‘The Last Of Us Part 2’: Here’s What We Know About The Game So Far
Saturday’s PlayStation Experience event [PSX] couldn’t have been a bigger success, at least for one developer in particular — Naughty Dog.
The popular Sony-owned studio showed off two trailers at the event, one for the next Uncharted game, which will feature Chloe — who was absent in Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End— as the game’s protagonist. But, that trailer was topped by the reveal of the highly-anticipated trailer for The Last of Us: Part 2, which was shown as a surprise at the end of the event.
The reveal trailer — which was roughly four minutes long — didn’t show much. All we saw was a forest, a bunch of blood, dead bodies, Ellie playing guitar, and Joel asking her “are you really gonna go through with this?”
Graphically, the game looks amazing. But, we’re used to that with Naughty Dog’s games, as the Uncharted series, especially Uncharted 4, were some of the most beautiful games on PlayStation. But, we really don’t know much about the game’s plot, and Neil Druckmann — who is the creative director at Naughty Dog — didn’t want to give too much away during The Last of Us: Part 2 panel following PlayStation Experience.
The crew about to meet fans and sign things at PSX just after their The Last of Us Part II panel! pic.twitter.com/9p77KViv2h
— Naughty Dog (@Naughty_Dog) December 3, 2016
There are a few things we do know about the game though, and one major thing that we found out was that we’ll be playing as Ellie in The Last of Us: Part 2, as Joel will be more of a supporting character.
Druckmann said the following during his panel at PlayStation Experience regarding the game’s main character change.
“If the first game — if the core of it, the theme was really about the love between these two characters, and how we build that through story, music, interaction, gameplay, mechanics… This story is the counter of that — this story is about hate, and how we use all those same things to make the player feel that, through Ellie this time. The first game you play as Joel, this time you’re playing as Ellie.”
Changing from Joel to Ellie isn’t that big of a leap. In the first game, players did take control of Ellie at certain points, so playing as her won’t be anything new to those who played the first game. Of course, the question now is, will we play as Joel at any point in the game? As of this writing, that question hasn’t been answered, but fans of the first game may be disappointed if we don’t get to briefly take control of the first game’s main protagonist.
At the end of the trailer, Ellie tells Joel “I’m gonna find, and I’m gonna kill, every last one of them.” We don’t know who she’s talking about, but there are a few theories out there regarding who she’s talking about.
One of the theories relates to the end of the first game, where the rebel group known as The Fireflies were going to kill Ellie so they could create a vaccine for the infection, which essentially put the world in a post-apocalyptic state. Of course, Joel prevented that from happening, and he lied to Ellie about why the group was unable to use her to find a cure. So, the theory that’s out there now is that she finds out the truth about what The Fireflies had planned, and now, she’s out for revenge.
— Naughty Dog (@Naughty_Dog) December 3, 2016
The second — and more likely theory — is that Joel dies early in the second game, and Ellie is out for revenge against the group of people that killed him. Also, the theory suggests that Joel will appear after his death as a figment of Ellie’s imagination, which explains why he was at the end of the trailer asking her if she really wanted to do what she had planned.
After the reveal trailer, we found out that The Last of Us: Part 2 has been in development for two years now. So, it could be released a lot sooner than most people expect, possibly as soon as late next year.
[Featured Image by Sony Interactive Entertainment]
