Going from the prologue to the ending, Bruce said the final moments of The Last of Us could really be read in several different ways, and it is open-ended and it is a somewhat ironic ending. Its not your typical ending, but its still a nice resolution to me. It has a nice finality of, okay, all right. Re-iterating something theyve said before, Neil addressed the thoughts of people thinking they left it open to a sequel by adding, what were saying is, if we never make a sequel, thatll be alright. In our mind the journey has been wrapped up.
Offering a bit more observation of that ending, Neil talked about how they had focus tests toward the end of production and we do these exit interview, and there are people who have said, I love the game, love the mechanics, love the combat, but youve gotta fix the ending, you really have to fix the ending. In fact, according to Neil, one of the most painful comments they received from a focus tester was, Because she kind of reminds him of his daughter, hes going to sacrifice mankind? Whatever.
Giving his thoughts on the ending was Bruce, who thinks that in stereotypical games, the ending would be, everythings good, we saved the day and everybodys happy, and were all, yay, awesome! But this is two flawed characters in an ambiguous situation, the world is a dark world, hard choices have to be made. To this, Neil added, The journey was kind of for nothing, but at the same time it was for everything.
In fact, the ending was something changed just prior to shooting it, with Neil explaining the reason for the change:
The original ending that for a long time we discussed is Ellie would believe the lie and youd see them walking off to Tommys town and the camera would track up and youd feel like, theyre going to be okay. It was about a week before we shot that scene and we thought, this isnt honest, this doesnt feel right, Ellie would know, I dont buy it, we have to change this
with all that logic and common sense
