The Last of Us 2 has already become Sony’s biggest Playstation 4 launch ever. It is also the fastest-selling game of 2020 so far. A lot of hype and intrigue had already developed around this game even prior to its release.

Since the announcement of the game in 2016, the plot of the game had been pretty well-guarded by the developers at Naughty Dog. Fans were dying to find out what happened after the first installment which ended in a cliffhanger.

The game has had its fair share of hype and controversy (majorly around Ellie) and now it is clear that The Last of Us 2 brought something new and, at times, unpredictable to the table. Finally, after around five years of secrecy, writer-director Neil Druckmann, and co-writer and narrative lead Halley Gross have talked about the plot in detail in an interview with Indiewire. Here are some excerpts.

Warning: Spoilers ahead

How the story of The Last of Us 2 is almost perfectly symmetrical

Druckmann said that the success of keeping Ellie as a playable character in the first installment was in inspiration to keep her as the protagonist in The Last of Us 2. The story is in fact symmetrical in the way that it, on one hand, shows Ellie’s quest for revenge. On the other hand, we have Abby, who has already accomplished what Ellie was trying to do and is now struggling to come to terms with it.

Read more: The Last of Us Part 2 Opens with Record Sales

We also have parallels like life in Jackson and the life in Seattle; Ellie’s love of open spaces and Abby’s fear of height. As Indiewire puts it in their question, the two halves of the game reflect each other.

“We were trying to find those parallels you’re talking about, and to do so in a way where it’s not on the nose but it’s still showing you how these characters — under different circumstances — could’ve been friends,” Druckmann says.

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Joel’s death was supposed to be different

Joel’s death was a strong scene in the game, and it was supposed to be a tad bit different. Druckmann spoke of this while discussing the scenes that they altered or scrapped from the game.

“In the first edit of that scene, you felt nothing. Ellie’s being held down and Joel’s looking at her and we had this idea of like, “Oh man Joel’s brain is so f***ed up at that moment that the only word that’s coming out of his mouth is his daughter’s name, ‘Sarah.’” It felt powerful, but then Troy [Baker] — to his credit — was like, “I don’t think he should say anything.”

Is there a possibility of The Last of Us 3?

“I think the test for whether or not to make a “Part III” would have to be a similar test to what we did with Part II,” Druckmann says. He says that with the first game there were no expectations and they could do anything. But now that they had established certain characters and themes, to make a part 2 they had to match the emotional core that was there in the first game.

As for part 3, this was Druckmann’s response:

“There’s already so many things you’ve seen about the backstory, about how the outbreak happens, so we’d really have to figure out how to create a new experience that matches the emotional impact of these stories and I don’t know what that is. Currently.”

Well, all this information and insight will surely make the gameplay experience of The Last of Us 2 even more interesting. What do you think of the game so far?