The Last of Us Part III

The Last of Us Part III is an action-adventure survival horror video game developed by Naughty Dog and PlayStation Studios and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. The conclusion of The Last of Us trilogy, it is set one year after the events of The Last of Us Part II, where Ellie Williams sets out on her own (even after the death of her protector, a former smuggler named Joel Miller) to join forces with a group of young vampire hunters against the corrupt Federal Disaster Response Agency led by the power-hungry Attorney General of the United States Arthur Monroe.

Gameplay
Following in the footsteps of previous installments, players control solely Ellie. Players' primary focus is to search for supplies and weapons in order to fight many enemies, such as soldiers and vampires, and complete missions. The Last of Us Part III is set in a vast, open world environment which is much larger than the worlds of The Last of Us and The Last of Us Part II combined. The nimble nature of the player character introduces platforming elements, allowing the player to jump and climb to traverse environments and gain advantages during combat. The player can break glass objects such as windows to access certain areas or obtain supplies. Some areas are navigated by horse or boat.

In combat, the player can use long-range weapons such as rifles and bows, and short-range weapons such as pistols and revolvers. The player is able to scavenge limited-use melee weapons such as machetes and hammers and throw bricks and bottles to distract or attack enemies. Collected items can be used to upgrade weapons at workbenches or craft equipment such as health kits, Molotov cocktails, and makeshift silencers. The player can collect supplements to upgrade skills in a skill tree; training manuals found throughout the environment unlock additional skill tree branches, allowing upgrades to attributes such as the health meter, crafting speed, and ammunition types.

Though the player can attack enemies directly, they can also use stealth to attack undetected or sneak past them. "Listen Mode" allows the player to locate enemies through a heightened sense of hearing and spatial awareness, indicated as outlines visible through walls and objects. In the cover system, the player can crouch behind obstacles to gain advantages in combat and can also crawl in a prone position to evade enemies. Hostile enemies use artificial intelligence; they may take cover or call for assistance, and can take advantage when the player is distracted, out of ammunition, or in a fight. The player may be impaled by an arrow, which will progressively decrease their health meter and disables Listen Mode until removed when in cover. Player companions, such as Dina, assist in combat by killing enemies or announcing their location. The game also introduces guard dogs that track the player's scent, which can be visualized in Listen Mode.

Plot
Six total years after the events of The Last of Us and The Last of Us Part II, a fully-grown 20-year-old Ellie Williams sets out on her own after mourning the loss of her protector, a former smuggler named Joel Miller, to find other people who are also immune to the Cordyceps Brain Infection. The story begins with Ellie being the only survivor to the Cordyceps Brain Infection thanks to her immunity now living in Los Angeles. Struggling to maintain her trauma, she spends her days patrolling the now-desolate Los Angeles, hunting for goods and food to survive, as well as capturing those infected with the Cordyceps Brain Infection for lab experimentations using her blood instead of her brain (as prophesized by the defunct Fireflies), but with little or no success. At night, living atop a fortified apartment building equipped with an arsenal of weaponry, Ellie protects her new home from the Infected who try and fail to eliminate her.

One day, as Ellie is in a department store helping herself to new clothing, she spots a healthy young man, who immediately flees. She pursues him outside, but later chalks it up to imagination; having earlier hallucinated about multiple telephones ringing. She then finds the corpse of an Infected already cocooned itself with its fruiting body and theorizes that this final stage completes the Infected's circle of life.

On another day, Ellie is ambushed by a new breed of Infected; she then gets captured by what it is revealed to be none other than vampires, a new and permanent stage of Cordyceps Brain Infection that carry out their most evil thoughts, primarily such as blaming technology for the global pandemic. The vampires are just about to burn Ellie at the stake after convicting her for heresy after a summary trial, but a group of young vampire hunters, consisting of Lucas, Mason, Val, Ezra and Gracie, rescues her. The hunters explain that the Federal Disaster Response Agency (FEDRA) plans to bomb all the places infected with the Cordyceps Brain Infection. Lucas, the leader of the hunters, also states that FEDRA is in fact not evacuating survivors but killing them off instead, letting the vampires spread the Cordyceps infection in the process. Ellie realizes salvaging humanity would take years as she will need a long time to duplicate the original vaccine; she believes extending her immunity to others may be possible by creating a cure from her own blood and agrees to join forces with the hunters to expose the military's crimes.

While infiltrating a military encampment, Ellie learns that a corrupt government official U.S. Attorney General Arthur Monroe is responsible for mutating the Cordyceps fungi so that it infects humans and witness him infect the U.S. President as well to assume full control of the government. After killing the infected President, Ellie and the hunters are captured by the military. Ellie awakens in a room in restraint, where she is interrogated by Monroe, who explains the entire plot he started in 2013; using the Cordyceps Brain Infection as a mutated bioweapon he weaponized, he has the ability to infect humanity and bring their dead back to life through the creation of vampires. So far, Monroe has infected 90% of the world's population, and as soon as he finishes off the rest of humanity (i.e., the other 10% of the world's population), he will gain absolute control of the entire world as a god of all vampires. As a punishment for attempt to leak his plans to the public, Monroe forces Ellie and the vampire hunters to two-minute survival games between unarmed prisoners and the infected to entertain his followers. During a survival game, Ellie subdues and kills all the infected while the hunters escape, retrieving their equipment and rescuing Ellie.

After the group escapes from the encampment, Ellie learns that the government is offering five million dollars as a reward for anyone who captures certain individuals who have escaped from his survival games. Ellie and her new friends hatch a plan to lure the vampires into a Victorian mansion, their new base of operation during their latest campaign. As the hunters fight the vampires, Ellie confronts Monroe and calls him unfit for duty as an Attorney General of the United States, declaring FEDRA was a lie and therefore a secret terrorist group bent on global domination. This finally convinces Monroe to reveal his true plan, in which he reveals himself as a vampire lord named Count Emeritus, who has reemerged since his defeat during biblical times to conquer humanity and cover Earth in eternal darkness. Although Ellie holds her own for a time, she is pushed into the brink of defeat by Emeritus, the spirit of Joel Miller appears and encourages her to save humanity, offering her the Flaming Sword which she eventually uses to defeat Emeritus with.

With Emeritus's defeat (via reduced into nothingness), the Cordyceps Brain Infection is completely reversed all over the world, and human civilization returns to normal, resulting in massive celebrations amongst the people of Earth. As civilization is being rebuilt, Lucas shows his gratitude to Ellie for saving humanity by asking for her hand in marriage, in which Ellie accepts.

Meanwhile, despite being casted to Coldharbour by Ellie, Count Emeritus and the other four surviving vampires (consisting of Lord Lythos, Lord Hydros, Lord Pyros, and Lady Stratos) decide to let the humans live for a while until they figure out new plans to conquer the human race. However, in the meantime, they plan to proselytize a satanic religion via artistic brainwashing, forming a band which they call "Ghost" in the process.

Development
To be added.

Release and Promotion
To be added.

Reception
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Sales
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Legacy
To be added.

Music
A song from the Japanese metal band Seikima-II, "Seigi no Tameni", should be covered in English by the Swedish rock band, "Ghost".