The Last of Us Part 2 Director Has "Mixed Feelings" About Misleading Trailers Featuring Joel

The Last of Us Part 2 director Neil Druckmann has some regrets about the misleading trailers for the game that featured Joel. The Last of Us Part 2 is one of the biggest games of the last decade. It sold a ton of copies, was reviewed extremely well, and even scored a Game of the Year award that was presented by Oppenheimer director Christopher Nolan. It's all pretty wild, but despite a lot of its success, it was also met with tons of controversy. The first game's story was met with near-unanimous praise, but the sequel did not enjoy that same luxury. The Last of Us Part 2 kills off Joel, the protagonist of the first game, in the first hour or so and it does so in a very matter-of-fact, unheroic way. To some people, this was disrespectful to the character and upsetting. It also angered people as trailers for the game showed Joel as being with Ellie at a different part of the story.

The marketing suggested Joel would at least be around for a good chunk of the story, but that was a total misdirect. In the commentary track for The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered, Neil Druckmann talked about the misleading marketing and noted he had "mixed feelings" on the matter. When The Last of Us Part 2 was revealed, Joel was shown in a way that strongly implied he may be dead, but Naughty Dog didn't want fans to believe this. In future trailers, they planted Joel in parts of the game that he wasn't actually in. In hindsight, Druckmann noted that the studio's heart was in the right place to try and protect the story for fans, but also didn't take into consideration how they'd feel when they found out what actually happened to Joel. As such, it seems Druckmann has some regrets about misleading fans. Actress Shannon Woodward, who plays Dina, noted that then fans started to speculate Dina was going to die and that put her in an awkward situation when people would message her about it.

Neil Druckmann, Ashley Johnson, and Shannon Woodward address the controversy surrounding the character model change from Jesse to Joel in the official story trailer.

Neil emphasizes that the primary aim was to safeguard the narrative from spoilers pic.twitter.com/pEzHisF21D

— Naughty Dog Central (@NaughtyNDC) January 25, 2024

It seems like there were a lot of lessons learned on The Last of Us Part 2. It's expected that Naughty Dog won't even reveal its next game until its much closer to release to avoid drawn out marketing cycles and hopefully, give fans less time to predict the story and therefore avoid misleading trailers.