And you guys thought this ending was bleak....
If you thought The Last Of Us Part 2 was grim now then it used to be even dark, as Naughty Dog discuss what the original ending was.
*** WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS ABOUT THE ENDING OF THE LAST OF US PART 2 ***
The Last Of Us Part 2 doesn’t have exactly what you’d call a happy ending, except given what else happens in the game it kind of is. But it turns out that the original version of the script had a considerably gruesome outcome and was only changed halfway through the script.
In the final fight, Ellie shows a spark of humanity since the very beginning of the game and as a result Abby and Lev lived–with the new title screen you get once the game is complete implying they’ve reached their destination safely.
But that’s not how things always were, as narrative lead Halley Gross described during a new Game Informer podcast.
‘When I signed on a lot of it was very similar,’ said Gross. ‘We did a lot of iterations on what that last act looked like, but the final beat was that Ellie would kill Abby. About halfway through production, we changed that and had Ellie let go at the last second to [show] that some little part of the old Ellie, the Ellie with humanity, the Ellie that is impacted by Joel, still exists within this character who has been so overtaken by her quest for revenge.’
There’s no indication or telling that anything was ever recorded in terms of motion capture and voice-acting, which is understandable as that side of things is expensive and the script would’ve been locked down as much as possible before recording started.
Creative director Neil Druckmann was also part of the same podcast and revealed that the fate of siblings Lev and Yara was also subject change, with each dying or living for different reasons in different versions of the script.It was the decision to have Lev live which in turn led to changing Abby’s fate, given Lev would’ve been largely helpless without her.
‘Letting Abby live felt wrong thematically initially,’ said Druckmann. ‘But at the end of the day, it felt more honest for the character. The theme [of] what we’re trying to say shifted a little bit, but our top priority always is are we being honest to the character? There’s certain things we are trying to hit but they can only work if we’re consistent with the character we’re writing.’
Well this ending would have definitely left a mark in gaming community due it to it's grim and bleakness. Nonetheless the game was a beautiful creation in it's own way.
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