The Last of Us alternate ending is one you won’t believe. The creators of The Last of Us held no details back on the original ending for their hit PS3 third-person shooter.
In the original concept for the ending of The Last of Us, players would find Joel’s sometimes love-interest Tess with a knife to his throat. In the heat of Tess torturing Joel, Ellie would step in and play an important role.
As reported by IGN, Ellie’s first non-Infected kill would be Tess. However, they found that this potential path for Ellie, Joel, and Tess was too contrived.
View the concept art of that scene below (click for an HD version of the image).
In speaking of why they decided to move the character of Tess in a different direction, Druckmann said, “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.”
Even though it never came to fruition, this Joel/Tess storyline sounds awesome. “Originally in the story Tess took more of a villain role,” said Druckmann. “Tess was betrayed by Joel and took on a mission to pursue him across the country.”
As for the character development for Ellie in the final game, creative director Neil Druckmann said, “What we realised 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.”
He went on to say that Ellie’s tale “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 last big detail revealed by Druckmann was of the fate of Joel and Ellie after the Tess fight. “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.”
Druckmann spoke of how “that was letting them off a little too easy – especially for Joel” after everything the characters had done.
Druckmann sure does love to drop post-game bombshells, huh?