The Last of Us, now a sprawling media brand reaching beyond gaming audiences, is difficult to classify as one specific genre. The easiest, most broad-strokes way to categorizeThe Last of Usis as a horror series, and while this is certainly fair in many respects, it’s also somewhat reductive.
Yes,The Last of Usfeatures flesh-eating, grotesque monsters and a world ravaged by disease and violence, and there are sections of both games that follow traditional horror tropes, but the franchise slots better into the “character drama” genre overall; most players are likely to walk away from a piece ofLast of Usmedia feeling upset, saddened, or morally conflicted rather than frightened. This can be attributed to the series' very intentional focus on character interactions and intimate moments, but also to how it rejects many typical aspects of the zombie-horror playbook. In this way, the horror ofThe Last of Usis able to be novel and refreshing, while also evoking deeper and more complex emotions tangential to pure fear.
The Last of Us' Take On Zombies Works In Its Favor
The Last of Us' Monsters Aren’t Quite ‘Zombies’
Creatures like theever-menacing Clickers are amongThe Last of Us' most iconicand important elements. Infected by the cordyceps fungus, these monsters may start off as more stereotypically “zombie-like,” but they gradually transform into radically inhuman beasts as the fungus colonizes their once-recognizable bodies. Based on the real-world Ophiocordyceps unilateralis fungus, which can take over the minds of various insects, the cordyceps plague inThe Last of Usis uniquely terrifying and unsettling, a far cry from the manufactured viruses ofResident Evilor the demonic zombie entities ofDOOM.
Because it’s rooted in real-world biology, and because of its rampant and unfeeling method of infection,the cordyceps virus manages to be almost cosmically eerie. Through it,The Last of Uscan explore nature’s brutal and unempathetic drive to spread; the natural world has little regard for human life, despite humanity’s insistence that it is superior or special in some way. Cordyceps doesn’t spread because of a mad scientist or an evil act of witchcraft, but because it simply wants to propagate. Fundamentally, it’s no different from the everyday mold that may grow on an old loaf of bread or a poorly maintained shower, and that’s what makes it so scary.
The Last of Us’inclusion of airborne sporesas a transmission method for cordyceps also helps make the virus scarier, as these are harder to combat, in some ways, than a typical zombie assault.
Though the games industry is arguably past the zombie boom of the late 2000s and early 2010s, the trope is still ubiquitous, with several modern franchises using some form of undead horde as their main source of conflict. To name a few:
The medium’s tendency towards zombies is easy to understand: the premise offers a deep well of monsters for the player to kill, without the need for any sort of moral conflict or justification. This logic follows the gameplay-first philosophy, wherein game stories should always serve to facilitate interactivity first and foremost, but designers and audiences can have the best of both worlds.Series likeThe Last of Usprove that zombie stories can still be interestingwithout sacrificing the gameplay benefit of mindless hordes to fight—they just shouldn’t feel the need to restrict themselves to typical zombie tropes.
The Last of Us Part 2
WHERE TO PLAY
Play the winner of over 300 Game of the Year awards, remastered for the PlayStation®5 console. Relive or play for the first time Ellie and Abby’s story, now with graphical enhancements, new gameplay modes like the roguelike survival experience No Return, full DualSense® wireless controller integration, and more. Five years after their dangerous journey across the post-pandemic United States, Ellie and Joel have settled down in Jackson, Wyoming. Living amongst a thriving community of survivors has allowed them peace and stability, despite the constant threat of the infected and other, more desperate survivors. When a violent event disrupts that peace, Ellie embarks on a relentless journey to carry out justice and find closur
