The Last of Us soundtrack ruined my life

My friends, this is the story of how the soundtrack for The Last of Us ruined my life.

Yes, I know that I am behind the curve, and everyone who's anyone has already written about Gustavo Santolalla's masterful achievement. I know. But I'm nobody, I'm screaming into the vast ether of the world, and this is what I'm screaming about today. In any case, I rarely buy new games due to the insane cost, and I wait until the titles I want show up in the refurbished bin at the game store.

  I waited AGES for The Last of Us. I was checking constantly, hoping someone would be hocking it for less than £1 less than the original sticker price (hats off to you, eBay). I got it, I played it, I absolutely loved it. Aside from the eye-popping graphics, innovative gameplay, and storyline that punches you right in the soul, the music stood out as an integral piece of the apocalyptic puzzle. After I completed the game and spent 2 weeks crying and 1 week trawling gaming communities looking for info on the sequel, I got the soundtrack, and that's where this story begins.

 I travel into London most days for work, and listening to this soundtrack while commuting in any major city will mess you up. Try listening to ''The Hunters'' while you watch people shoving each other to get on the bus and shouting at people on the train. The intensity ties in perfectly with the stealth focused gameplay, making your heart pound while you despair for humanity and the selfishness of mankind.

It's no surprise that Santolalla is a genius- the Argentinian composer has been writing critically acclaimed scores for decades. He won an Oscar for his score in Brokeback Mountain, and has written scores for truckloads of other films, including the animated feature The Book of Life, released last year. This score is perfect, and I'm thanking the Flying Spaghetti Monster that he's already agreed to do the sequel,which comes out no time soon thanks to Uncharted 4, which just got pushed back to spring 2016 (UUUGGGHHHH).

Santolalla is known for featuring a unique stringed instrument called a ronroco, the lovechild of a mandolin and ukelele, with 5 sets of double strings from the mandolin and a wood body reminiscent of the ukelele, traditionally made with the shell of an armadillo or a tortoise. This instrument is heavily featured in The Last of Us soundtrack and provides that bittersweet, heart-wrenching guitar sound that repeatedly punched me in the gut during my play through.

 Listening to ''Vanishing Grace'' on the Underground is an experience in an existential crisis. I started to imagine what all this will look like when we're all dead and gone, due to our own hubris as a species through nuclear warfare or environmental collapse, or through a one off cataclysmic event that wipes us all out. After all, a one off cataclysmic event is what brought us here in an accident, and it could just as easily take us out. Even as a composer (aspiring composer?), I started to think about how after I'm dead, my work is just notes on a page. Even if my legacy lives on, if I manage to write deep, meaningful music that touches hearts and souls, one day it will be nothing. I guess we all have to come to terms with that, that one day everything that mankind has built, our empire of architecture, capitalism, art, and greed will all be blown away like so many grains of sand in a desert.

You see? This is how this score ruined my life.

I apologize if this post caused any deep and mortal wonderings about the human condition. Blame Joel and Ellie. *SLIGHT SPOILER AHEAD*

And Tess. (Still sore about that one.)