New look

Naughty Dog is no stranger to dramatically tweaking the design of its characters before release. Elena Fisher, the Uncharted franchise’s leading lady, was a brunette at one point – but her character was eventually tweaked to reflect the features of actress Emily Rose.

The Last of Us’ tween protagonist Ellie has gone through a similar transformation. Those of you paying attention to the details of this morning’s brand new trailer will have noticed that the character looks a little younger now and, crucially, a lot less like Juno actress Ellen Page.

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Chatting with IGN, creative director Neil Druckmann explained that the change was designed to give the character a “younger look” that's better connected the plot and reflects the personality of actress Ashley Johnson.

He said:

When we came up with the character of Ellie we put a lot of thought into what we wanted her to look like, researching the facial proportions, coloring and bone structures of dozens of faces and bodies. In addition to this, we held numerous casting sessions to ensure we had the right performance capture artist to represent Ellie, eventually selecting actress Ashley Johnson.

As we’re still in the midst of development with The Last of Us, the team has been continuing to put a lot of thought into the creation of Ellie. After delving further into the game’s narrative over the past few months, we decided to modify Ellie’s model to better reflect Ashley’s personality, and also resemble a slightly younger teen more fitting to the story.

Meanwhile, in the same interview, game director Bruce Straley explained that everyone at Naughty Dog is working hard to prepare for a big The Last of Us showing at next month’s E3.

He teased:

Our team has been working hard to have something ready at E3 that will please our fans. We’d love to say more, but we don’t want to spoil anything.

If you haven’t seen The Last of Us’ latest cinematic yet, you should probably rectify that. The video can be found right here.

[source uk.ign.com]