It’s been a long while since we’ve gotten a new trailer for the highly anticipated sequel to The Last of Us, which aired at E3 2018 over a year ago. Before then, we’d seen two equally exciting and disturbing trailers for the narrative-driven story: the reveal trailer in 2016 and a story trailer in 2017.
Although some of us have already seen enough of The Last of Us Part II to know we’re going to play it, others haven’t yet been convinced, and many want to continue the hype until the game launches next year.
To continue the hype, we dove into the latest trailer from Tuesday’s State of Play in order to find every little detail we could about the game. Here’s what we found:
Horses and Boats Offer New Means of Traversal
Near the beginning of the trailer, we see Ellie, her romantic partner Dina and other members of her village set out on a routine expedition on horseback, likely for food, supplies and possibly other survivors.
Although horses aren’t new to The Last of Us, their prominence seems to be significantly increased. Ellie and company are seen riding them at multiple parts, and some scenes suggest some level of freedom when it comes to traversal.
We doubt The Last of Us Part II is going fully open world, but with Naughty Dog’s Uncharted 4 and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy featuring semi-open world sections, we wouldn’t be surprised to see a few pop up in the studio’s latest project.
This would continue the tradition of the two franchises borrowing concepts from each other, such as Uncharted 4’s stronger emphasis on stealth.
Another borrowed element from Uncharted is the implementation of boats as transportation, although it seems as if this game is taking more inspiration more from the original’s speedboat than 4’s fancy yacht.
We imagine traversal will be somewhat like the most recent God of War’s use of a boat, although it’s possible that Ellie could still engage in combat while waterborne.
We Finally Get to See the Infected
We’d barely seen any of the Infected in Part II up to this point. Naughty Dog went all out in re-revealing them, however, as they showed off every major iteration in Tuesday’s trailer. And they’re looking as wonderfully ugly as ever.
As Ellie falls into a pitch-black room while hearing the chilling click-ck of the iconic Clicker, she turns on her flashlight to reveal the fungal horror right before it strikes. We hope she has a shiv on her!
Not even a shiv could make a dent in the Bloaters, The Last of Us’ most imposing and difficult variant of the Infected. They’re back with a vengeance, tearing through walls and brushing off bullets.
Two of the monstrosities are seen in a cramped room, which is terrifying considering how one of The Last of Us’ final and most sinister challenges was getting past a group of three.
We also see a group of Runners in an abandoned mall during the trailer’s last batch of quick cuts, the first and least advanced form of Infected. It’s unclear if any are actually Stalkers, who share most visual characteristics with Runners aside from a slightly more deformed face.
Our First Good Look at Joel
Joel, Ellie’s father figure in The Last of Us, made a short appearance in Part II’s reveal trailer, but we only got to see the back of his head then. We’re finally able to see how the years have treated him, and while he looks a little worse for wear, he’s still kicking.
In the final scene, Joel holds Ellie back from being seen by her enemies, before asking in Troy Baker’s gravelly voice, “You think I’d let you do this on your own?”
Joel was no spring chicken in the original game, but even still, it’s startling to see how much he’s aged in the five years. Likely in his early to mid-50s, Joel has acquired a considerable amount of wrinkles and gray hairs.
Given the unmeasurable stress, guilt and grief he’s carried since the original game’s heart-wrenching opening, this isn’t particularly surprising. Perhaps we should be grateful the poor guy hasn’t had a heart attack yet.
Most of the time, we predict he’ll be around as an AI companion, much like Ellie was in the first game. However, since Ellie was sometimes playable in the original, chances are high you’ll get to play as Joel at some point, even if not for any huge chunk of time. We’ll see if age has slowed him down at all.
Some Key Details Are Likely Being Left Out
Despite how much we’ve learned from the newest trailer, a lot is still left ambiguous, which is almost certainly by design. On surface level, the premise seems to be that Dina is killed, causing Ellie to go on a quest for revenge against whatever group her killer was associated with.
It’s possible this ends up being the actual story, but given The Last of Us’ penchant for surprises, we doubt it’s the full picture. During multiple times in the trailer, the screen cuts to black while audio continues, which we doubt is how the game is presented when actually playing.
In perhaps the most critical scene where Ellie gets lost and stumbles across a fancy cabin, she follows a trail of blood into the basement, whereupon she is immediately tied down by assailants. She begs an unknown figure out of frame to stop something, it cuts to black, and we hear a single gunshot.
The narrative Naughty Dog no doubt want to convey is that Dina was tied up in the room, and they killed her once Ellie discovered it. Although there is plenty to learn in terms of motive and the killer’s identity (the Fireflies, perhaps?), we doubt, or certainly hope, that’s not all there is to it.
A simple revenge story would stand in stark contrast to its predecessor’s creative plot, and as many have pointed out, killing Dina reinforces the uninventive and problematic “kill your gays” trope prevalent in media, especially since two gay characters had already been killed in Part I.
It’s never stated outright that Dina was killed, or that Ellie is explicitly on a quest for revenge. She is brought a box of (supposedly) Dina’s possessions in a later scene, and says she has to “finish it,” without elaborating further.
While there will be plenty of theories, we won’t know for certain until we get our hands on the game when it launches February 21, 2020, on PlayStation 4.
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