We're less than 2 weeks away from the release of The Last Of Us: Part II and many gamers are excited to have the opportunity to brutally murder people with arrows and broken bottles once again. However, this is a series with a deep and complex narrative that players should probably be aware of before they start down Ellie's path to bloody retribution.

Even though many people are still stuck indoors sheltering themselves from a very real pandemic, there may not be enough time to play through the first game before June 19. So if that's the case, here's a quick recap to get you up to the speed on the most important plot points of The Last Of Us.

Clickers And The Cordyceps Infection

via Tested

Before getting into the full details of the plot, it's important to properly explain what led to the world becoming such a dystopian nightmare filled with fungus-covered monsters.

Cordyceps is a fungus that can normally only infect insects. It takes over the brains of its hosts, driving them insane and making it so their only goal is to continue to spread the spores. In The Last Of Us, a mutated strain of Cordyceps has become strong enough to infect humans. They can be infected by either a bite from another host - much like your typical zombie virus - or by breathing in spores.

RELATED: Do You Need To Play The Last Of Us To Enjoy Part II?

The fungus morphs people into mindless, bloodthirsty creatures with bizarre mushroom-faces, causing them to only be able to make eerie clicking sounds. Hence why they're given the name Clickers.

Joel's Origins

via Whatculture

The game begins with the player taking control of a girl named Sarah as she gives a birthday present to her father Joel. Soon enough, the Cordyceps outbreak goes into full effect and people are scrambling for their lives while individuals gone mad with infection run rampant. The military arrives to "take care of" the situation, and during the chaos, Sarah is fatally shot by a soldier and dies in the arms of Joel. That traumatic experience will influence some important decisions he makes much later in the game.

Cut to 20 years later, and the US is now a collection of military zones under martial law. The rest of the country - and likely the world - is covered with Clickers or small groups of survivors fending for themselves. Joel is living a rough life as a smuggler doing dirty jobs with a woman named Tess. They're given an offer by another woman named Marlene, who is the leader of a group of anti-military freedom fighters known as the Fireflies who are searching for a cure to the Cordyceps fungus. She wants them to smuggle a teenage girl out of the quarantine zone. That girl is Ellie.

Ellie's Origins

via Game Rant

Prior to the events of The Last Us, there's DLC for the game called Left Behind which gives some backstory to how Ellie became infected. She and her best friend Riley had been spending time together before Riley was sent away to join the Fireflies, but the two get attacked by Clickers. Both are bitten and Riley dies. Yet, Ellie never succumbs to the infection. In fact, despite the bite happening three weeks earlier, she's still perfectly fine aside from a rash around her bite. This makes her an asset to the Fireflies because they want to examine her to help create a vaccine.

Tess and Joel quickly find out about Ellie's bite and immunity from the infection. Tess is killed shortly after while trying to get Ellie out of the city, leaving it up to Joel alone to escort her to the Fireflies. The two travel across the country, fighting their way through hordes of Clickers and bandits before reaching a small town led by Joel's brother, Tommy. Tommy used to be a member of the Fireflies and points Joel and Ellie towards the University of  Eastern Colorado, where they have a lab set up to study the Cordyceps pandemic.

But, since nothing is ever easy for these two, they arrive to find the base abandoned and are soon attacked by more bandits. Joel is gravely wounded from a fall, and he and Ellie barely escape with their lives.

David And The Long Winter

via The Last Of Us Wiki

Joel's serious injury keeps him bedridden for a long stretch of time. Ellie is forced to care for both him and herself during a cold, harsh winter. While hunting a deer, two men named David and James approach and she agrees to trade the buck she's shot for antibiotics that Joel desperately needs. Because Ellie has quite possibly the worst luck imaginable, it turns out that David is the leader of the bandits that assaulted her and Joel back at the university. However, he stays true to his word and gives her antibiotics which she then administers to Joel.

David tracks down and captures Ellie, but luckily, Joel recovers from his wounds and is able to find out where she is by torturing one of David's men. Ellie fights off the bandits and is able to kill David by repeatedly hacking him to death with his own machete. Joel arrives in time to console a distraught Ellie.

How It All Ends

via Youtube - EfusioniX

As Spring comes around, Joel and Ellie fight their way through even more Clickers and, after Ellie nearly drowns during an encounter, the Fireflies find them and knock out Joel. He awakens to find that he's in the Fireflies' base and Marlene is there to reassure him that Ellie is safe and being prepped for surgery that will help them find a cure to the Cordyceps infection. However, since the infection spreads to the brain, Joel soon realizes that in order to engineer a vaccine Ellie will have to die. At this point, Ellie has become a surrogate daughter to Joel, and he's not going to allow the Fireflies to kill her.

RELATED: The Last Of Us 2’s Survivor Difficulty Is Extremely Brutal, According To Early Reviews

Joel guns down many of the Fireflies - including the doctors who could have helped create the vaccine - and retrieves an unconscious Ellie from the operating room. He escapes to the underground parking lot, but Marlene is there to stop him. She tries to reason with him, even going as far as to put down her gun, but he shoots her in cold blood to prevent her or any of the Fireflies from coming after them. By doing so, he effectively ends any chance of a cure being found in the near future.

As Ellie comes to she asks Joel what happened. He lies to her and says that the Fireflies have given up on finding a cure and that there are many other immune people just like her. Yet, despite Joel's explanation, Ellie seems skeptical about his version of events. After expressing her remorse for not being able to cure the pandemic and for outliving so many of the other characters in the game, she begs Joel to swear that he's telling the truth. Joel does, and despite lingering doubt, she believes him and the two head back to settle down with Tommy and his group of survivors.

Now You're Ready For Part II

via Entertainment Weekly

It's still probably a good idea to play The Last Of Us before its sequel arrives as it is an absolutely incredible video game that's well worth your time. But if you can't, hopefully this recap has you prepared for the nerve-racking adventure that Ellie is about to go on when The Last Of Us: Part II releases on June 19.

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