All Articles: The Last of Us

Can we all agree that the character of Ellie, from The Last of Us, looks a lot like actress Ellen Page? It might be slightly unfair, but the developers at Naughty Dog pretty much stole her face. A loving homage this was not. For proof, take a look at the 2011 Spike TV VGAs trailer (fast-forward to 0:52) and the 2012 Spike TV VGAs trailer (especially the scene at 0:45).

So what does Ellen Page, star of Quantic Dream’s Beyond: Two Souls, think about all this? She answered the question during an Ask Me Anything on Reddit last night:

MozeoSLT: “This has almost certainly been made clear to you several times, but are you aware how much you look like Ellie from “The Last of Us,” a video game which came out about a week ago. She even sounds like you. So much so that almost everyone assumed it was you playing the role.

Have you seen any footage of “The Last of Us” and would you have taken the role as Ellie if approached?”

Page (iamatinycanadian): “I guess I should be flattered that they ripped off my likeness, but I am actually acting in a video game called Beyond Two Souls, so it was not appreciated.”

My apologies if you were expecting fire and brimstone. But Ellen Page is, after all, a very polite (and apparently “tiny”) Canadian.

Ladies and gentlemen, the bar has been raised.

YouTube user dansg08 has compiled a six-hour “marathon edition” version of The Last of Us that includes every story cutscene and a good chunk of the gameplay as well. If you want to experience the story behind Naughty Dog’s latest masterpiece, but haven’t had a chance to play it yet, this movie is for you.

Bravo, dansg08, bravo.

With just a week and a half to go before The Last of Us is available in stores, Sony and Naughty Dog have finally unveiled the game’s multiplayer component.

The game’s multiplayer mode is referred to as Factions and players will be able to side with either the Hunters or the Fireflies and from there it branches off into two gametypes: Supply Raid and Survivors.

In Supply Raid, you’ll have to scavenge the area and keep your team alive. Your team has a pool of twenty reinforcements. Once the reinforcements have been exhausted, the match will go into sudden death. In Survivors, you’re going to have to be extremely vigilant. There are no respawns. Once you’re gone you’ve been eliminated until the next round. It’s a best of seven rounds in which the first team to win four rounds wins the match.

Eric Monacelli, Naughty Dog’s Community Strategist is pretty proud of Factions and told the PlayStation Blog: “The moment-to-moment survival present in the single-player campaign is integral to the multiplayer. You’ll feel tension and need to be intensely alert at all times.”

The Last of Us will be available exclusively for the PS3 on June 14.

Sony made a bummer of an announcement today on the PlayStation Blog, saying that The Last of Us has been pushed back to Friday, June 14.

“As we entered the final phase of development for The Last of Us, we came to realize just how massive Joel and Ellie’s journey is. But instead of cutting corners or compromising our vision, we came to the tough decision that the game deserved a few extra weeks to ensure every detail of The Last of Us was up to Naughty Dog’s internal high standards,” wrote Neil Druckmann, Creative Director at Naughty Dog.

“As a team we pride ourselves on setting a very high quality bar for every aspect of our games – gameplay, story, art, design, technology and more. We want to make sure The Last of Us raises that bar even further – for ourselves, and most importantly, for you, our fans.”

It’s nice to see them taking their time with it to make sure it’s perfect, as opposed to releasing it and then doling out DLC fast and furiously after. But it’s an odd choice to have it come out the day after E3 ends. Either way, as Druckman said, this is their “most ambitious project to date,” so rushing it is a bad idea.