You are a strong, competent man with a gun. Your mission is to lead an important young woman through a world filled with shuffling hordes infected with a disease that transforms them into monsters. Sometimes you need the young woman's help to reach areas you can’t get to on your own. Over time, the two of you develop a bond. At the end of the game, though she is infected with the same disease that created the monsters you killed along the way, she is safe because of your actions.
I just described The Last of Us, but I also just described Resident Evil 4. Naughty Dog and Capcom's games feel quite different in execution, but if you can manage to look past how different Leon's parted silken bangs look from Joel's coarse scruff, you'll see that, deep down, the seminal third-person shooters share plenty of DNA.
My recent playthrough of Resident Evil 4 Remake really drove this home, in part, because Capcom's 2023 reworking reflects the changes that have happened in survival horror in the 18 years since the original's release. Leon, like Joel, can crouch now. Like Joel, he can sneak up on his enemies and dispatch them with a knife before they notice him. The gameplay loop hasn't changed that much — there are no bricks or bottles to throw, like in The Last of Us — but these relatively minor differences show that the landscape has changed and survival horror fans expect something a little different post-TLOU.
The Last of Us owes a lot to the great games with companion characters that came before it. Ico was a clear influence, but Resident Evil 4 was just as important. The Last of Us has the same basic gameplay set-up, with the player controlling Joel as Ellie assists in puzzles and combat. But, The Last of Us refines Resident Evil 4's companion mechanics, making Ellie a helper who is never a hindrance. You never need to worry that you're going to have to restart a mission because Ellie got bit by a clicker. But in Resident Evil 4 Remake, Ashley can still botch a fight for you. When I played through the segment on the castle ramparts in which Leon has to fend off Plagas while also dealing with a bombardment of fiery artillery from several catapults, I had to start the segment over a few times before I learned when and where I could shoot the exploding barrels to take out the catapults. It was more difficult than it needed to be because Ashley kept getting incapacitated. That's frustrating on a mechanical level which also makes it easy to get frustrated with her as a character.
Resident Evil 4 is interesting because it casts Leon as a protective figure, but not a paternal or romantic one. Ashley is 20 years old in RE4 and Leon is, canonically, in his late twenties. He's not old enough to be a father figure; an older brother if anything. And, when Ashley hits on him at the end of the original game, he turns down her advance. The pair develop a friendly relationship, but it seems to be almost entirely professional for Leon. That distance between the characters keeps the game from hitting as hard on an emotional level, and that isn't really what Resident Evil 4 is trying to do. The RE games are campy and entertaining, but rarely strive for resonance. The Last of Us dug deeper into the relationship between its primary characters and found something impactful as a result.
That isn't to say that The Last of Us is, necessarily, a better game. But if it is, it's because it's standing on Leon's sheepskin-covered shoulders.