“We always wanted to stay away from that”: Neil Druckmann had a good reason for lying about The Last of Us, but no one has actually said it yet

When The Last of Us first came out, creative director Neil Druckmann made a conscious decision to mislead players about certain aspects of the game’s story. This decision has been largely ignored until now.

Neil Druckmann. | Images: Gage Skidmore, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 | Wikimedia Commons.

When the game was released in 2013, it quickly became one of the most successful titles in gaming. Central to its success was the unique dynamic between Joel and Ellie, who transformed what could have been a typical escort mission into something none of us expected.

Neil Druckmann’s trick was a stroke of genius

In an interview with VentureBeat, creators Neil Druckmann and Bruce Straley spoke about their deception. Druckmann and Straley decided from the beginning to lie about certain aspects of the game in interviews.

Here are some things we lie about in interviews. When someone asks, “Do you play as Ellie?…