Okay, this article contains some spoilery spoilers for Naughty Dog’s fantastic The Last of Us, so if you haven’t played it, two things…
One – shame on you (you really should go play it), and two – perhaps it’s best not to read any further till you finish the post-apocalyptic epic.
Right, so we’ve culled the weak from the herd. As we know then, The Last of Us ended on a rather ambiguous note.
Joel and Ellie both survive the events of the game, and there’s clearly more to their story – but it’s never made clear if it’s their story that will be picked up in a potential sequel.
For her part, Ellie voice actor Ashley Johnson recently told GameSpot that she’d very much love to return for a sequel – and I’m sure the majority of us would love to see that happen too.
She said:
I feel like if they were to pursue it again, if they were to have another story for Ellie or Joel or that whole world, I would totally jump on board. But you know there’s also a part of me that thinks, ‘Man, the story could stand alone,’ and sometimes we should just leave it alone. If they were to make another one, though, I would love to be a part of it.
Since we’re all desperately scraping up whatever nuggets of news regarding The Last of Us 2 we can find, reading into her comments would suggest that Johnson as yet to be approached by Naughty Dog for a sequel.
So, either Naughty Dog hasn’t started work on the sequel yet, or the sequel doesn’t feature Joel and/or Ellie. Or Johnson is lying. So that clears up nothing (as usual).
Is The Last of Us a game that should be left to stand alone? One thing’s for sure… Naughty Dog are gonna have one hell of a job trying to top the original if they do plump for a sequel.
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.