Review Summary: A perfect companion, a beautiful nightmare.
“Music was invented to confirm human loneliness.” – Lawrence Durrell
Gustavo Santaolalla’s companion soundtrack for
The Last of Us is, at it’s very core, a lonely, isolating experience. While the game itself is a fantastic example of storytelling in interactive media, and at the same time is visually stunning, the soundtrack takes something of a backseat and approaches things much more subtly, drawing little focus on itself and filling the empty spaces with exactly what is needed, as opposed to overwhelming the mood with anything unnecessary. It proves itself an excellent demonstration in self-restraint, and could easily have been much more overdramatic had the wrong artist been at the helm, potentially completely diffusing any chances of a gripping atmosphere being created to accompany such an artistic interactive experience.
The Last of Us soundtrack comes across as wonderfully meditative for the most part, gently building and falling with every breath and every step of the way. It even comes across as uplifting at times, but always with a sombre air; never peaking beyond just a few short notes and always dying back down once again. ‘Vanishing Grace’ and ‘Home’ are stellar examples of this approach, with moody keys and gentle guitar creating an atmosphere of ambient melancholy that drifts hazily through to the back of your mind while the game absorbs your attention greedily, and deservingly so.
As already mentioned, the soundtrack is almost constantly in the background, quietly pushing the scene forward but never obviously doing so, but there
are a select few moments when the soundtrack takes hold of the scene, and is brought to the forefront while the event plays out; during a particularly crucial moment in the storyline the scene is paired with ‘All Gone (No Escape)’, and the unification between the two is nothing short of brilliance. It’s beautifully complimenting to the experience, to the point of a suffocating catharsis. Another equally memorable example of this is the penultimate ‘The Path (A New Beginning)’, one of the soundtracks most recognisable tracks, and plays at an equally crucial moment in the storyline - albeit the scene is crucial for completely different reasons than the previously mentioned scene.
Of course the soundtrack would not be complete without the more tense and overbearing tracks to pair with scenes of danger and pressure, and these are certainly to be found too, but still show the same restraint as everything else on the album; ‘The Hunters’ and ‘Infected’ are barely more than a series of tribal drumming tracks with gloomy keys to add to the atmosphere, but for the gritty nature of the game, these are more than sufficient to create the tension needed during moments of confrontation.
Ultimately,
The Last of Us stands as a stunning testament to one of the best video game soundtracks of recent years, and one of the greatest interactive media experiences of all time. It fully embodies the game’s themes of loneliness and a search for companionship in a world that’s gone straight to hell, and the impact that this world has not only on the characters, but by extension on the players themselves. It is by no means an accident that the title track for the soundtrack completely encapsulates everything that
The Last of Us represents; it’s a brooding, solemn build up from a darker mood into something that could potentially be perceived as much more uplifting, yet it still carries a heavy weight that brings it down once again.
This
isn’t a happy experience, but it is a mesmerizing one.
