The developers have revealed the details
The creators of The Last of Us have revealed how the prologue of the game was originally supposed to look. The original intention was for the story to begin from Joel’s point of view, not Sarah’s.
Warning: There are SPOILERS for the game below.
Recall that in the first minutes of The Last of Us, the player controls not the main character, but his daughter Sarah. In a short episode, a worried girl roams the apartment in search of her father. At the end, she finds him when she runs into an infected neighbor. The action picks up speed quickly and within minutes the player is in control of Joel. But the original vision of the developers was different.
The Naughty Dog studio blog reports
“The prologue was one of the elements that got finalized towards the end of development. For a long time, we had a plan to start the game from Joel’s point of view, not Sarah’s. The player hears a noise coming from a nearby apartment and goes there to see the infected. Then he would come back for his daughter and start running away like he did in the final version of the game.”
But such an idea was recognized as unoriginal. For this reason, the prologue was decided to be redone. Game director Neil Druckmann said:
“It seemed to me that the fact that we see it through the eyes of an innocent child makes everything even more scary.”
Sound designer Phil Kovac adds:
“She didn’t know something bad was going on, she couldn’t find her father. This feeling of disunity and unrest needed to be portrayed properly. So we had raw, quiet sounds mixed with a loud TV and an explosion that shook the room. All in order to create a palpable tension at this moment.
