9 Ways The Last Of Us 2 Was Almost Completely Different

8. Joel Had A Girlfriend (Who Would Die)

TLOU 2's opening is actually a sequence directly lifted from The Last of Us: One Night Live, an event held in 2014 which featured live music from composer Gustavo Santaolalla and Ashley Johnson and Troy Baker reenacting scenes from the original game. However, director Neil Druckmann slipped in something special for audience members only: a newly-written epilogue between Ellie and Joel.

Funnily enough, this turned out to be, almost beat for beat, the intro of TLOU 2 with Joel visiting Ellie and gifting her the guitar. The set up, the use of Pearl Jam's Future Days, even Joel's crappy joke were all there, with one slight alteration: in that live performance, Baker's character mentions his girlfriend, Esther.

For a long time, Esther was actually going to be featured in the sequel's story, but was one of the many characters cut to keep the focus on Ellie's arc. Gross explained that the new character would be the focal point of a scrapped flashback, that would have occurred six hours into the game.

This sequence would have seen Ellie and Joel visiting Esther, who lived on the outskirts of Jackson, near the dam from the original game. However, when they arrived, her house would be overrun with infected, and the two would find her dying inside. You'd then play as Ellie going to get water to comfort the dying woman, only to hear the gunshot, with it being ambiguous who pulled the trigger.

It already sounds like an emotional scene, but it would have incited a confrontation between Ellie and Joel, with the former lamenting that this wouldn't have happened had the Fireflies developed a cure.

Gross explained that it was ultimately cut because of the limited screen time Esther had, which effected how much you connected to the scene.

Apparently Esther still lived on in the form of a note penned by her you could read in Joel's house, but this too was cut shortly before release.