Warning: This post contains spoilers for The Last Of Us.

Yesterday we reported that Naughty Dog was planning to reveal the original ending, and overall story arc, for The Last Of Us. Originally, Joel and Ellie would be chased across the US by an antagonist; creative director, Neil Druckmann, has now revealed this antagonist to be Tess, who was initially meant to be play a “betrayed” villain-like role.

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“What’s interesting is that, originally in the story Tess took more of a villain role…Tess was betrayed by Joel and took on a mission to pursue him across the country. That storyline never worked out”. This was because the team failed to see why Joel would undertake this enduring mission with no real motivation, and even why Tess would “go for a year around the country” on a personal vendetta. That is when the “storyline shifted and Tess took on this role where she became more of a believer and she helped motivate Joel.”

Ellie was also scripted a lot differently too, with her being a “far more innocent character”. Druckmann revealed that it was only not until the very end that Ellie killed a non-infected and this would turn out to be Tess as she tortured Joel (the picture we saw yesterday). However, he later goes on to say that “what we realised is that we had to get Ellie engaged more in the combat because when she was disengaged from the action for that long you didn’t care so much. So that changed pretty early on.”

This was when the chapter with David was introduced. This was used as a “coming of age story of the impact that the horrors of violence has on her over the course of the game”. Personally, I thought this section was one of the best parts. We saw Ellie completely break from her innocent shell and, in a way, become more ruthless than Joel himself. They certainly fulfilled the “coming of age” story.

Finally, we reach the ending where it was initially pitched to be more “hopeful”, with Joel and Ellie reaching San Francisco and living out the rest of their lives. Ellie would have bought into the lie from Joel, and San Francisco was to be run by people aiming to bring back society. All a little too good to be true for my liking. More surprisingly is the fact that the current ending “tested very poorly”, with common complaints of it being “anticlimactic” and “unclear”. However, the team came around and the current ending was used to full effect.

I don’t think any other ending would have suited the game, do you feel the same?

Source: Videogamer