How the genesis of a threat defined the game's world.
The concept a post-pandemic world is usually fraught with every visual descriptor except "beautiful." Naughty Dog has taken a very different approach by simply asking the question: what happens to the world after we're gone?
The brutality of edge-case survival isn't just a setting, for Naughty Dog it's also a way of visceral connection to the player through the rulesets that bind their actions in the game world.
Scavenging the paltry resources leftover from a devastated world makes each use a meaningful one, and each player action a storytelling moment.
An exploration of the relationship that Joel and Ellie develop in spite of and because of the insane world in which they've come together.