Console generations tend to last about 5 to 7 years. Eventually, technology evolves and gets to the point where developers can no longer produce the kind of games that they want to make on current-gen systems. Thus, the need for fancier, more high tech gaming hardware arrives. That’s why the Playstation has gone through 4 different iterations with its fifth one due to arrive sometime this holiday season.
That’s all well and good when the world isn’t in the middle of a near-apocalyptic crisis, but when infectious spores start to create mushroom-headed zombie people it can become difficult to properly coordinate a new console launch. This is the unfortunate situation that gaming fans in the universe of The Last Of Us find themselves in.
As seen in this Reddit post, Ellie has one of those chunky Playstation 3 models hooked up to her TV in The Last Of Us Part II. She probably has this set up so she can enjoy the original Uncharted trilogy whenever she wants.
However, there’s a reason beyond nostalgia for why she’s hanging onto a system from the seventh generation. The Cordyceps outbreak occurred on September 26, 2013. In our reality, the Playstation 4 launched on November 15, 2013. And the events of The Last Of Us Part II happen in the year 2039, which is 26 years after the initial outbreak. So if Ellie is still playing Little Big Planet after all that time it’s safe to assume that the arrival of Clickers may have permanently halted the development and production of new consoles worldwide. It also makes it seem like Sony electronics have a high level of craftsmanship considering that that PS3 is still going strong after two and a half decades of use.
This, of course, isn’t the only piece of older Sony hardware seen in the game. A cutscene that was shown prior to The Last Of Us Part II’s release saw Ellie confront someone who was playing Hotline Miami on their Playstation Vita. The handheld console had that woman so utterly entranced that she couldn’t hear Ellie sneak up behind her. She would end up getting stabbed in the throat due to her devotion to the device, which makes her a literal diehard Vita fan.
The world that The Last Of Us takes place in is already depressing enough, but the fact that video games and technology, in general, were drastically stunted by brain-altering spores just makes things even more gloomy. It means that Ellie will never get to experience the joy of ray-tracing or play on a system that features teraflops galore. Forget about Clickers and bandits, that’s the true tragedy of The Last Of Us Part II.
