Hardly is there a game that I get "fanboy"excited about. Sure, I'm excited to play the new "Call of Battlefield"  but I always, in the back of my mind, find some new way to equate it another terrible game. The experience is always lost by week two, as I find plot holes or similarities between games. As you can tell, I like to ruin things for myself. Finally, though, there is a game I'm genuinely excited for. The Last of Us, is the new blockbuster game to come down the pipes from developer Naughty Dog. 

Ellie and Joel

If you remember Naughty Dog made their money with a little franchise called Uncharted. So these guys know how to craft a video game. I first got excited a couple months back at the release trailer. It depicted a grim, post apocalyptic world, where our two protagonists are trying to survive. Pretty cut and dry stuff, right? I thought so too. Then I got the rest of the storyline. It's set 20 years after a fungal infection wiped out civilization. The game takes place in a Boston quarantine zone and follows Joel( the player character), a seasoned black market dealer, and Ellie, a 14 year old girl. The story starts with Joel making a promise to a friend to get Ellie out of the city. The game follows their lives together as they cross the infected United States. The story allows for plenty of character growth. A point to that being that Ellie was born after the infection had started, whereas Joel wasn't. So Ellie, could be very accepting and hardened by her situation. Joel, would probably have very few emotional strings left, after having to kill other people to survive for so many years. Their interactions, as well as their interactions with others, allows for pervasive storytelling that I crave with games. Then at E3, I saw the gameplay and was sold. Everything looked and felt real. Gunshots have ramifications, which is a strange concept if you've ever played Halo.  They alert enemies, waste ammunition, and actually put holes in their targets.(Here's looking at you Armor Lock).  It also harks back to the days of the original Resident Evil, where you'd be strapped for ammo and almost debating if you wanted to fight the zombies. This game looks like it gives players the ability for immersion into the realm of survival. Everything looks like has a consequence. Even killing an enemy, looks and felt like the player was shooting a real person. So it allows players who enjoy games built around moral ambiguity to play that out. The developers  also put in something called "dynamic stealth". Meaning that players can act with numerous responses to a given situation and the enemies will react  based on player input. So the game also allows for player ingenuity which is a big point I love with games. 

In game shot of Boston

I always have a hard time caring about my NPC partners. For instance, in Infamous I did not care at all for Cole's girlfriend. It's not MY girlfriend and the game did very little besides telling me I should care about her, to make me care for her. So I let her die.In The Last of Us, it looks like the bond between Ellie and Joel is central to the game. The player plays as Joel, but Ellie has just as much personality and weight on the game  as the player-character. In the E3 demo, Ellie actually bails the player out of otherwise fatal situation. A functional NPC, coupled with superb writing, could breed a relationship that extends to the player. Meaning, the player wants to save Ellie and feels responsible for her. A problem I have with NPC partners in games, is that they can't die. So letting my partner run into a battle and get riddled with bullets, actually does nothing more than distract my enemies. Hopefully, there is a system, like death, that incentivizes me to care about keeping Ellie alive. I doubt that they'll have to try that hard because the character building between Ellie and Joel, will give them enough depth for players to have a strong basis for caring. Check out the new Comic Con trailer here. It builds character for both Ellie and Joel and sets the tone for the game. The Last of Us comes out sometime in 2013 on the Playstation 3. Note: I do not own any of these pictures and found them through Google Search.