Ellie Will be the Only Playable Character in The Last of Us: Part 2, Naughty Dog Says

One of the questions that's been percolating about The Last of Us: Part 2 recently is who the main playable character will be. Will it be Joel? Ellie? Something more anthology-like, jumping between all sorts of characters? Well, this week during a behind closed doors demo, IGN asked whether there would be other playable characters besides Ellie, and the world got its answer.

Ellie, allegedly, will be the only playable character, according to creative director Neil Druckmann. This answer came about after co-lead game designer Richard Cambier said, "We aren't saying anything about that yet." Druckmann chimed in afterwards, apparently, and dropped the bombshell.

Of course, as IGN notes as well, this could be a cover-up. In the lead up to the first game, only Joel was shown as a playable character, with us going into Ellie's shoes in the later part of the game coming as a surprise. The Last of Us: Part 2's big E3 demo showed only Ellie as being playable, with Joel's presence left only to a light reference in dialogue with another character. (During this week's E3 Coliseum panel on The Last of Us: Part 2, Druckmann confirmed that the "old man" being referred to is Joel, and their location is where the last game left off: in a Jacksonville community.)

There's also notably no word on the new characters that appeared in The Last of Us: Part 2's previous trailer, which featured all new people. It's unknown if one of them will be playable, or what the context of the brutal scene is. In the meantime, we'll just have to go off Naughty Dog's word, and cautiously assume that Ellie is indeed the only playable character in it.

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