see Ellie keep her innocence and be able to stay and live happily ever after at the town of Jackson. But unfortunately, that doesn’t make for a good video game and THIS mess of a game is something I will talk about for years!
But I’ve already said enough, I’m a few hours away from finishing the game and I’m terrified of what will happen next. I refuse to spoil the ending for myself as I feel like I would then just put the game away and never complete it for myself. It’s very hard to put into words how I feel about the game because on one hand I really love the story and on the other hand I hate what it is doing to my heart emotionally.

I guess when I’m done I’ll crawl into my bed and just take it all in for a few days… and wait for new rumors about HBO’s take on the game and when they will be giving us a series on this masterpiece of storytelling.

Lots of Love