Major plot spoilers for The Last of Us follow.

It seems like a direct response to these criticisms that the violence in The Last of Us feels so dreadfully personal. It has a physical and emotional weight that takes a toll on you as the story progresses. In many ways, combat in The Last of Us isn't traditionally fun. It feels more necessary than gratuitous. Usually, running is your best option. Even surviving an all-out firefight means you're likely ill-prepared for whatever terrors lurk in the next tunnel, basement, or abandoned storefront. Your encounters with the infected and bandits that stalk this dying world usually find a way to force you into a fight for survival, but to the game’s credit open combat never feels like the best course of action. Violence in The Last of Us feels desperate, a tool to use when you've run out of options, and if this game had a mantra it would be whispered: “At any cost, survive.”

The Last of Us certainly feels like the closest a game has ever come to justifying the violence of its gameplay mechanics. Joel, the player character, is a violent man because he lives in a world where violence rules. Joel is not a character who revels in conflict, and in fact he seems to loathe it. He can be heard swearing to himself when enemies spawn around each corner, grunting with effort at each frantic swing of brick or two-by-four. He’s not a superhero; he’s a survivor. The narrative pushes the player into violence more often than not — fight for your life, defend the girl — but never fails to set up a very reasonable justification for why that violence might be necessary. It’s hard to imagine any talking-head on television holding up a copy of this game as an example of the way the medium “glorifies violence” because at no point in the game’s sixteen hours is violence glorified. In fact, quite the opposite.

It takes only ten minutes of gameplay for Joel’s daughter Sarah to be murdered by gunfire. It’s a harsh, emotionally difficult scene that immediately sets a somber tone that continues to the game’s last, challenging word. It’s also a defining character moment that will color the player’s perception of Joel as he moves forward. Caring for Ellie becomes an inevitability the moment you meet her. She reminds us, and Joel, of Sarah. Catch Joel glancing at his broken watch in those first crucial scenes. He loves Ellie even before he knows her, and the directorial choice to use nothing but Troy Baker’s superbly empathetic performance to show us so demonstrates a commitment to the most honest form of storytelling. Playwright Anton Chekhov: “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”

“[Games] are the only form of art that invites us – even requires us – to participate in order to fully express itself.” - Chris Melissinos

The Last of Us uses empathy as a tool quite deftly throughout, and builds empathy the way only games can, by putting the player in control. There’s something fundamentally different about experiencing a story not only through the eyes and ears of a character, but through their movements, actions and choices. Player control suggests agency, even in a linear narrative. Though not a traditional “role-playing game,” it’s true that while inhabiting Joel, and briefly, Ellie, a player can feel themselves start to play those roles appropriately. There’s a subtle motivation to strive for narrative cohesion; it’s some combination of the narrative circumstances, the characters’ history, and the very naturalistic performances that make it very easy to not act out of character. In fact, I never felt an urge to. Unlike a game like, say, Grand Theft Auto IV, I never wanted to fire a few rounds at Ellie “just to see what would happen.” That’s a testament to my involvement with and genuine care for these characters. In some ways, we become them. Chris Melissinos, curator of the Smithsonian’s “The Art of Video Games” exhibition, describes the unique emotional tool that video games can wield over all other mediums: “[Games] are the only form of art that invites us – even requires us – to participate in order to fully express itself.” Unlike a movie, unlike a novel, we are our protagonists. In a well-written, human story, the power this connection has to provoke an emotional response to the narrative becomes near-infinite.

This scene is placed so expertly within the game’s narrative that it becomes very hard to walk away from.

The singular ability of interactive entertainment to force an audience to be complicit in a narrative is no better realized than by a scene, late in the game, where Joel and Ellie encounter a herd of wild giraffe wandering the broken landscape of Salt Lake City. Ellie is enthralled, delighted. After all the violence, the fear and the danger, here is a moment of respite. It’s beautiful. She will stand and watch the animals for as long as you let her. You know you can't stay forever, even if you'd like to. The game makes you choose to pull her away, to head back into danger. There’s another sort of violence in that choice, a turning away from peace and from beauty that stuck with me for a long time. Despite the fact that there was no other action I could have taken, it made me feel sad. It made me feel responsible.

It’s this sense of culpability in actions with which we might not agree that can change the way violent gameplay feels to a player. In contrast to games in which the gameplay is insufficiently supported by the narrative, truly caring for the protagonists means the continuous combat can feel heavy, emotionally difficult. I rarely looked forward to the next violent encounter; I often felt drained. The thrill of the combat in The Last of Us comes not from the mowing down of wave after wave of faceless enemy, but from the surviving by the skin of your teeth to fight another day, (and you will fight another day.) When it arrives, violence feels like a significant choice. It feels like a statement.

We are also culpable in the game’s challenging ending. The choice to rescue Ellie or save humanity is never offered to us. Joel chooses violence to save his surrogate daughter, and we're forced to experience what follows whether we agree with his decision or not. Many players vented their frustrations at not being able to choose humanity over Ellie; they didn't agree with Joel’s choice and wished the story to end another way. I'm reminded of the ending of No Country for Old Men, which likewise challenged the viewer’s notions of story. Audience members who disliked the film’s ending, who found it too ambiguous, misunderstood the identity of the movie’s true central character. Something similar is happening here: the game was never telling a story about the saving of humanity. It was telling a story about Joel and Ellie. The ending is far from ambiguous: after all they've been through, Joel lies to spare Ellie the weight of the world. After all they've been through, Ellie chooses to believe him.