WARNING: This article WILL DETAIL SPOIL DETAIL for The Last of Us Part II. If you don’t want to mess up the plot, walk away now.
The Last of Us Part II is out now on PS4, and players can finally figure out what happened to Joel and Ellie after the end of the first game. Players who have finished the game will know that it is much longer than the first, lasting approximately 25 hours, but it turns out that a lot of content was cut during production.
In an interview with IndieWire, the game’s director, Neil Druckmann, and narrative leader Halley Gross, who wrote The Last of Us Part II together, cover many details about the game’s plot and characters, including some details about what was short.
While the game’s main action occurs over three consecutive days, experienced from Ellie and Abby’s perspective, the original plan was for this section to cover five days.
“There was a whole parallel story in which Ellie went to Seraphite Island, and we had so much more to say about the Seraphites and Ellie’s journey there and she is going through like the different layers of Hell and is still going on,” says Druckmann.
Joel’s death scene was also originally different: The original plan was for him to cry for his long-dead daughter Sarah, but actor Troy Baker suggested it would be a more effective scene if he said nothing.
Gross adds that at one point Joel was going to have a girlfriend and a different ending, although she did not elaborate. Druckmann also says they built a playable section where Ellie hunts the boar you find in the museum, but slowed down the game too much.
Druckmann previously said he is still unsure what the next Naughty Dog project will be, but it could be The Last of Us Part III. If you’ve finished the game, be sure to check out the GameSpot spoiler chat for our publishers’ thoughts.
