Episode 8
Podcast

Episode 8

“I would do it all over again.”

NEIL: I cling onto this Robert McKee quote, which is, um, people often ask like, what is the responsibility of a writer? Is it to tell morally just stories? Is it to do fan service? Is to whatever those things are. He's like, no, you don't have any of those responsibilities. You have just one responsibility, which is to tell something that you truly believe in, to be honest to yourself.

[ELLIE: I can’t let you leave.

ABBY: I’m not doing this. I’m not going to fight you

ELLIE: Yes you will

ABBY: He’s not a part of this

ELLIE: You made him a part of this

SFX of ABBY and ELLIE's final fight

ELLIE: Go. Just take him.]

CHRISTIAN: Welcome back to The Official The Last of Us Podcast; I’m Christian Spicer. Man, it’s been a treat. I need to start this episode by thanking all of you for going on this journey with me through the discussions of [The Last of Us] and now Part II. It’s truly been a dream come true. To be able to talk about my favorite game with some of the people who helped bring it to life, has truly been an amazing experience and to them, and to all of you for inviting us into your homes, into your cars, into your ears over these past weeks, it has been an honor and a privilege. So thank you for being here. Today we’re gonna bring it all home. We’re covering the final beats of The Last of Us Part II and talk about the impact this game has made on millions of lives, mine included. So enough babbling from me. Let’s hear more from Neil Druckmann.

NEIL: This whole journey for me was I felt this horrible thing back in the day and today I reflect on it and say I'm glad I was never put in a situation where I would have done that because I don't believe that's the right thing to do. And I, I, that conversation that I had with Halley Gross, my, my Co-writer on this project at some point, it's funny as like, as we're talking about, we're arguing about something else with the story and as we're arguing about it, all of a sudden I was like, hold on. Something you just said just triggered something for me. Like, what if Ellie doesn't kill Abby? And she's like, Whoa, I didn't even think that was on the table. And I'm like, let's just go down this road because something is that feels correct based on this conversation we just had that feels more honest than what we've had. And then we started talking about who Ellie is as a character. And while Ellie is violent and is… um, her violence is tied more to her ego than Joel. Joel is very pragmatic where Ellie holds a grudge. Um, you see, like the way Ellie kills David is very different than how Joel, Joel doesn't derive pleasure from it. And I think Ellie does. But beneath all that, I believe that Ellie is a good person and wants to do the right thing. Now why she does it, that's maybe like, um, I don't want to get too much into that cause that is a little bit open to interpretation, but she doesn't kill Abby. And in not killing her, she saves her humanity. So she might've lost everything, but she saved probably the most important thing for her.

CHRISTIAN: Why does Abby think Ellie stopped?

LAURA: (laughs) In that moment and the final moment? I mean...

CHRISTIAN: Mmhm. Or does she not care?

LAURA: (laughs) I, she doesn’t give a fuck, she don't give a fuck. Just don't stop killing me and I'm going to run. I'm done. I’m fucking done. You know. That that rage is gone. It doesn't do anything. That's pretty amazing to get to that place, I think, after everything that they've been through, it sucks that you had to go through all of it to find that place and hopefully Ellie will find that too.

ASHLEY: She knows she made the right choice, at least, in choosing to stop the hate and the, uh, decision to keep hurting people. Does she have a purpose or know what that is yet? No. I think, I don't think she knows what that is yet. And I think that is forever going to be her journey to try to find that now, umm, and of course I am a little bit of a pest-- uh, pessimist, so I'm always like, no, there's no hope. There's no hope. [laughs] Um, but yeah, I feel like she, she leaves cause I, I think, I think she's gonna at least try to find what her purpose is now, because, umm… it wasn't saving humanity and she at least realized that killing Abby wasn't necessarily going to heal the hurt that she has from losing Joel. And now she has to, has to just figure out how to heal from there.

CHRISTIAN: I just thought of this. So I think it's more profound than it probably is, but-

ASHLEY: (laughs) Let's go, let's hear it.

CHRISTIAN: What if her purpose was saving humanity, it's just now much smaller. She saves her own, and now as a microcosm of those she interacts with, she can speak to personally the importance of it and what it means to keep them. So she won't save humanity from the outbreak, but she can save humanity, like what it means to be a human living in this world. Again, I'm probably going to hate this tomorrow, but for right now, I like it.

ASHLEY: No, that’s, boy. That makes me a little emotional. Cause that is… such a beautifully positive way to look at it. And... you know, I, we can always speculate where she goes from here. I mean, I don't know, but... I hope she realizes that. [laughs] But I think that is, uh, a very beautiful way to look at it.

NEIL: I'm now reminded of this, which, um, was such a strange feeling because of the scope of the game there'd be like team Ellie and team Abby and it is very much like we're making two different games that for months we would just be with one set of cast members and I'm there with like, you know, Laura's taking the charge and a lot of it is Abby and just shooting all these scenes and trying to figure out her character and her relationship with Lev and how do we make that relationship work. It was pretty challenging to like to make sure that chemistry was working well. And then all of a sudden we'll be like, okay, now we're switching gears and we have Ashley available cause she's shooting a TV show in New York. Okay, now let's, let's shoot all this Ellie material. It felt like, Oh my God, we're making a different game. I forgot about these characters. And it felt kind of refreshing. Like Oh my God, I miss all these characters. I forgot what- that this is all part of the game as well. And you're doing these two things in parallel for so long and kind of jumping between these two worlds. But then all of a sudden when we shot the Abby Ellie scenes, it was so exciting. It was so exciting to finally see these characters meet and how they're going to interact and right like Ashley and Laura, like really good friends and then they have to fight each other to the death in this really brutal way. And that's them like, you know, like fighting on that really brutal beach fight, that final moment where you just hear like Ellie screaming, that's all there from the set of these two actors just going at it. Again, that was like a brutal scene to watch, but kind of exciting because it felt like everybody's at the top of their game at that point, just like giving it their all and just pouring like years of work out in this moment. That was exciting in a horrific sort of way. But, um, exciting nonetheless.

CHRISTIAN: I mean this in jest but also seriously, what was it like to beat up your friend for so long? Cause you were going at it!

ASHLEY: Yeah. We were going, we were going at it. And Laura Bailey is one of my best friends. We've known each other for so long. We play D&D together weekly. And we actually didn't shoot together a lot in the game, of course, because we are on two separate journeys and there's only a handful of scenes that we shot together on. And that ending scene, all of them were hard. None of them were scenes where, you know, it was just, hey, it's a fun day at work. And,

CHRISTIAN: (laughs)

ASHLEY: (laughs) in particular, that last, that last scene was… man, throwing yourself into sort of trying to be, uh…in the place where Ellie was by that point in the game. And these two people, I mean, Ellie in particular, in a place of extreme hurt and anger and hatred and directing that towards one of your best friends, was really weird and really hard. But, Laura and I just talking with each other and trusting each other and just saying like, let's go, let's do this. Let's get into it. And, it was hard, but we did it. And we just hugged and cried when we were done because it was just, it's weird having those feelings come out in general. And when it's towards someone that you deeply care about, it's tough, man. You, you're like you, you, you want to sort of say, Hey, obviously like this isn't real. I love you so much. And you both know that, of course, but it's a, it was a pretty amazing experience. Like, that whole week of shooting those scenes was pretty, pretty special.

LAURA: I think what made it work so well is that insane amount of trust, um, that's there and it's, it was there with me and Troy too, as one of my best friends, you know, you're able to go further, you're able to go to a darker place because you know they have your back in that moment. And, uh, like in that final fight when me and Ashley were wailing on each other...I mean, we went, we went hard. Um, and...when we finally wrapped it, you know, we cried and we hugged and…

Um, yeah, it was, we were able to go further with it because of the relationship that we have.

CHRISTIAN: Um, what was your favorite moment of, of this entire process?

LAURA: This is a five years, man. Thinking back... I think it's, I think it's been getting to have this experience with Ashley. Because, you know, I know how much the game means to her and I, and, and it means so much to me, and just both of us put our everything into the performances and...being able to feel this, like anticipation of experiencing it. And we've been, you know, texting back and forth and just being able to see what she did on days when I didn't get to see it, um, has been so amazing. And I'm just, it's stupid. But I think my favorite thing about it has been just how proud I am of, uh, of my friends working on it. And everybody's so good and it's just a triumph. It, it really is amazing. And I just, yeah, I mean, like I did the scene where it's a flashback with Ellie and Joel and the Bloater and that moment when Joel saves her, and I started crying. I was like, thank you Joel. This is so good. And it, I was so stressed and it felt so amazing to have somebody have your back in that world.

CHRISTIAN: And then you killed him. Um, cool.

LAURA: I know and then fucking killed him.

CHRISTIAN: Real talk, like, you know, Neil won't listen to this. Don't worry. It's cool. Do you like Abby?

ASHLEY: (laughs) Man.

CHRISTIAN: Remember, Troy is listening though. So do you like Abby? (laughs)

ASHLEY: (laughs) Yeah, yeah, man it... okay. I feel like there was a big turn for me that, th-- when we finally see Abby's side of Joel's killing, and we've already gone on this whole journey with Abby at that point where we have a new perspective and we've been so angry with her, and... we've seen her, we've seen her agony, and we've seen what she's gone through. And she finally got to do what she's been wanting to do, but she is still in turmoil. And you know, when you see the flip side of it, the flip side of that scene, and it's just on Abby and everybody's saying, no, no, stop, leave Ellie alone… she saves Ellie's life in that moment. And she very easily could have done what Ellie does throughout the entire game, but she doesn't. She stops with Joel and she leaves.

[ABBY: Stop. We’re done]

And I think she realizes quicker than Ellie, that the hate has to stop there and she's done. And, uh, when I got to that point in the game, I was like, Ooh, is she a better person than Ellie? When they meet again in the theater and Abby says

[ABBY: You killed my friends. And we let you both live. And you wasted it.]

And it's true. I mean, they, they only killed Joel, but Ellie in her pain... how is she any better with the choices that she made? And we always try to justify when it's our side of the story. I mean, we all do it. We feel like it's the right thing to do when we've been wronged and justice needs to be served, but when does that cycle end? And I feel like that's the whole point of the video game. It doesn't end. And each person feels so justified in their actions and the things that they do. And because we have a whole other video game of these characters that we love, and they're tough questions. I mean, even when I got to the end of the game, when you’re walking down to the beach in Santa Barbara, I just, I put down my controller and I-- even though I knew it was going to happen, I just, I kept saying, no, no, no, no, no, I don't want to do this. I don't want to do this. I don't want to fight this person anymore. And... I've never felt that in a video game.

CHRISTIAN: I'd love to hear you talk about why--this is kind of a potentially a shitty question but I think there could be fun in the conversation.

HALLEY: Please!

CHRISTIAN: Why the game couldn't have ended with Ellie and Potato sitting on the tractor? Why can't that be the end of this--

HALLEY: Oh man

CHRISTIAN: Why can't that be the end of this game?

HALLEY: You know, I think that doesn't honor what Ellie has gone through. I think, yeah, she's sitting on the tractor. And we have that in Dina, right? Like Dina goes through this whole ordeal and you know, she says to Ellie, basically like, you think you're the only one struggling. I'm struggling too. But for him and for you, I deal with it. And Dina is very much in a position where she can deal with it where however loud all of this pain is, she's able to deal with it. But you got to show the other side of that. It's like PTSD, trauma, you know, that's not a choice. And it certainly hits people at different volumes and it doesn't talk about the cyclical nature of violence. These girls aren't done. This isn't, this wasn't consensual, this, this fight wasn't over. And you want to, you want to take Ellie to the point that Abby got to, you want to give her the same choice as Abby. Um, because until Ellie consents to release this hunt, unless until Ellie's subconscious is willing to let this fight go, it's going to always be a what if.

[DINA: You never really talked to me about Kat

ELLIE: Yeah because there isn’t much to talk about.

DINA: Yow

ELLIE: I just I got the impression that you didn’t really like her.

DINA: I don’t care about her one way or the other.

ELLIE: Ok.

DINA: No, I think she’s a talented artist! I’ve grown to like that tattoo of yours!

ELLIE: Well, that’s so big of you.

DINA: And I think she wasn’t right for you.

ELLIE: Interesting.

DINA: Shut up.

ELLIE: Ok…]

CHRISTIAN: I would love to take a minute or so to talk to you about the tattoo. And, uh, I've seen in real life, you know, people getting versions of their own, even before the game came out, which, you know,

ASHLEY: Bold move.

CHRISTIAN: Yeah yeah, indeed. But I'd love to kind of get your take on that and what that tattoo meant to Ellie, to the character.

ASHLEY: Sure. Um, and you know, I, it's funny because I actually didn't know during the shooting of the game-- I knew what the tattoo was-- but I didn't know that the moth is from the fret of the guitar that Joel gave her. And you see that in the first scene of the game. And I just, I grabbed my heart and I was like, oh my God.

CHRISTIAN: (laughs)

ASHLEY: I didn’t know this. But... I think it's, it, it does feel like a natural choice for Ellie to get a tattoo on top of that. I mean, she's, she's almost embarrassed about her immunity and, cause she just doesn't know what to do with it, and um, because it's, it's, it's meant nothing in a way up until this point. And she first covered it in a very painful act of covering it with, um, an acid burn. And that in itself is a very strong choice. Um, but yeah, I think in sort of with her previous girlfriend, Kat, and we also see in the game that Ellie has become an artist, and I love the journaling mechanic in the game. I think it's so cool. Um, the lyrics, the drawings, all of it. I love it. Um, but I think as she got older and started to heal, I'm sure... she designed that tattoo, and obviously the gift from Joel of the guitar really meant something to her and she wanted to get a tattoo over the bite mark, over the burn. And, I think it's really cool.

NEIL: Um, again, I have to go to, so much I’ve learned this from Robert McKee, but um, he talks about internal symbolism versus external symbolism that um, often amateur art uses a lot of external symbolism. So you'll, you'll bring in something like a religious iconography that already has all this weight to it and you're trying to leverage the weight outside the story to bring the story more weight. Versus what becomes more interesting is internal symbolism where you start to build meaning a new meaning for something based on the events of the story. So the moth, again outside the story to moth can mean death and it has all these other meetings that I was much less interested in. Um, the one thing that's, first, maybe I should talk about where their moth initially came from. We hired this woman, Natalie Hall, who's a tattoo artist to design Ellie's tattoo. We had this idea that the show growth and years of passage, we wanted Ellie to have this tattoo that she would put over the bite mark, to help hide this bite mark. Um, so she designed these kinds of ferns and she put this moth in there and I was like, Oh, the moth looks a lot like a Firefly. That's kind of interesting. So right. Firefly already has this internal meaning within the world and here's this insect that's pretty close to it. Um, and then as a story, as we kept working on the story, it just took on greater and greater meaning to, um, well, one, it started to symbolize Ellie because it's such a prominent feature of her character design. And then we had this, again, so many things are just lucky happenstance of, uh, we, we had this, um, relationship that started developing with Taylor Guitar. They wanted to release a guitar based on The Last of Us and I was like, oh, well we have a guitar in this game. What if we collaborate together to design this new guitar? And then I believe it was Ashley Swidowski, our Lead Character Designer that had the idea of like, what if we put the moth as an inlay in the guitar? And then right away I was like, Oh my God, that's awesome. Like that's how Ellie got the idea for the moth on her arm. But now because Joel gives her that guitar, now that moth has, the meaning has evolved, it's becomes to represent the relationship between Ellie and Joel. And we already had like the outline already had that she can't play guitar anymore at the end, which symbolizes the cost of everything that has happened to her now that even as more poetic if now Joel gives her this guitar, it has the moth on it, the moth is on her arm. So the moth just became this greater symbolism for this, this whole journey.

CHRISTIAN: I'm curious where she is at the end when she can't even play the guitar anymore. Does she have hope? Does she have joy? What does she have then, other than maybe her humanity, which she found a way to save?

ASHLEY: Yeah, I, man, I know at least in, in shooting those scenes, you know, cause all of that last bit is mocapped, of walking back into the house,

[SFX of ELLIE walking into the house and exhaling]

Seeing that Dina and JJ are gone and, and--

[SFX of ELLIE walking through the house to her room]

Picking up the guitar, trying to play it again.

[SFX of ELLIE going over to play her guitar. She plays E, then F, then E again, but can’t play D. She continues playing, able to play some notes, while others sound off and muted. ELLIE stops playing and lets out a sigh]

ASHLEY: I didn't feel a lot of hope and it sort of, she's making a conscious decision at the end of the game to... I’m, she leaves again. We don't know where, but she leaves that behind. And I think you're right. I think the only thing that maybe is hopeful about this journey is that she has found her, her humanity. And, at the end of the day, that's kind of all we can hope for, for any of us, is hoping that in these situations that we put ourselves in, that at the end of the day, we're going to choose humanity and to try to do the right thing. And obviously it took a journey of doing very terrible things for her to get there. Um, but I think that for me, that's, that was the only thing that was hopeful, you know? Cause it's, it's sad. She lost, she lost a lot. And it took a lot for her to realize that

<<AD BREAK>>

CHRISTIAN: Um, I'd love to talk about the title screen or the press, any button screen, whatever it's called. And in the game, uh, at the beginning it's the boat. And fog and dent. And then it literally didn't hit me until, I dunno, maybe I am dreaming about The Last of Us. And it's, it's Catalina,

NEIL: It is Catalina.

CHRISTIAN: And that feels like maybe the most hopeful ending of any of your games. I don't see them on the boat, so for all I know, but the boats not destroyed, so maybe they didn't make it, but I'd love to talk about that and kind of the decision for those kinds of new game plus Easter eggs and, and the menu screen and what you hope people take away from it.

NEIL: Yeah. Uh, we had a lot of conversation. John Sweeney, um, Co-art Director was really like, had ideas for the open, for the title screen and we talked about showing it as like the guitar. And then like when you press start, the camera will pull out, you see Joel polishing the guitar. And that felt right in a lot of ways. But then as we started making the story and we knew everything is heading to this showdown at this beach, like that's where it's all gonna come together. And it felt like there was a version of the story where we even started the game with Ellie just sobbing, sitting on this beach with waves kind of washing around her and there's like, you see like blood in the water and then we'd cut to like the beginning of that just felt like, okay, there's like flash forward and flashbacks. And it's like just the beginning was getting a little bit too muddy and we needed to simplify to make it clear. Um, and then I don't remember, there's just were brainstorming, like the idea of starting on the boat, and then I was like, Oh, that's kind of exciting. Like there's this ominous image that we can leave you with. And then everything is heading towards that ominous image. And then we talked about, Oh, Abby leaves and goes to Catalina and they were talking about this like round building. Like we could then change the menu and show like the boat made it an end on a like as you said it, it's kind of a hopeful note that like at least you know, they made it to this beach. What happened afterward again, what really happens in the future? You don't know. And there's something about, I think last time we talked a lot about how death often doesn't happen the way we expect it to and um, there's so much like randomness to life. That Joel didn't know taking that action at the hospital will lead to his eventual demise, but it did. Um, and likewise, Abby didn't know that sparing Ellie in the theater will eventually be, lead to her survival. Cause if Abby didn't spare Ellie and then just went to Santa Barbara with Lev, she would be dead. She would have died on that post. Um, and there's something kind of poetic about that, that this whole kind of cycle of violence and all this, like all these people left dead and maimed and traumatized. Somehow something good came out of that at the end. Uh, and it felt kind of cool to just present them with the menu and see if people pick up on it.

HALLEY: The title screen is an indication of hope, right? It's, uh, Lev and Abby. Maybe they've arrived-- you know, without, in the true Naughty Dog way of not spelling it out, you know? Maybe they've arrived at Catalina, maybe they've found the Fireflies, maybe they found community and home. And a version of community and home that is more stable than what they've experienced in Seattle. And more akin to what Abby experienced at the hospital. So I think that's the hope, but also leaving some mystery. You know, we don't know who the Fireflies are now. We don't know what their focus is now. Is it still finding a cure? Have they moved on? Um, and why Catalina?

CHRISTIAN: I'm curious in your professional experience, your thoughts on kind of that, I'm going to do it a disservice by calling it an open ended ending, but leaving room for interpretation in, um, your professional writing experience, but also in the media you consume, um, your approach to that. Does that leave you fulfilled and kind of excited?

HALLEY: To me, it's really exciting. We're not being prescriptive and you're being allowed to take away what you will, and being left with the idea that people's stories are never really done. Even when they're dead, their stories aren't done. You know, like, where Ellie goes when she leaves the farmhouse. Is she going to Dina? Is she just going off? Is she going back to the Fireflies? Like, we don't, you have no idea, but you know that she is changed. Right? So that, her new stasis is a changed, more wizened, wiser gal than the sweet one that we saw at a dance years before. But it leaves a lot of room to say she's still growing. She's still changing, her story's not finished. No one's story is finished. I think it makes the endings feel more human, more relatable.

CHRISTIAN: What does hope look like in the world of The Last of Us? And would you say it’s ever obtainable?

NEIL: Mmm, that's a good question. Uh, I was talking also, funnily enough to someone this morning about just the journey of what it's been like to make this game and just the ups and downs of making it been, you know, right now we had some people that finished the game for the first time and said really kind of like wonderful things about it and how it moved them. And it's like, it feels like there's a really positive moment and there's this anticipation of everyone wanting to play it and you go back a few weeks and it was really sad. It was like we had all these leaks and there was all this negative feelings that people had about the game and we couldn't really go and defend it and say what's right and what's wrong with all those leaks. And it was kind of depressing for a lot of us, um, for a while. And then had a lot of conversations about, okay, what are the things you could help and what are the things you can't, there's certain things that just you can not change. They are what they are and you just have to tolerate and accept them. And I think, hope, to answer your question, is like knowing that things are going to be okay. They might not be ideal, but they're going to be okay. And you know, there's a lot of like Buddhist stuff that have been originally getting into of like, again, the idea of like, there's no enlightenment without suffering that, you know, we're all going to get old and we're all gonna die. Uh, it's just about what do you make with the time you have, like how do you enjoy the present. And the present might be kind of miserable in some ways, but it's still saying, look, I am alive and I might be in a crappy situation, but like what are the things that are going well for me and what do I have to look forward to tomorrow?

CHRISTIAN: Is that the same that the hope in the game is, is it kind of the same thing that, that, that characters are looking for and try or, or perhaps trying to find, um, those moments?

NEIL: I think so. I think both Abby and Ellie are resisting and fighting the reality of the situation. Um, that something terrible has happened to them and they think they could change reality. They can like force reality to change and will it back to how it was, but they can't. You can't fight and beat up your way to bringing a loved one back. It just, that's never going to happen. So how do you deal with it? How do you move on? And so much as this story is about moving on past trauma, moving on past a really horrible thing that happens to you? Losing a loved one, losing a relationship, um, and they both at the end in different ways come to terms with what happens and decide to move on.

CHRISTIAN: How do any of these groups last? Is, is there a path forward for any of them or does the fungus win, is there a path forward for humanity?

NEIL: That's kind of the interesting thing is like I think stories and maybe traditional Hollywood stories have taught us to look for closure too, right? To answer that. Like what is the end to who wins? Is there a cure? Like there's this group like, and it's like, that's not like, um, and reading the story is trying to reflect. Like for example, again, I'm going to talk back about the world that we live in is like, do we survive? Um, is there going to be a nuclear Holocaust? Is there going to be some outbreak that kills a whole bunch of us? Um, is there going to be war? Like, yeah, all those things probably like at some point are going to happen, hopefully not the nuclear Holocaust part. But countries rise and fall groups rise and fall. And we just wanted to show that and make you experience that in the story that, um, you know, the, the Seraphites and the WLF eventually kind of wiped each other out in that last battle. That's what we wanted to do, it's all in chaos. I'm sure there'll be survivors, um, but it's not going to be the groups that were before that attack on the Island. Jackson for now is fine, but who knows what will happen in the future. You don't know. Um, the Fireflies are trying to regroup and Abby and Lev might reconnect with them. But we don't know what's gonna happen there. Ellie's going to go off on her own. Is she going to be okay? Is she going to find happiness? It's going to go back to Dina? I don't know. That's, that's kind of like the thing with life. It's like all like, all you know is what happened now and you don't know what's gonna happen in the future. Um, so you just, every group is trying to do their best to survive and some are surviving longer than others, but I can't answer that.

HALLEY: The hope that we see in this game is largely from investing, right? It's in investing in relationships, investing in community, investing in security, safety, happiness, art, um, bringing productivity and positivity to the world. And we see that when Ellie and Dina build their farm. We see that when, you know, all these members of Jackson are contributing to helping the the town. We see it with Joel investing in Ellie by trying to make her happy and taking her to the museum and investing in, in time as a father, um, and making this day about her. And you know, you see in that first guitar beat at the very beginning of the game, like Ellie's a little standoffish. She's a little wary. And you know, not at the very end of museum, but right up until the very end of museum, we're back to old Ellie. Like, Joel has invested in Ellie and really regained her trust, regained that warmth, regained that intimacy and friendship and happiness, um, in this scrappy kid. Right? Um, and obviously the lie encroaches and encroaches and encroaches. But to me the hope is... putting energy towards positive investments, uh, which I think is, is also true for the real life, you know, for us every day.

CHRISTIAN: There's a wonderful line, I think it's in the WLF, in the stadium, of, you know, they killed the only person that had a chance to make a cure.

HALLEY: Mhmm.

CHRISTIAN: And what I liked about that moment, and I'm sure I'm butchering when and how it happened, but it feels very real for their truth, but it doesn't necessarily have to be the world's truth. Um,

HALLEY: Sure.

CHRISTIAN: but it's still, it’s very much their world's truth.

CHRISTIAN: When people are done with the game, when they’ve walked away from it, what do you want people to be left with?

NEIL: I guess the, the biggest hope is the one I've had all along, which is I just, I hope, I hope it sticks with them. I hope that it was challenging in some part in interesting ways. Not in just kind of like, Oh, that's kind of there for shock value in the, the worst thing that could happen in my eyes is like if people just like, yeah, okay. That was it. Those, that was it and move on and never discuss it again. Um, because for me it's like the ideas behind it and stuff that I've wrestled with for a really long time, and like for years, and I still wrestle with that even now when, uh, like, right, those leaks were so... they just hurt me personally. And I know they hurt people in the team, so much that when we found out who did it and how it happened and it wasn't anybody at Naughty Dog, initial reaction was like, how do we make them pay as much as we can? Like they've hurt this so much without even realizing what they've done. And it's like, uh, and then like, I think someone said, it's like, have you not played The Last of Us Part II? And it, and it was like, that's like an interesting thing. I was like, Oh, right, right. The whole thing with this game is like, how can you think about the other side? Like, okay, how can I put myself in this other person's shoes and try to understand their point of view? And it really kind of calmed me down and to say it's again, it's like, okay, it happened. Um, and just to come to acceptance of that and that just helped me kind of forget really forget about the person that did that. It was like, Oh man, if someone else can have that feeling about something, whether it's like they have a fight with someone politically on Twitter and they say really horrible things and they just, they're able to let it go and move on or just say like, I kinda get, I might disagree with it, but I get the other side. That to me would be like the greatest compliment if someone told me that like, they're like, that's what they took away from the game.

CHRISTIAN: Um, [The Last of Us] has been described as a love story and Part II has been described as, um, violence, and the cycle of violence and, and what that means and what it does. I'm curious, in your opinion, what is The Last of Us as a whole? What does The Last of Us represent?

LAURA: Right...like what does it mean? What is...what is our place? It’s funny ‘cause like all these questions that you've been asking and I, you know, is, is it possible to find hope and I just feel like this game is, is, you know, there's endure and survive physically. What does that mean for your soul? What does that mean mentally? How do you live with yourself?

CHRISTIAN: What's worth it? You know?

LAURA: Mhmm.

TROY: I could sit here and just mull that over for far longer than we have or I have hard disk space for. What's so funny is I try to think of a better word and I will come up with a better answer, but the word that I keep coming back to is a story of redemption because unilaterally across every character I can see that as a commonality of every character just wanting redemption. It's not about revenge. Revenge is a very short wick and everybody just wants to feel like they can be redeemed. So ultimately I say that The Last of Us is a story of redemption.

HALLEY: But I would say it is about enduring and surviving, right? It is about your, your world is going to get rocked. Bad things are gonna happen to the people you love. Bad things are gonna happen to the world around you. But we keep on finding things to fight for. We keep on finding reasons to be good to each other. And so often, you know, our reason to fight is, is for those that we love. Sometimes it's easier to be there for somebody else than be there for yourself. So I would say the, I'd say on the whole this, this game is about...resiliency. How do you keep picking yourself back up? Which I think is a theme that and a, and a concept that we all need, especially right now.

ASHLEY: Boy. Um... I think, for me at least, when everything is, is stripped away, our possessions, our, uh, finances, our, uh, external shit, uh… You're left with human connection. And human relationships. And… I think that's really at the end of the day, what is important. Is your connection with another human being. And if that's taken away, what do you have? You know, we start to see that in the first game where the connection is made between Joel and Ellie on this, this journey together. And that's what the game is about, is their, their connection, their relationship. And about how these two people made a connection in a very, very tough time, in a very tough world. And the reason he makes the decision he makes is because he realizes that, that I've made a connection with something. And that's the only thing that's kind of worth living for right now. And I feel like that's confirmed in the second game. It's, it's a different journey of getting to that, but Ellie goes back home. Dina's not there, but she goes back because she also realized, I had, I had love. I had this thing, I had this connection, and that at the end of the day is the most important thing, is this, is love and connection. Take it all away, take everything else. That's all that you have left...

NEIL: I don't know if I'm going to have a succinct answer. It's funny cause something like I’m sure for marketing we wrote stuff down, but that stuff is always like, you're trying to distill it down to too little, um, right? It's like for marketing, we say The Last of Us Part II is about hate, but it's really about dealing with trauma and like love and how do you move on from grief and all these other interesting facets to it. But as you ask me this and I, I don't think anybody's ever asked me, like, try to put the two games together and say, okay, what is this whole thing about... And it's, it's kind of an exploration of love and all the facets around it. Meaning the beauty that comes within it, the happiness that comes with it, the grief that comes with it, the insanity that can come with it. Uh, right when you lose or when someone you love is hurt. So yeah, I guess it's that, um, everything that happens, all the choices, these characters, these characters make good or bad. It all comes from a place of love. Um, and as us as human beings, it's like we commit often the worst atrocities because of love.

[ELLIE: After all we’ve been through

MARLENE: I want Joel to watch over her.

JOEL: Whoa whoa I don’t think that’s-

ELLIE: Bullshit I’m not going with him.

ELLIE: Your watch is broken.

JOEL: No matter what, you keep finding something to fight for.

ELLIE: Everything that I’ve done.

JOEL: Oh baby girl. It’s ok.

ELLIE: My life would have fucking mattered. But you took that from me.

ELLIE: Go. Just take him.

ELLIE: It can’t be for nothing.

JOEL: If somehow the lord gave me a second chance at that moment, I would do it all over again.

ELLIE: Yeah. I just. I don’t think I can ever forgive you for that. But I would like to try.

JOEL: I’d like that.

ELLIE: Okay. I’ll see you around.

JOEL: Yup.]

<<MUSIC PLAYING>>

CHRISTIAN: This concludes The Official The Last of Us Podcast. Until next time: Find Something to Fight For.

Listen, if you’ve enjoyed listening to the show, tell your friends, your family, your enemies, tell your Ellie and your Abby. And if you really love this show, please rate it and review it in your podcast app. It helps people find us. And be sure to stay subscribed, you never know. We might be back one day with more behind the scenes goodness you won’t want to miss.

The Official The Last of Us Podcast is produced by PlayStation and Spoke Media.

It’s hosted by me, Christian Spicer and written by Brigham Mosley.

Our Sony PlayStation team includes Charlie Yedor, Cristian Cardona and Carrie Surtees.

Our Naughty Dog team includes Arne Meyer and Scott Lowe. Our production team is Carson McCain, Kelly Kolff, Tre Jones, Reyes Mendoza and Aleisha Force.

This episode was mixed by Evan Arnett who contributed additional sound design and music.

Today’s episode included interviews with Neil Druckmann, Halley Gross, Laura Bailey, Troy Baker, and Ashley Johnson.

Our executive producers are Alia Tavakolian and Keith Reynolds.

Special thanks to Janielle Kastner, Caroline Hamilton, Becky Dodd, Lauren Muniz, Samara Still, Vivian Alcala, Dinah Bakeer, Rob Krekel and Joshua Bradley.

Thanks for listening.

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