The Last of Us star Troy Baker says the first game in Naughty Dog's post-apocalyptic zombie (sorry, infected) series "became the brand name for quality and storytelling within games" after it launched in 2013.
Baker, who plays everyone's favorite grumpy dad, Joel, in The Last of Us and its sequel, has a lot of praise for Naughty Dog's award-winning action adventure, and he's not the only one. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, prominent actor Matt Mercer (who's appeared in countless games, including Fire Emblem: Awakening, Persona 5, Yakuza: Like a Dragon, and Fallout 4) says The Last of Us was "a watershed moment for what video games could be as a storytelling medium." Meanwhile, Erika Ishii (Destiny 2, Apex Legends, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, and many more) says breaking into the games industry around the same time as TLOU was like "being there at the advent of cinema."
Needless to say, Baker agrees. "It became like the fridge, it became the Kleenex, it became the brand name for quality and storytelling within games," he says. The actor also claims that after that, "you started having all subsequent stories that were told from there," before specifically referring to Quantic Dream founder David Cage (writer of Detroit: Become Human), and Remedy Entertainment creative director Sam Lake (writer on Control and Alan Wake 2). Of course, it should be pointed out that both Cage and Lake were involved with significant games long before The Last of Us was even released, from Heavy Rain to Max Payne, as well as the gems they've made since.
There's no denying the overall impact of The Last of Us, anyway – you need only look at the mountain of awards accumulated by the original and its sequel, not to mention their continued popularity. Despite all that, though, the game series isn't guaranteed to continue – Naughty Dog studio head Neil Druckmann recently stated that fans shouldn't count on there being a Part 3, saying: "This could be it."
