Most of the Ellie-and-Riley half of Left Behind is devoid of combat. What made The Last of Us special was its humanity, and Left Behind follows in that spirit by focusing on something we rarely see in mainstream, big-budget games: a relationship between two teenage girls. But taken on its own merits, it's even more impressive.

In this way, Left Behind serves as a terrific side story to The Last of Us. But the way they express that sentiment casts them as two sides of the same coin - whereas Joel has a more selfish take on survival, Riley's message to Ellie is that we fight to survive so we can spend our limited time on Earth with the people who matter to us. Riley and Joel both tell Ellie the same thing about survival: that we survive together. By the time Ellie and Joel reach the University of Eastern Colorado, having survived together for a monthslong journey across the U.S., she and Joel have come to care for each other. Three weeks before Ellie meets Joel, Riley is the most important person in her life. We come to understand the origins of Ellie's dogged devotion to the people who are close to her, and her drive to make it to the Fireflies so she can contribute to the production of a potential remedy for the brain infection that led to an apocalyptic pandemic. In fleshing out Ellie's backstory, Naughty Dog illuminates her motivations and worldview. Only after a few false starts were they able to hit the right notes in telling the present-day story of Ellie's frantic search for medical supplies to treat Joel, and the flashback story of Ellie's last hours with her best friend, Riley. Neil Druckmann and Bruce Straley, the two creative leads on The Last of Us, told Polygon that what they initially came up with for Left Behind wasn't working. The task ahead of Naughty Dog was challenging indeed. How The Last of Us: Left Behind overcame a false start

And focusing on backstory, as Left Behind did with its exploration of Ellie's past, runs the risk of producing something that is, by its nature, less interesting than the main game. As a perfectly self-contained tale, The Last of Us didn't seem to need any additional story. Naughty Dog already delivered the best story of 2013 with The Last of Us, so players were justifiably apprehensive of the studio adding to the game with a story expansion. Left Behind's DLC status may render it ineligible for traditional game-of-the-year lists, but it's one of the finest gaming experiences I had in 2014. The particular regulation that forbade us from voting for Left Behind stipulates that game of the year choices must be 'full games' or expansions - not smaller downloadable add-ons. I say that as one explanation for why The Last of Us: Left Behind did not appear in our top 10 games of the year list. The guidelines for Polygon's Games of the Year selection process prevented me and my colleagues from voting for The Last of Us: Left Behind.

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