One thing I've been getting real sick and tired of with all the games lately is the way EVERYTHING always turns out so f*cking perfect in the end. Deus ex machina runs rampant in most works of fiction. But who doesn't want a flowery and perfect ending?

Too much of a good thing, I say. So when something comes along like The Last of Us and throws an ending like that in your face, I appreciate it from a writer's standpoint. So let me set the scene.

You are Joel. A man who's been tasked with escorting a young girl by the name of Ellie through hell and back to get her to a group of people that will create a vaccine from her as she is the only person who is immune to the zombie outbreak. Through their travels, Joel becomes exceedingly attached and protective of her... having lost his own daughter before the outbreak. It took most the game to get to that point though.

By the time finally get to where you are going, you have passed out. You wake up only to find out that she will soon be in surgery to undergo what it will take to extract the virus and create a vaccine only to find out it will cost the girl her life. Now Joel is faced with willingly letting her die to save all of humanity, or save her and live out the rest of their lives trying to survive the apocalypse.

What Joel ends up doing, is barging in guns blazing. He wants to save her life. All the soldiers in your way are trying to protect what could be the only cure to the virus this world will ever seen. Joel kills a good majority of them and makes his way to the surgery room. The doctors, knowing what it means to the human race, try to stop him from taking her away. So to save her life, Joel has to kill them too.

He then carries the unconscious Ellie down to a car he stole after having to kill the very person who asked you to help Ellie get here, and drives off back to where Joel's brother lives in a fairly safe hydro-facility plant. When Ellie wakes up, he tells her that there are several immune people out there, and that they had failed to extract a vaccine from them. And they failed to do so with her, and they let her and Joel go. Which is a horrible lie.

Ellie, skeptical that it was that easy, stops Joel a few miles outside the hydro-facility and asks him point bank, "Do you swear everything you told me about the Fireflies is true?" (The Firefiles being the group of people that was there to create the vaccine).

After a few moments for Joel to think, he looks at her and says, "I swear."

She nods and says, "Okay."

Roll credits.

So now you are left with knowing that Joel is a horrible liar and that humanity as a whole could be damned. But he couldn't let go of what he's come to love.... no matter the cost. You NEVER see this kind of stuff. It causes conflicts in your mind where you fight with yourself being like, "No, it can't end this way." And the fact that you are willing to care so much shows how much you were really invested in it. Maybe Joel and Ellie ended up living out the rest of their lives away from danger... maybe the died horribly at the hands of zombie. You don't know. But I find myself thinking about it a lot, and that say something about a game to keep coming back to it like this. Controversial endings are so hard to come by. So rare. And they leave such a greater impact when I do run across them. And I have to give Naughtydog props for this one.