Sarah. The first twenty minutes. The game establishing what Joel is before the world takes it from him, and then taking it. The prologue is the most efficiently devastating piece of game narrative in the genre — the specific texture of an ordinary night, a daughter on a couch, the warmth of a domestic life that the game refuses to let you take for granted. Joel keeps finding something to fight for because the prologue ensures you understand what that costs.

The epigram is not a declaration made at the prologue's beginning. It is the conclusion the next twenty years will draw from what happens here. The finding happens over and over, through each subsequent session, as Joel rebuilds the capacity to care about something after learning what caring about something means in this world.