A former Naughty Canine developer who labored on the primary The Last of Us and its sequel has mentioned the controversial determination to kill off a serious character in The Last of Us: Half II.
Main spoilers for The Last of Us: Half II and the franchise on the whole observe beneath.
Heather Cerlan, an surroundings and texture artist for each The Last of Us video games, stated on Kiwi Talkz that the studio was “fairly break up” on the choice to kill off Joel. “It was controversially internally, too,” she stated, as reported by GamesRadar.
Joel’s loss of life leaked earlier than The Last of Us: Half II was launched, creating a lot hullabaloo on-line, as followers passionately weighed in on the surprising loss of life of one of many franchise’s core characters.
Joel is killed by Abby in The Last of Us: Half II. Abby hunts him down and murders him with a golf membership to get revenge for Joel’s bloodbath within the first sport, together with him gunning down Abby’s father.
The loss of life was surprising within the 2020 sport, and it was recreated in equally brutal trend on HBO’s TV sequence within the Season 2 episode “By the Valley.” For the TV present, nonetheless, followers who performed the sport or knew the lore understood what was coming.
Gamers upset by Joel’s loss of life in The Last of Us: Half II despatched loss of life threats to Abby actor Laura Bailey and threatened her new child as nicely. Kaitlyn Dever, who performs Abby on the TV present and may have an even bigger position within the upcoming third season, confronted backlash as nicely for enjoying the character.
As for Joel, though the character is useless, the actor who performed him within the video games, Troy Baker, has stated followers have “not seen the final of Joel.” It stays to be seen what which means, however some are speculating {that a} new The Last of Us sport may very well be a prequel.
Naughty Canine has a number of new single-player video games in improvement, together with the brand new IP Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet. The second stays a thriller. Some are theorizing it is a new The Last of Us sport, whereas others imagine it may very well be Uncharted 5.