In 2013, Naughty Dog brought us one of the most highly rated games of all time. The Last of Us was a winning recipe blended from the finest ingredients: beautifully detailed and realistic graphics, a harrowing and believable story, and unforgettable characters who found a permanent place in our hearts. The game also featured a satisfying but divisive ending—one fans continue to debate to this day.
In December 2016, The Last of Us: Part 2 was announced at the PlayStation Experience event. Since then, it’s been a whole lot of waiting, but not a whole lot of news. The game is a promised feature at the upcoming E3, so soon we’ll know a lot more. In the meantime, here is everything we do know.
A lot of the original personnel are involved in the new game.
A game is only as good as its development team, but good is not the only thing we’re looking for from The Last of Us 2. We’re looking for consistent. We want a game that follows as seamlessly off of the original as The Last of Us: Left Behind.
That should be entirely feasible with The Last of Us 2. Neil Druckmann is returning as the writer alongside Halley Gross (of Westworld fame), and that’s a big deal right there. There are other returning personnel as well, including composer Gustavo Santaolalla. Unfortunately, however, Bruce Straley will not be coming back to co-direct with Neil Druckmann. Instead, Druckmann will work with Kurt Margenau and Anthony Newman.
Ellie and Joel are returning.
Joel and Ellie, our heroes from the original game, will both be appearing in the sequel, portrayed once again by Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson. Both have talked about working on The Last of Us 2, and both were featured in the game’s first trailer.
Now, that being said, we don’t really know how large a role Joel is going to play. We’ll be playing as Ellie (more on that shortly), so we know she’s central. But Joel’s appearance in the trailer is ambiguous. He walks in out of a bright white backdrop through an open door, and we never see his face. He only asks one question: “You really gonna go through with this?” Note the “you,” not “we.”
Considering Ellie’s extremely angry in the trailer (she’s going to “kill every last one of them”), all of this adds up to more questions than answers. Is Joel even literally present on the scene, or is Ellie only imagining him? Is he dead? Let’s hope not, but it seems like a strong possibility.
There will be new characters as well.
A second trailer dropped during Paris Games Week which introduced us to some brand new characters.
During the trailer, a woman whose identity has yet to be revealed is being strung up by another, who seems to be the leader of a cult of some sort. A second woman is dragged in and subjected to further violence. During the PlayStation Experience 2017 panel, it was revealed that this second woman’s name is Yara. A guy with a bow shows up to save her, named Lev. They cut down the unnamed woman, and are promptly rushed by Infected.
It’s all very ambiguous at this point, but Druckmann has mentioned that these characters are essential to the ones we know and love.
The game will be about “hate.”
Another statement Druckmann has made concerns the themes of the games. He’s said that the first game was about “love,” and Part 2 is about “hate.” You definitely can pick up on that in both trailers.
The game is “part of a larger tale.”
During the PlayStation Experience panel, Druckmann also stated, “The Last of Us is about these two characters [Ellie and Joel] specifically. ‘Part 2’ is saying this is going to be a larger story; it’s going to be a complementary story to the first game, but together, the two combined are going to tell this much larger tale.”
So that’s why the game isn’t called “The Last of Us 2.” It isn’t a haphazardly tacked-on sequel. The Last of Us was always envisioned as a larger story. In fact, Druckmann told Ashley Johnson about Part 2 clear back while they were working on Left Behind. Druckmann explained, “So as we walked through the whole story of Left Behind, Ashley’s crying at the end. Then I’m like, ‘I have one more story I want to pitch’, and I walked her through the story of Part II, and she’s bawling by the end of it.”
We will play the game as Ellie.
Ellie is “the star” of The Last of Us: Part 2, just as Joel was the star of the first game. We’ll be taking on her role for at least the majority of game play. Druckmann says that she’ll play “differently” than Joel—which follows, given that she did during the original. Some of the most challenging sequences of The Last of Us were played in Ellie’s shoes, so it’ll be interesting to see how that plays out in the sequel.
We’ll be spending a lot of time in Seattle.
According to Druckmann, Seattle will be the setting for a “large part” of The Last Of Us: Part 2. If the format follows suit with the first game, however, we can expect to potentially visit quite a few other destinations before the story concludes.
At least five in-game years have passed.
One of the few really solid things we know about the next game is that it will take place five years after The Last of Us. That makes Ellie 19 years old. Will we see any flashbacks of those past five years? Hopefully, but as of right now, we have no idea.
The graphics are beyond insanely good.
Finally, one more thing we know about The Last of Us: Part 2 is that the graphics featured in this game are out-of-this-world, particularly where character rendering is concerned. Naughty Dog has been using new techniques to combine the real-life facial features of the actors with those of the animated characters. Watching the trailers, you can see the results are pretty mind-blowing.
Now you know everything we do about The Last of Us: Part 2! The new game is going to be featured at the upcoming E3 convention in just a few short weeks. Check back with us then; we’ll be sharing the news with you as it is revealed!