10 Mind-Blowing Facts You Never Knew About The Last Of Us

It's not very often that gamers find themselves reaching for a box of tissues while trying to cleverly avert their faces the instant a roommate, sibling or significant other waltzes into the room, deflecting suspicion with a quickly stammered "It's just the... pollen in the air" *sniff*. But when a certain opening scene played out in millions of living rooms across the world after only a half-hour's worth of play time, gamers knew they had just experienced something special with The Last Of Us. Taking players on a journey of desperation, survival and ultimately love, Naughty Dog's 2013 masterpiece ushered in a new era of cinematic storytelling and further cemented the notion that the medium was no less capable of examining complex themes worthy of discussion than film or literature. Hell, the game's two years old now, and people are still debating the moral implications of the ending. That's real staying power. With a game as masterfully-crafted as this, sometimes it's easy to forget that these things hardly ever charge out of the gate fully-formed. Sometimes it takes a few false-starts before things really pick up steam, and occasionally the stories behind all the what-ifs are just as fascinating as the finished product, shedding new light on various aspects of the game in the process.