What We Know: Ellie Is The Main Character
The bulk of Part I (as we can now call it!) focused on Joel’s determination to take care of his surrogate daughter after the death of his biological child. But as various sources are now reporting, we’ll now be playing as Ellie. It feels like a smart move to adjust the lens from the gruff would-be father to the woman morphing at his side, and given that Ellie is all grown up and on the cusp of twenty, she no longer needs a doting dad following her around. How has their relationship changed, though? We already know the depths Joel will go to save his loved ones, but how far will Ellie go?
Well, she’s not going to be squeamish about bloodshed. The reveal trailer shows our heroine smeared in blood and coolly strumming the strings of a guitar as Joel enters and addresses her with his unmistakable southern twang. Ellie looks up, cold, cruel eyes twitching. “I’m going to kill every last one of them,” she says.
If the first game was about love, Druckman says the story this time is about “hate.” We can expect a revenge dish with gore aplenty; a bleak story of moral greys.
What We Want: Answers
So, here’s what we don’t know. Will the final moments of Part I be central to the events of Part II? Does Ellie know that Joel has lied to her? And does she have any idea that she might hold the key to unlocking a cure to the virus?
These questions could be the central axis upon which the new story rests, but on the other hand, Naughty Dog could go in a new direction totally. Setting the game five years in the future opens up the possibility of side-stepping many of the cliffhangers teased in the final moments of the original.
Our only hope is that we get some resolutions to those delicious, unsolved teasers that made The Last of Us just so memorable. If not, why make a Part II at all?