The Last of Us Part 2‘s creative director has revealed details on the various deleted scenes that failed to make the final version of the game. In case you missed it, the storyline for the post-apocalyptic sequel made some controversial decisions, so much so that some folk are calling for the story to be remade.
The Last Of Us Part 2 Deleted Scenes
Needless to say, if you haven’t played The Last of Us Part 2 yet, don’t read on as there’s major spoilers to be found.
(Okay, seriously, don’t read beyond this point!)
Speaking during an interview with Indie Wire, Druckmann described how Joel’s death scene evolved with him and actor Troy Baker.
What comes to mind right now is Joel’s death. In the first edit of that scene, you felt nothing. Ellie’s being held down and Joel’s looking at her and we had this idea of like, ‘Oh man Joel’s brain is so fucked up at that moment that the only word that’s coming out of his mouth is his daughter’s name, Sarah.’ It felt powerful, but then Troy [Baker] — to his credit — was like, ‘I don’t think he should say anything.’ We shot both versions, and Troy was right. The scene was stronger without it.
Elsewhere, Druckmann revealed that entire sequences were cut from the final version of The Last of Us Part 2, including a cut scene that depicts Ellie hunting a boar.
There was a whole side story where Ellie went to the Seraphite island, and we had so much more to say about the Seraphites and Ellie’s journey there and she’s going through like the different layers of Hell and she still keeps going forward.
In the farm sequence, you can find an entry in Ellie’s journal where she writes about killing this boar and how it makes her feel — we shot cut-scenes for that. There was a whole playable sequence of her hunting down a boar and it was awesome, but we felt that for pacing and production purposes it was just better to remove it. Art was done, and Ashley [Johnson] gave a great performance of how she kills this boar and everything.
Read our The Last of Us Part 2 review here.