Cormac McCarthy, one of the most significant figures in modern American literature, died last week aged 89. While the tributes have mostly come from within the literary world, he had a huge impact upon modern culture as a whole – including video games. McCarthy’s work reshaped the way that the world looks at the post-apocalyptic genre, a flavour of fiction that video games have long called home. And Rockstar’s western opus Red Dead Redemption vividly recalls the Border Trilogy – particularly the twisted figure of Dutch van der Linde.
The developers of The Last of Us have specifically cited The Road as a key influence, and it’s easy to see why Naughty Dog drew upon McCarthy’s parent-child journey across a post-apocalyptic America to inform their own. While the main thrust of the game’s story fits neatly into Joseph Campbell’s monomyth, it is the nihilism and bleakness of The Road that determines its mood. Both feature ruined worlds, full of marauders and cannibals, and Joel’s sickness parallels the Man’s fading condition in the novel. Both endings are bleak, the horrors of the world swallowing characters up bodily and mentally.
