The Last of Us has continued the critical and commercial success that Naughty Dog has had with the Uncharted series, and the game is on many people's game of the year lists. The game's story in particular has drawn praise from critics and fans, but Naughty Dog had the story go through many different drafts before the final script was settled upon. Neil Druckmann, the creative director of The Last of Us, revealed to Game Informer (via VideoGamer) that several details about the game were changed. The following contains massive spoilers, so anyone looking to keep the story's details a secret should stop here.
Originally, Tess was going to switch from a companion in the game's early levels to a villain, stalking Joel and Ellie across the country. This single detail informed much of the game's plot, as this would have forced Ellie, who was a more pacifist character in the original script, have to commit violent acts to save Joel:
"What's interesting is that originally in the story, Tess took more of a villain role. Tess was betrayed by Joel and took on a mission to pursue him across the country. That storyline never worked out. The storyline shifted and Tess took on this role where she became more of a believer and she helped motivate Joel."
"Ellie's arc originally was that she didn't kill any non-infected people until the end, when she was going to kill Tess when Tess was torturing Joel...What we realized is that we had to get Ellie engaged more in the combat, because when she was disengaged from the action for that long, you didn't care so much. So that changed pretty early on. We decided it wasn't going to be about the first time she killed someone, it was more about this coming-of-age story of the impact that the horrors of violence has on her over the course of the game."
The ending also was more positive, with Joel and Ellie getting a much happier ending after the events at the tail end of the game:
"The original ending when we pitched the game was a much more hopeful ending, where Joel and Ellie make it to San Francisco, and that is a town run by people who are trying to restore society. Joel has killed all these doctors and lied to Ellie, and Ellie just fully buys into the lie. So, you're left with the idea that they are going to live the rest of their lives in this town. The camera pulls back and maybe everything is going to be alright for these two. I was working on writing, and it didn't feel honest anymore. After everything they've done and everything they've been through, that was letting them off a little too easy--especially for Joel."
However, Druckmann revealed that focus groups found this ending anticlimactic, so the happy ending was cut out and replaced with the current ending for the game.
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