A lot has been said about 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Last of Us, especially now that the second season of the HBO adaptation is 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:stoking the fires of fan discourse. Folks love to argue about the game’s themes, its moral messaging, and 16ဣ8澳洲幸运5开奖网:how the show compares to the so🧜urce material.
With all the dialogue surrounding the show right now, I started 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:replaying The Last of Us to see how it holds up afဣter more than a decade. After playing through the introduction, a single question lodged itself in my head, and I had to put my controller down and do some thinking.
Does The Last of Us have the gr🐲eatest opening sequence of all time? I think it d🥀oes.
I Remember How Small It All Started
The Last of Us starts from 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:the perspective of Sarah, Joel’s daughter, as she wanders through her empty house at night while th🦄e signs of the cordyceps outbreak start slowly revealing themselves until Joel finally gets home, chased by an infected neighbor. He pulls out a gun and shoots them in front of Sarah. The pair meet up with Joel’s b🦋rother Tommy and they drive to get out of town before being overwhelmed by infected. Joel runs, cradling a terrified Sarah, trying to find a way out of town amidst the chaos. They’re soon confronted by a soldier who opens fire on them, hitting the innocent and defenseless Sarah. As she dies in Joel’s arms, he unleashes and earth-shattering, hopeless cry. The screen cuts to black, and the title card drops. This is The Last of Us.
This intro hit hard when The Last of Us came out in 2013, but playing it now in 2025, it lands a little differently. I’m older now, so the death of a child hits me harder than when I was only a little older than Sarah, but the real reason it feels so raw is because we went through something similar in real life when the COVID-19 pandemic caused the entire world t🀅o shut down in 2020.
The perspective of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:the cordyceps outbreak starts small as Sarah explores her eerily empty house.🔯 She answers a panicked phone call from Tommy before the call drops, bits of the news play on the TV before an explosion outside disrupts the broadcast, a dog barks in the distance and then lets out a pained squeal. It all starts to come to a boil as Sarah watches vignettes of terror from the backseat of Tommy’s car while they flee hordes of infected and try to escape the city.
I remember what it was like when Illinois started shutting down during the pandemic. It, too, started slow. February saw the first case on U.S. soil, then there were five cases in Chicago, then my college announced it was going to close for two weeks, I moved back home, and then the death toll started coming in. It was a slow, creeping panic. I felt like a child walking room to room, looking for help as things startꦑed crashing down outside, until the reality of what appeared to be the end of the world ꧃finally hit.
The real-world virus that we all lived through, the one that many of us did not live through, recontextualizes the introduction of The Last of Us. It hits harder, closer to home, because its terror isn’t an abstract concept anymore. It’s almost a sense memory. The Miller house smells like my parents’ house in my mind as I explore 💧it🍌s dimly lit hallways.
Personal Moments Of Devastating Grief
The introduction to The Last of Us has incredible pacing. The slow build assures that when things really hit the fan, we understand the stakes, and we feel a part of the horror as it unfolds. It’s devastating to see a burning house collapse in on itself because we just spent several intimate moments exploring a house just like it down the street. By the ti𒅌me Joel is running through the streets with Sarah in his arms, chased by tens of infected at once, we know how frought the situation really is, we’ve already seen how horri🍨fying a single infected is when it breaks through the sliding glass doꦑor into the Miller’s living room.
Sarah’s death is hard to watch. Hana Hayes’ performance is gut-wrenching and upsetting, and when paired with 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Troy Baker’s pained sobs, the entire scene almost feels like a personal moment of devastating grief that ought to be private. I shouldn’t be watching this. The thing that stuck out to me the most was the expression Toꦓmmy makes when he sees Sarah on the ground before Joel does. His quiet “Oh no” is dripping with subtext. He💦 knows that Sarah is going to die before everyone else, and that brief moment of grim realization hits him like a truck thanks to the excellent subtlety of Jeffrey Pierce’s performance.
As Joel cradles Sarah in his arms, showing the most explicit emotional vulnerability we’ll ever see him show again for the🐽 entire series, the scene is interrupted quickly by the title. It’s a shock to the senses, the title card feels almos🎃t as abrupt as the disruption of normal life caused by COVID, caused by the cordyceps.
The Last of Us starts with an incredible sequence that’s only gotten more potent with time. It sends a shiver dওown my spine just thinking about it, my mind tries to block out its most devastating and uncomfortable moments. They hit🧸 a little too close to home now.
Despite that, I appreciate how The Last of Us makes me feel. It reminds me of the single most devastating weeks of my life, but in a way that helps me heal. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Art is cathartic♛ and something as strong as the introduction to The Last of Us helps me understand and internalize the fear and grief that I felt when it felt like the whole world was coming down around us.
The Last of Us has the most pow♈erful op🎐ening of all time and, given how it’s been recontextualized, I’m not sure anything is ever going to top it.
