Healing a Veteran’s Amputated Spirit: Why “The Last of Us Part II” is more than just a video game
By: Sebastian Wolfe
Tags: The Last Of Us, Veterans, Self Improvement, War, Videogames

I’m a combat veteran. Or at least people seem to call me one; not that I’ve ever truly felt like I deserve it.

My wartime experience was one of minimum repute and maximum screen time. I spent my deployment mostly putting data into excel files, forwarding emails of little to no consequence, and plowing my way through a slew of video games. Every once in a while, I prayed for a mortar to fly over my head so I could go back home and tell my friends that I’d ‘seen action.’ It happened a couple times. But the experience was, overall, a huge disappointment.

Don’t get me wrong, we weren’t exactly on a glorified camping trip. There was an element of danger. Attack helicopters hovered overhead, the familiar thud of IED explosions echoed across the desert floor, and the rat-tat-tat of a distant Kalashnikov occasionally rustled me out of bed.

In sum, I wasn’t exactly in Hometown, USA. This was, on occasion, a battlefield. And people died. Almost every day. People I knew. But the war was on the other side of a wall. A wall I rarely crossed when compared to my more battle-hardened compatriots.

For an infantry officer, this can be a major disappointment. A missed milestone. For me, it was more than that. Twenty three years of soul-searching, studying, and training had led to the heartbreak of a lifetime. There is no way to describe the shame of watching others go out and die or be maimed while one is powerless to step off the sidelines. It may not be as traumatic as war. I wouldn’t know. But it ain’t no picnic, either.

Just about the worst thing I’ve ever said to anyone was in the summer of 2016. I was visiting a friend from a small country that had fought a terrifying war against its neighbor. My friend was a veteran of this war and had both seen and done things he didn’t often describe.

One of the few times he did talk about his experiences, I said something along the lines of, “Wow, you sure showed those assholes who was boss, didn’t you?”

His reaction was not what I’d anticipated.

“Never say that to me again,” he replied. “My enemy, they were people, too. They wanted to put food on the table for their families, just like I did. And now they can’t. Because of me.”

I’ve never felt less like a ‘combat veteran’ than at that precise moment. And it’s a lesson I’ve carried with me ever since.

Growing up the grandson of a novelist, I’ve always had a deep appreciation for a good, insightful narrative. Add the option of participating in that narrative, and I’ll come running. So when my father gave me my first video game console in the winter of 1999, he may have considered it a toy, but I saw it as a god-send. Two decades on, I’m still gaming.

I’ve virtually infiltrated secret Alaskan missile bases, upgraded my body with nano-machines, coordinated bank heists, outrun zombies, and desperately looked for my long-lost son across a post-apocalyptic wasteland. I’ve found love, sought revenge, made amends, saved humanity, and lost it all. For decades I’ve done this across dozens of worlds, all painstakingly developed by creators with something to say.

But none of them have been quite as meaningful to me as The Last of Us Part II, released in June of 2020. Playing through its narrative was to me one of the most profound experiences of my life. And since then, I’ve been struggling to figure out how a video game, what many still consider to be a toy, could have had such an impact.

In the award-winning 1992 film, The Scent of a Woman, Al Pacino’s Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade, a mercurial — yet principled — veteran gone blind, gives what I think is one of the best monologues in film history.

I’ve been around you know! There was a time I could see. And I have seen. Boys like these, younger than these… Their arms torn out, their legs ripped off… But there is nothing like the sight of an amputated spirit. There is no prosthetic for that.

Though it may sound melodramatic to some, I left my war with an amputated spirit. And ironically, it was not because of what I had seen, but what I hadn’t. My close friends had lost their limbs. My colleagues had been killed. My fellow soldiers had shown heroism in combat. I had filed paperwork and come home without a scratch. Henceforth bestowed the honor of being called a ‘combat veteran,’ I couldn’t have felt more like an impostor.

This is not a wound that heals easily. In fact, it still hasn’t. But I think nothing helps someone understand their own sorrow more than empathizing with someone else’s. That, in short, is the beautiful escapism offered by The Last of Us Part II.

Set against the backdrop of a bleak, post-apocalyptic cityscape, and amongst a supporting cast of vicious zombies, ruthless cultists, and brutal survivalists, I walked for hours in the shoes of Ellie and Abby, two characters whose capacity for love, vengeance, and forgiveness would be tested beyond measure.

The journey was a tough one. Through all the spilt blood, all the forsaken friendships, through every step they took further away from compassion and closer toward the tragically unfulfilling goal of revenge, I felt the pain, exhilaration, and desperation of their heartbreaking narratives. With them, I struggled on, watched them regain their humanity bit by bit, and ultimately held back tears as they put their broken spirits back together again, even if only in part.

Books and films have long been praised not only for their prose or their aesthetics, but their ability to inspire us to look within ourselves and reflect. The same can be said for video games, especially The Last of Us Part II.

Like Ellie and Abby, I, too, have known the pain of an amputated spirit. And like Ellie and Abby, I, too, have a path that I must walk in an effort to heal it. I may not be killing zombies or traversing fallen sky-scrapers along the way, but at least I’ve seen that there is a way.

Sebastian Wolfe is a veteran of the War in Afghanistan and author of the novel ‘I Saw the Fire.’ Now living overseas, he spends much of his time exploring, writing, and pursuing his goal of a meaningful life.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of Defense, the US government, or any organization or institution with which the author is affiliated.