So far, we don't know much about what the exact story of The Last of Us 2 is going to be, although early teasers and trailers have given players a few glimpses of where Joel and Ellie stand at the start of the game. However, with the new title seemingly following Ellie five years after the end of the original game, likely won't give players a clear picture of what Joel has been doing up until he reappears in his surrogate daughter's life.
While at the moment, the direction of the The Last of Us 2 is still up in the air until The Last of Us 2 releases in May, we can look back at the first game in order to see what Naughty Dog might have planned based on the previous title. Specifically, how in the original The Last of Us, certain story beats were explained over quickly in dialogue or through jumps in time, but never fully explained or shown until the DLC released after launch.
Left Behind
The Left Behind DLC that launched the following year after the base game released, may be one of the best add-on campaigns to come out in the last decade. This shouldn't come as much of a surprise, considering that many fans still consider The Last of Us to be the best game of the past decade, at least according to Metacritic scores. However, no matter how highly rated it was, the story of the extended campaign filled in holes that the original game had left open, with some fans accusing the game of artificially creating a need for DLC to complete the story.
So, whether or not the decision to leave the Left Behind storyline in DLC was an artistic choice or a monetary one, it does fill in two very important pieces that help give The Last of Us a full picture. Namely, it shows how and when Ellie was infected by the cordyceps fungus that is the cause of the zombie outbreak, and becomes the inciting incident that drives the rest of the game. While this is something that helps build the world, it can be argued that the game's base story isn't diminished by leaving it ambiguous before the add-on content released.
Another important section of the story that Left Behind fills in is what happens between the fall months when Joel is injured from a drop onto a piece of rebar and the winter months where the story picks back up with the introduction of David. This is something that doesn't need to be seen as much as Ellie's infection, but it still works to fill out the world of The Last of Us even more. More than likely, this was a section that might have been originally intended to be in the base game, but was cut for time or other deterring factors.
Did Joel Leave Ellie?
Considering the way that the first game ended, it almost seems hard to believe that Joel and Ellie have been separated for the last five years. Joel has taken Ellie on as his surrogate daughter and saved her from the Fireflies, even if that condemns the rest of the world to never be free from the zombifying effects of the cordyceps fungus. However, from what we've seen of The Last of Us 2, he has apparently been gone for some time, or at the very least he isn't present for the new inciting incident that will set off the new game's plot.
It's likely that a lot of these questions will be answered in dialogue as players progress through the game, or what will likely be a tearful reunion between Joel and Ellie. In fact, let's just call it right here, the rest of that scene from the trailers is likely going to include Ellie angry at Joel, Joel apologizing and saying something along the lines of, "Don't do this, baby," like he did when Sarah died, and then them hugging it out before he leaves again. Either that, or it does in fact turn out that Joel is the villain and leader of the rival gang that attacks Ellie's new community, like some people have already assumed.
Either way, with Naughty Dog's track record for handling emotional scenes like this, it's not likely that we'll be given a flashback that shows off what's been happening over the past 5 years. Instead, everything that leads up to Joel's return will likely be covered in dialogue and character interactions and won't be shown directly. However, it's likely that it will be The Last of Us 2 DLC that will give us an actual view of the time gap and give players control of the defining moments between the two games.
Catching the Player up
Similar to how the original game made a 20 year jump right in the beginning, The Last of Us 2 takes place five years after the events of the first game. So players are going to need to be caught up on everything that's happened over the course of that time skip and what characters made it to the next game. The original The Last of Us was careful about how it caught players up, with dialogue between Joel and the various people he interacts with, like Tess and Tommy, that gives an idea of what he's been up to for the last 20 years.
This catch up will likely be done in the same way, with players learning about the past events second hand through stories and exposition, but with the rule of "show, don't tell", players will likely want to see the events first hand. Unfortunately, given the last game having not pulled the player out of the moment with flashbacks, this likely won't come until DLC, unless this is what the new Last of Us show is meant to follow. However, given the quality of Left Behind, players will likely have no problem continuing to support the game to get a little more content and a clearer view of the world five years later.
The Ambiguous Ending
The original ending left a lot of things open, including the relationship between Ellie and Joel, with it being unclear if Ellie really believes the lie that Joel tells and continues to trust him. Naturally, the lie won't hold forever, as it will soon become well known that there are no other people with an immunity to cordyceps, but it may still take some time for Ellie to really find out what happened. In that case, if a later DLC shows what happened to Joel in the five years leading up to The Last of Us 2, it would be best to start with Ellie either confronting Joel and his negative influence on her or fully uncovering his dark truth.
The Last of Us 2 is set to release May 29th, 2020, for PS4.
