The Last of Us director describes game's original ending

Spoilers, duh.

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The Last of Us is a rather unforgettable experience. Days and weeks after finishing the campaign, I still couldn't stop thinking about the ending. However, things could have ended differently, creative director Neil Druckmann explained in a very revealing interview.

Spoilers ahead.

"The original ending was, I guess, much more hopeful," Druckmann told Kotaku. "We knew Joel would lie to Ellie, but she believed the lie, one hundred percent. There wasn't any doubt there, and they would be arriving in Tommy's town, and you kind of get the idea that everything's gonna be fine and dandy."

The official ending has Ellie questioning Joel after being rescued from the Fireflies. She asks Joel why the Fireflies gave up on finding a cure to the infection, unknowing that Joel had murdered nearly everyone in order to prevent the cure-finding surgery from happening. In the game, she clearly doubts Joel's explanation. "But as we got closer and closer to shooting that scene, it stopped feeling honest," Druckmann explained. "And Ellie, over the course of the game, initially you're just writing and working with such broad strokes. And as you take it deeper, that's when you really figure out who the character is. She had such a good bullshit detector that it didn't feel like she would buy it."

The full interview goes over other details, like how giraffes were ultimately added to the game. Another interesting revelation: the surgery scene was originally not interactive. However, Naughty Dog wanted to give players some sense of choice--even if you are forced to kill the surgeon no matter what. For anyone mesmerized by The Last of Us, it's certainly a fascinating read.

Andrew Yoon was previously a games journalist creating content at Shacknews.

From The Chatty
  • reply
    June 28, 2013 8:00 AM

    Andrew Yoon posted a new article, The Last of Us director describes game's original ending.

    Spoilers, duh.

    • reply
      June 30, 2013 8:56 PM

      That 'choice' at the end was one of the most immersion-busting scenes I've seen in a long while. Due to the fact that it was gameplay, I assumed it was a choice, and tried to do ANYTHING other than take Ellie (Because the needs of the many vs needs of the few, etc) and it just ended up a comical scene where the surgeon waved his knife around screaming 'Get back!' while I was in the other room trying to find a way out.

      For a lot of people that were playing in-character character it was probably fine, but I was spending the whole last level saying "No, Joel, stop being an asshole", and I pounced on the chance to make a choice, only to find out that I was being railroaded. They really should have either made it an actual choice or just left it as a cutscene.

      • reply
        August 8, 2013 8:44 AM

        the real choice was whether you kill the other two doctors or not, because you can leave that scene without touching them, but most people end up killing them.

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