But if you let your attention slip for just a moment, it's clear that Tess is the driving actor in these moments. You're having to learn new skills and adapt to the demands that the game is making of you. It's easy to get locked into what Joel is doing during these opening segments. It's the same relationship between Tess and Joel. Darcy is up to, even if he's doing something right there in the room with Elizabeth, and that's what makes the book about manners and people chatting at one another so engaging. When we read Pride and Prejudice, part of the thrill is that we're locked into Elizabeth Bennett and her surroundings. But that extreme focalization helps us miss things, too. We know his every movement, his every spoken word, and the fifteen minutes he spent walking around a zombie-infested room making sure that he hasn't missed any collectibles. In the opening hours of The Last of Us, we have an intense external focalization on Joel. It's a little more complicated than a 'point of view', and as a term it's meant to help us talk about what slice of the broad narrative world the person who is experiencing the story is getting. Hold with me here a second: Narrative theorist Gerard Genette developed the concept of 'focalization' to talk about the way that information is delivered to someone who is experiencing a story. The reason? Up until that point, it's her game.

The Last of Us's major plot doesn't get going until Tess exits it. So what is Joel before that transformation? He's a lackey, and Tess is in charge. This is what happened before he became the extraordinary, grizzled video game violence man. From the way the rest of the game plays out, it would be very easy to forget about these opening story beats as a part of the normal, everyday violence that makes up Joel's life. With Tess, we get to see our first fungus zombies, get in our first gunfight, and learn to do simple environmental puzzles. Header and all The Last of Us screens courtesy of Sony

The last of us tess