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The last time we saw someone go the trouble of dressing up as a clicker from The Last Of Us, it was a work of art. These guys, while also impressive, are also a little more horrifying. I'm not sure whether that's down to the costumes or the HDR, but it's good they remembered to mess their teeth up as well as their faces! Amie Lynn and Richard Roth are the cosplayers, while Mike Rollerson took the photos.

Sony Computer Entertainment said Naughty Dog's The Last of Us "surpassed all sales expectations" after shipping 3.4 million units worldwide, including download purchases, in just under three weeks. SCE declared the melancholy horror the fastest-selling PS3 game of the year, as well as the fastest-selling "new software title" in the console's history - in other words: the fastest-selling new intellectual property.

"These sales figures are a testament to the blockbuster quality of The Last of Us," said Sony Worldwide Studios President Shuhei Yoshida. "The teams at Naughty Dog are true visionaries and their storytelling capabilities are second to none, this title is an undisputed demonstration of that. SCE continues to be committed to delivering unique gameplay experiences that redefine the interactive entertainment industry and The Last of Us is a perfect example."

Like a zombifying fungus, The Last of Us has really grown on critics and fans alike. Joel and Ellie's grim adventure notched all five stars in our review, with our Richard saying it had a "curious inertia" that he couldn't deny from seeing through to its end. Meanwhile, The Last of Us did what BioShock Infinite and Dead Island: Riptide just fell short of this year: infecting the top of the UK charts for four weeks straight.

There's enough smiling here to remind you we're talking speculative fiction here. And just enough science to make anyone who's played The Last Of Us a little bit nervous. Could We Be The last Of Us? [vsauce3]

I honestly never experienced a single bug (that I noticed) in my time with The Last of Us. But I have heard tales of a few funny and flailing polygons. So here's a four minute clip of a bunch of them, set to goofy clown music. YouTuber Ben Buja compiled the glitches you see above. Think of it like the ultimate blooper reel. To contact the author of this post, write to tina@kotaku.com or find her on Twitter at @tinaamini.

The Last of Us is one of the most critically acclaimed big-budget games of the last year. All the same, it's gotten its fair share of criticism. Is it too difficult? Too much like a movie? Are female characters relegated to the sidelines? And why the heck aren't they just called zombies? I took these common complaints to the game's creators. SPOILERS FOLLOW FOR THE LAST OF US. YOU KNOW THE DRILL BY NOW. Last week I got on the phone with The Last of Us creative director Neil Druckmann and game director Bruce Straley to talk in-depth about the process making the game. We've already covered several of the things the three of us talked about: We covered the many ways the game's climactic sequences could have been different, from the final lie to the operating room shootout to those awesome giraffes. We also talked about the DLC plans (vaguely) and which characters might feature in a sequel (even more vaguely). And of course, we talked about those cursed phone-sex numbers that made their way into the game. Here now, everything else we talked about, from zombies to difficulty to sexist tropes all the way to Charles Foster Kane himself. Pour a cup of coffee and grab a seat; we're gonna be here a while. Why Not Just Call Them Zombies? Zombies are everywhere. Zombie movies, zombie games, zombie TV shows. And yet they're almost never called zombies. They're called "runners" or "walkers" or "infected" or some other term that means zombies without actually being "zombies." I (half-jokingly) asked Druckmann and Straley, why not just call them zombies? "I guess it's the baggage that comes with that." Druckmann said. "I mean look, when we talk about our inspiration and the kind of stories we're into, we don't hide that we were inspired by 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later and Walking Dead. When we talk about that BBC video, we refer to them as zombie-ants. But I think as soon as, in the narrative, in the fiction of the world, if you call them zombies, at least for us, it conjures walking, dead people, coming back to life. And [The Last of Us] is more about this disease, this infection that's grounded in reality." "I think it separates it from the stereotype," Straley said. "When you say zombie, you're suddenly thrown into B-movie, jokey, shooter domain. And we're not making another zombie film, another zombie game. We're not making another zombie trope-thing, we wanted these characters, a story and a world." "Honestly it's one of those things where sometimes we say 'post-pandemic' to not say post-apocalyptic, but it doesn't matter," Druckmann said. "Ultimately it's the story of Joel and Ellie, and that stuff doesn't matter." "As long as that stuff resonates and people," Straley said, "they get the message that it is a story about these two characters and this world and humans, then…" "They can call it whatever they want," Druckmann finished. How Hardcore Is Too Hardcore? One of the unusual things about The Last of Us is how difficult it is, particularly for a big-budget "tentpole" game. It's terrifying and tense, and at times will stop even seasoned players in their tracks. No single aspect embodies The Last of Us' difficulty as fully as the clicker. Easily the most terrifying enemy in the game, the clicker is a blind, powerful monster that hunts by sound. If it touches Joel, it tears his throat out. Game over. Straley said that they had been iterating on the clicker constantly, and that while they knew their goals, for a long time they hadn't quite nailed the formula. The game wasn't working how they wanted it to. In fact, they were still trying to work it out just before time they let the press go hands-on with the game. "We're doing basically a big public playtest with the most critical mother*crag*ers in the industry," Straley said, "and it really came down to the final hours. "It really just wasn't fun," he said, "and we weren't getting the tension that we wanted. Without the one-hit kill, we just weren't getting the tension, the stakes weren't high enough for people. We were debating it back and forth," He laughed. "It was controversial!" Straley: "We needed a Chainsaw Guy from Resident Evil 4." "There were two things," Druckmann said. "We didn't have an enemy like the clicker, and we had a push-off mechanic, where as you were wrestling with infected you could push them off. And by removing the mechanic and making the clicker one-hit, all of a sudden you had all this tension. And people were now using all the stealth mechanics that initially they were just not using." "We needed a Chainsaw Guy from Resident Evil 4," said Straley. "We needed somebody that was just gonna destroy you when you touch him. That's where we were equating it to." The first prolonged infected encounter in the game (as outlined in my helpful tips post) is jarring and savage: Joel is dropped into a room full of runners, as well as a single clicker. He's got minimal ammo, and the player hasn't yet been required to take on a clicker head-to-head. I would estimate that about 98% of players become clicker-food more than once on this section. It's a wonderful slap in the face if you're into that kind of thing, but could be a roadblock for more casual players, particularly as it happens pretty early in the story. I asked Straley and Druckmann if they'd considered making that section easier. "I saw Bruce stressed out many nights over how you train people for this game," Druckmann said, "and whether we're making it too hard, and how do you appeal to the hardcore gamer while still [letting in] all these people who are somewhat casual gamers that play Uncharted. "Can you appeal to both?" he asked. "Is it possible?" As with most aspects of The Last of Us, the key was iteration. "We have a Naughty Dog audience," Straley said, "a fanbase that wants to play the game and just chill out on the weekend. And the story and the world definitely had to have a sense of tension, [to have] survival aspects to it. And we [at Naughty Dog], as players, we want to play something that's challenging. We want to hit the wall sometimes and have to re-think. That's what's fun about games. [It was a challenge], the balance of this game, and trying to find that tone between the survival-horror hardcore niche and trying to make it as accessible as possible." Just Another 'Cinematic Game' Chief among the criticisms leveled at Naughty Dog games is this one: They're more movies than games, and you could just watch them and get the same experience. I asked Druckmann and Straley, do they think that's a fair complaint? And are cinematic experiences like The Last of Us and Uncharted limiting what games can accomplish? "No," Druckmann laughed. "We pride ourselves that we use every tool that we have. We see being cinematic as being like film, but using the visual language that cinema has established that is well-known to people to tell better stories. And that means subtlety. That means show instead of tell. A lot of games suffer from very heavy-handed expositional dialogue, which, to us... that dialogue is very un-cinematic." Straley chimed in: "I think people get caught up in… I don't really know how to say this. I think it's easier to say things like that than it is to do them. How many games are there that truly tell the sorts of emotional stories that Naughty Dog is known for, inside of a completely open-ended world? I don't know. I'm trying to think of a game where [that happens]. "You can create your own narrative, and that's the argument, right? And the beautiful thing about this medium is that you can create a little puzzle game using colorful blocks, or you can create a character-driven game, or you can try to create an open-world game where you create your own narrative as a player and get more investment by interacting with something in the environment. Suddenly I have an attachment with that thing in the environment. But why not try to do all of those things? And that's kind of like what we do." Druckmann: "Sometimes the implication with that criticism is, 'This would work better as a film.' And for us, we feel strongly that's not the case." Straley compared the arc of progression in their games—growing a tool-set, increasing skills, overcoming more difficult enemies—to the narrative arc of the story, saying that, "These are gameplay concepts, but at the same time, this is Joseph Campbell's breakdown of story. So when you look at the similarities between these two, a narrative in a novel or a movie and a narrative and interactivity in a game, and you see the parallels between them. We're just trying to exploit what we're discovering. Our medium is still so young, man, I think we're all poking and prodding to try to figure out how to really juice it." "To expand on what Bruce is saying," Druckmann added, "sometimes the implication with that criticism is, 'This would work better as a film.' And for us, we feel strongly that's not the case. You talk about that giraffe sequence, I don't think that would be as effective in a passive medium. I really don't. I think there's something about you playing through that, you experiencing that, you having played alongside Ellie and Ellie having saved you in combat multiple times, you form a bond that's not the same as if you were to just watch it on the screen." A Game 'By Men, For Men And About Men' Of other criticisms leveled at the game, one of the most resounding came from The New York Times' Chris Suellentrop, who in his review lamented the ways that, for all its strong storytelling, The Last of Us still relegates female characters to the periphery. "It does some things better than any other game I’ve played," Suellentrop wrote, "but I found it hard to get past what it embraces with a depressing sameness, particularly its handling of its female characters." To his eye, despite the initial appearance of a mixed-company narrative, "Almost throughout ... it is actually the story of Joel, the older man. This is another video game by men, for men and about men." That last line is particularly punchy: Just one more game by men, for men, and about men. I asked Druckmann and Straley if they thought that was a fair assessment. "That statement was… I think it was unfair to us," Druckmann said, measuredly. "We have a pretty high percentage of women that work here in the studio, and we all felt that we're doing a dual-protagonist story. We're presenting Joel and Ellie as the protagonists, so there's just that game 'by Men,' that's already not fair. Druckmann: "You could make the argument that it's just Joel's story. But for us, our artistic intent was to create a story both for Joel and Ellie." "And then a game 'about men'..." he continued, "you could make the argument that it's just Joel's story. But for us, our artistic intent was to create a story both for Joel and Ellie. They both have pretty significant arcs, they both affect one another, and they both are really changed by the end. And ultimately the final decision is made by Ellie, not Joel, when she says, 'Okay.' "And the last part of that statement," Druckmann said, "which is 'for men.' We fought hard to get female focus testers both for gameplay and for marketing. We had to specifically ask for [them]. We reached out to our agency and said, 'We need both female and male focus testers.'" Druckmann said that they also asked their marketing partners to focus-test the game's marketing for both men and women. "We felt like we did the opposite of that statement." The Daughter In The Refrigerator Related to that, I asked about the fact that the game begins with another potentially problematic trope: The "woman in a refrigerator," a trope recently illustrated so well by critic Anita Sarkeesian. At the start of The Last of Us, Joel's daughter Sarah is killed by a soldier. It's an event that in many ways provides the dramatic impetus for Joel's entire inner journey. As I said in my write-up of the game's ending, I think that the ending of The Last of Us—and really, the entire journey—didn't just redeem that opening trope, it depended on it in an honest way that most video games don't. But I was curious what Druckmann and Straley thought. I asked, had they seen Sarkeesian's videos, and did they worry about the fact that they were opening The Last of Us with such a shopworn video-game trope? Druckmann said that they had indeed seen Sarkeesian's latest video, though they were conscious of the trope well before that. "The problem with that trope," Straley said, "is when there's no character there. Then it's just a device that's used to progress the male character's story. "But it becomes more complicated when you have a fully three-dimensional character that has different wants and needs and has interesting contradictions. And that's what we tried doing with Sarah, with the time we had with her. And again, we felt like we used the power of mechanics in the fact that you embody Sarah, and you see how she moves and how she reacts. And you can look at her room and see all the stuff that she's into. Druckmann: "At the end of the day, you have to be a slave to the story. … Abstract it enough and you can find these tropes and these conventions everywhere. So all you can do is say, 'What is honest?'" "Here's a girl that has a lot of agency; she went out of her way to somehow get money and buy her dad a watch. They have this relationship where they can banter with one another. As much as we could, we tried to really flesh out her character. So that you know, we're working toward that moment when she eventually dies, [and] you don't feel like… I think that scene wouldn't have worked if she was a very flat character. "The other thing: Where that trope is usually used in games is to fuel a violent revenge story. That's almost all of the examples that were used in Anita's video. Where here it's like, yes, Joel becomes a violent man, but it wasn't necessarily because of Sarah's death. It's because of what the world has done to him. If anything, Sarah's death has shut him down. He didn't go on this [rampage], 'I'm gonna go kill every soldier, I'm gonna find the guy that ordered the soldier to shoot my daughter!' No, it's about this man that has completely shut down and is pretty much dead inside, until he meets Ellie." "At the end of the day," Druckmann said, "you have to be a slave to the story. You can't worry yourself about these things… abstract it enough and you can find these tropes and these conventions everywhere. So all you can do is say, 'What is honest?' What was honest for the prologue was to show a snippet of what this family had to go through, how they were ripped apart, so that you can imagine what happened to the rest of the world. But you're seeing it from a very personal viewpoint. And then you just try to make those characters as real and as grounded as possible so that you can buy into that drama." The 'Citizen Kane of Games' One of the more enjoyable things to come up in the critical response to The Last of Us is the hoary old Citizen Kane of Games meme. The old phrase is as well-worn as any of the zombie tropes in The Last of Us, and yet whenever a game this good comes out, inevitably some critic or other will compare it to Orson Welles' groundbreaking 1941 film. Like clockwork, Empire released their early review of the game and ended by saying that, "It may also prove to be gaming's Citizen Kane moment." Across the Internet, a thousand heads met a thousand desks. I asked Druckmann and Straley if they thought that was a fair assessment. Is The Last of Us is the Citizen Kane of games? At first, Druckmann laughingly tried to turn it back around on me, asking what I thought the comparison meant. I said I was more interested in what he thought. "It's already been attributed to several games, and now it has become almost a joke?" Druckmann said. "Like, I think Metroid Prime was called the Citizen Kane of video games." (He's right, it was.) "Who knows, right?" he said, more seriously. "You hope you leave some kind of mark and you inspire people. Look, we're into narrative-driven games. We hope that there'll be more games like this, games that take story seriously, that really work hard to combine story and gameplay. I hope it leaves some kind of mark, and it inspires more people to make games like this, and to try to push it forward even further." Then he laughed. "There's gotta be a Wayne's World of games."

You gotta think, someone, somewhere in The Last of Us' universe has tried to cook Clicker meat. Not like, the once-human part of the Clicker—they'd probably cook the stuff growing off the Clicker's face. Gross, I know, but...someone has tried it, surely. Right? Well, if you're curious as to how they'd probably go about cooking it, this video by VideoGamerTV gives us the how-to on making Clicker omelets. Repulsive yet intriguing! Cooking With The Last of Us: How to Make a Clicker Omelette [VideoGamerTV]

In the post-apocalyptic future, overrun with plant-face zombies and an abundance of gangs of violent middle-aged men, teenage girls have learned to survive by adopting potty mouths. The Last of Us - Ellie Swearing Montage [BenBuja]

I wasn't always sure how to feel about the things I witnessed in The Last Of Us. We're about to enter a world of spoilerhurt. Proceed with caution. Joel is a good man. After everything we've been through, as player and avatar, I still whole-heartedly believe that. I kind of have to believe that. Because everything he ever fought for was something he believed in. Something I could believe in. But Joel's path wasn't always a clean one. And it wasn't just because he had to bash a couple of dudes' heads in with a brick. The decisions he made throughout the survival experience are a lot more complex than that. There are a few major points in the story I want to go over in regard to the right and wrongs of The Last Of Us and, in particular, its ending. The Rescue Had Ellie been my daughter, or someone who had grown to become my daughter figure, I would never sacrifice her life even to save the lives of millions of others. Sorry, guys. Nothing comes in the way of family. Since this is a video game, I actually might have done so in a virtual world where I can be more flexible with my emotions. If developers Naughty Dog gave me the choice of handing Ellie over to the Fireflies or refusing the surgery, I probably would've done the "right" thing and saved mankind, or at least given mankind a chance to be saved. I don't begrudge Joel his decision. Like I said, I would have done the same. But there's a very specific distinction in the way that entire situation went down that makes Joel's decisions all the more righteous. Let's recap. The Fireflies hit Joel over the head while he attempts to save Ellie's life. Then, he wakes up in a hospital and is told that no, you can't see Ellie and sorry, she's going to die whether you like that or not. No discussions. No questions. Just shut up and take it. After you went above and beyond the deal you made with Marlene, after you almost get yourself killed spending a year tracking these bastards down, and after they still don't give you the supply of guns promised in exchange for Ellie's delivery, the least they could have done was offer the courtesy of a conversation. With Ellie present in the room, prepared to make her own decision. That seems like the fair thing to do. But it's nowhere near what happened. And that's why Joel's masacre of the Fireflies makes sense to me. Including the murder of the surgeon that would have ended her life. I spared the other two doctors, but only because I knew they wouldn't dare stand in my way. Not after I'd just shot their lead surgeon in the head without the slightest flinch. How could I entrust the life of my daughter to a group of people who could so easily disregard us and everything we'd been through to get there? To help them, no less? The Kill A few of you took issue with the fact that I called Marlene an "innocent" woman in a piece I wrote yesterday. Some of you shook your heads, claiming that she had deceived Ellie all along. Let's remember one thing: Ellie is the daughter of one of Marlene's closest friend. After her mother's death, Ellie was put in Marlene's care. Marlene loved Ellie. That much is clear from her journal and recordings that you gather at the latter half of the game. But that's not all we learn about Marlene. Though she's introduced to us as the "queen" Firefly, Marlene slowly lost control over the Fireflies as their organization began to crumble. And though they'd asked for her permission to go ahead with the surgery, a surgery that would ultimately kill Ellie, Marlene knew they weren't really asking for her permission at all. She considered it a test. She was no longer the queen. The desperation in her tone when she's speaking with you in those final scenes at the hospital make that pretty evident. (Specifically when she's first explaining her position to you after you wake up from the knock on your head.) So while it seems like she may have betrayed Joel and Ellie, I don't believe any of it was up to her in the end. Was the entire situation handled badly? Yes. Was it Marlene's fault? No. Was she a good, strong woman? In many ways, yes. In other ways, she had lost a lot of that by the end of the game. But I think her heart was in the right place. She's an innocent, albeit misfortunate woman. I can't blame Marlene for the decisions she's made or where it's led her. She put necessity over emotion. She sought a greater cause that would affect the future of mankind. But in that same line of thinking, I can't blame Joel for gunning her down. Though his efforts wouldn't save mankind, his motivations—to protect Ellie—are just as noble. His definition of "necessity" was just a different one than Marlene's, however intertwined with emotion it was. In the world of The Last Of Us, it's kill or be killed, and Joel is no risk-taker. The Lie This is the big one, and one I've seen debated in the comments on Kotaku. This is also perhaps the one instance I couldn't sympathize with Joel. And it's for a simple reason. I respect honesty. I very much dislike dishonesty. I can understand white lies or waiting for the right time to make confessions, but Joel flat-out lied to Ellie about their last encounter with the Fireflies. The look on Ellie's face said everything: she knew. And she accepted it, I imagine, for the same reason that I feel compelled to believe that Joel is a good person. Because all things considered, he still is. His sole purpose has become Ellie and protecting Ellie and being with Ellie. But in that moment when he lied to her, I knew it wasn't for her—out of love or protection over her—it was for him. He made the selfish decision to deny any dissent, because he had already made up his mind. He was keeping Ellie. She was going to live, and they were going to live together. Shielding her from what happened with the Fireflies wasn't for her benefit, because she already knew the truth. Ellie just wanted to see how Joel would respond when confronted. Ellie's final speech to Joel about survivor's guilt is incredibly telling. It wasn't the same kind of guilt Joel was talking about. Joel probably wished he had died in place of his daughter, Sarah. Ellie's wish is something entirely different. She wanted to do something that would make every death she witnessed mean something. For all of her friends that died in front of her, she wanted to make a difference. I'm willing to bet that given the choice, given a conversation with the Fireflies that they never got, Ellie would have sacrificed her life. She would have convinced Joel to let her go and The Last Of Us would have been a very different game. But she was never given the option, by the Fireflies or by Joel. After all of Ellie's growth with Joel—after he slowly came to trust her to protect herself—it all suddenly felt stunted in that moment. Ellie's matured in so many ways, but in that moment Joel chose not to confide in her. It's the one thing I truly regret the game making me do. To contact the author of this post, write to tina@kotaku.com or find her on Twitter at @tinaamini.

The various choices you’ll have to make with regard to combat in The Last of Us are representative of the larger human struggle in the game world. How will people act when tension is unbearable and their life might be on the line? What are the consequences of those actions once enacted? While the third video in our development series explored the moment-to-moment tensions in the world of The Last of Us, our fourth video looks at the action and potential consequences of inertia in the face of those tensions. Take a look:

If you’ve missed any of our development series, be sure to watch the first video and second video to get up to speed. An in-depth glimpse into all the topics covered in the series is available in Grounded: The Making of The Last of Us, our ninety minute documentary about the development of the game. You can get Grounded by purchasing the season pass.

We have two episodes left in this series. The next video will explore the characters of Joel and Ellie, who they are, and some of what it took to make them as pivotal to the game as we wanted them to be. The final video in the series was teased in our Vanity Fair coverage of the art of The Last of Us. Look for a deeper dive into the gorgeous art and beautiful music behind the game in the coming weeks. The Last of Us is available now in stores and digitally worldwide.

That ending, huh? It was certainly an...interesting one. To the point that it left one of the louder-known YouTube personalities in the gaming community—PewDiePie—speechless. Just for a moment, of course. Spoilers, obviously. Skip to 10:05 for the good parts. Regardless of your feelings towards PewDiePie, he's well-known and well-liked by many on the Internet, and it's interesting to see someone who is usually shouting and cussing his way through his Let's Play videos all of a sudden sit there, mouth agape, unsure of what to say. That's the power of The Last of Us. I had a similar reaction when I finished the game this weekend. Basically, there are two key moments to this ending. The first is when Joel shoots Marlene. Though he does have reasonable grounds for doing so, it's not just that he shoots her. It's the absolutely cool and collected way in which he does so. It's the way he doesn't even hesitate for a moment. He's already decided. He has no remorse. He will have no regrets. In that moment, I felt shock. For an instant. And immediately afterwards I thought, "Good." Because while it may still be morally reprehensible to gun down an innocent woman, I admired his dedication to Ellie above all other things. I admired that he's capable of knowing, one way or another, what is right and wrong to him. And he's steadfast. The other moment is, of course, where he lies to Ellie. And immediately I felt a reversal of emotions. Where killing Marlene still felt like it was motivated by his loyalty to Ellie, this felt like betrayal. The exact opposite of what Joel had been proving was at his core almost the entire length of the game. And at that point I wanted to hate Joel for it. But like Ellie, I just couldn't. We'd been through too much. To contact the author of this post, write to tina@kotaku.com or find her on Twitter at @tinaamini.

Shortly after The Last of Us came out, we discovered something pretty funny. On a bulletin board in Pittsburgh hung a sign with two phone numbers for "Pest Control." But if you called those numbers in the real world, you got phone-sex hotlines. (Since I've seen enough people wondering about this in the comments on past posts, let me just say: God bless the people who go through games and movies trying out every background phone number. You're the reason America is great.) Last week I asked The Last of Us creative director Neil Druckmann about the phone numbers, and he told me they were "an artist's mistake," and that Naughty Dog was working to remove them in a game update. Last night when I booted up the game, it downloaded the 1.02 update. According to the patch notes, in addition to some multiplayer stability tweaks, this patch would change the phone number on a bulletin board. Whatever could they be talking about? After updating, I headed on through to Pittsburgh to check the bulletin board. (Which, if you want to find it, is at the base of a flight of stairs right after you meet Henry and Sam.) Lo behold, the numbers had been disfigured and were no longer legible. It was as though some angry clicker or hunter attacked the board, frustrated at his inability to connect to his favorite phone-sex operator. For posterity, here's the original bulletin board: And here's the edited one that's now in the game: And so, one of the more humorous easter-eggs in recent video-game memory is no more. This "artist's mistake" brought us no small amount of amusement, so thanks, artist, whoever you are, for accidentally inserting two phone-sex numbers right next to one another. You, too, are the reason America is great. (Note: I originally ended with a crack that implied I thought that the phone numbers were intentional. I've softened it a bit, since I was really just making a joke and I take Naughty Dog at their word.)

Naughty Dog has wasted no time in removing the completely unintentional sex hotline telephone number it inadvertently plastered on a bulletin board inside of The Last of Us. The game's first patch, version 1.02, changes the "texture of a phone number on a bulletin board" as its only modification to the single-player experience.

Multiplayer mode, on the other hand, has received a handful of technical corrections and gameplay adjustments, including improved host migration and fixes for miscellaneous crashing, camera and connectivity issues. The full patch notes can be found here, but what we really want to find out is: Who was answering those telephones after the apocalypse? Clickers? We're betting it was Clickers.

The fine folks at IGN invited writer/actor Seth Rogen and his partner in crime, Evan Goldberg, to play the opening to The Last of Us. It's fun to watch. And yes, Seth Rogen games with inverted controls, because of course he does. (Warning: this video contains spoilers for the first 30 minutes of the game.)

You only really see them in the dark, or moving fast, or when their heads are exploding, so there aren't many points in The Last Of Us you can really appreciate how gross the infected really are. Let's fix that. These 3D renders are the work of Mike Svymbersky, an artist who helped out Naughty Dog on development of The Last Of Us, doing everything from the model work you see here to lending a hand with the game's gore systems. You can see more of Mike's work at his personal site and CGHub page. To see the larger pics in all their glory (or, if they’re big enough, so you can save them as wallpaper), click on the “expand” button in the bottom-right corner. Fine Art is a celebration of the work of video game artists, showcasing the best of both their professional and personal portfolios. If you're in the business and have some concept, environment, promotional or character art you'd like to share, drop us a line!

Any story, no matter how assured the final product, goes through revisions. And The Last of Us is no different. The game's closing hours may be among gaming's most confident, but as I learned speaking to its creators, it all could have come together quite differently. BIG SPOILERS COMING FOR THE LAST OF US. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. Earlier this week I had a long conversation with The Last of Us game director Bruce Straley and creative director Neil Druckmann. We covered a whole mess of topics related to the game, but the first three things I asked about were: 1) The final scene with Joel and Ellie. 2) The scene in the operating room. 3) Those *crag*ing giraffes. Let's go through them. The Final Moments, The Final Lie I've already gone on at length about how much I like the ending to The Last of Us. The ambiguity, the hesitation, the lie. All of it. It was an ending that felt rare and complete. Here's me, in case you don't have time to read that whole article: It sure wasn't a satisfying ending; there was no intense final boss battle, no emotional goodbye, and no great sacrifice. In many ways, it was the opposite of the more traditional (though no less worthy or affecting) ending we saw in Telltale's The Walking Dead game. None of the more predictable "zombie endings" people had guessed came to pass: Joel didn't die, he wasn't forced to kill Ellie, nor was she forced to kill him. Despite the fact that the game was built on so many zombie-movie tropes and clichés, its ending avoided all of them. Druckmann told me that initially, they had an ending that, while not significantly different in terms of content, had a very different tone. "The original ending was, I guess, much more hopeful," he said. "We knew Joel would lie to Ellie, but she believed the lie, one hundred percent. There wasn't any doubt there, and they would be arriving in Tommy's town, and you kind of get the idea that everything's gonna be fine and dandy. "But as we got closer and closer to shooting that scene, it stopped feeling honest. And Ellie, over the course of the game, initially you're just writing and working with such broad strokes. And as you take it deeper, that's when you really figure out who the character is. She had such a good bullshit detector that it didn't feel like she would buy it. Or at least not buy it so easily. And then the scene kind of grew out of that, that there would be a kind of final challenge." I joked that I was surprised he saw that ending as more hopeful, given that Joel had still stolen away humanity's hope for a cure and killed a lot of people in the process. He's a monster, he's lying to her! And she believes him? That's a hopeful ending? Druckmann laughed. "Is that how you saw him, as a monster?" I said, "I mean, a sympathetic monster, but sure! He did monstrous things!" To which Druckmann replied, "Yeah. But who didn't in this world? Fair enough. I asked if they'd ever considered changing the ending more substantially, making it much less of a downer. "No," Druckmann said. "As far as like, 'Joel saves the world,' no. "As for the whole ending… I've heard you talk [in your review] about how some of the plot points are clichéd, and the one that probably bugs us the most is Ellie being immune. And the only reason that's in there is so you could get that choice at the end. There's this progression of character for Joel, and how far is he willing to go for Ellie? It progresses from like, willing to put his life on the line, willing to put his friends on the line, and eventually he's willing to put his soul on the line, and he's willing to sacrifice all of humanity. And at the end you could argue that last conversation, he's even willing to put his relationship with Ellie on the line. In order to protect her. Druckmann: "I haven't heard a single parent say 'I disagree with Joel's decision.'" "So that was always there for that purpose. It was never there because we're interested in saving the world or curing Mankind; it was just to get that progression of his character, or rather, the progression of both characters, because it becomes really interesting for Ellie at the end there, too." Replaying the ending a couple of nights ago, I noticed just how effective it is to have the final sequence, climbing through the woods toward Tommy's, play out from Ellie's perspective. As Joel natters on about Sarah, and how she would've liked Ellie, it's clear that he's being overly nice. Something's off; you can hear the lie. And more importantly, you can see how Ellie sees it. I asked about that choice. "That was a conscious decision," Druckmann said. "As far as you know, he has taken these acts, and some people interpret them as monstrous or horrible, and you get to kind of view him from afar. You get to objectify him in a way, by playing as Ellie." Later, Druckmann said, "What's interesting to me about the ending is, I think people who aren't parents are about 50/50 in how they feel about the ending, as far as agreeing with Joel or disagreeing with Joel. I haven't heard a single parent say 'I disagree with Joel's decision.'" The Operating Room In comments sections and forums and even among my colleagues, one thing everyone seems to talk about is the scene in the operating room. Joel walks in and three doctors are preparing to operate on Ellie, which would kill her in the process. Joel slowly walks toward the operating table, and the nearest surgeon holds up a scalpel, ready to fight him off. Joel kills him, takes Ellie, and leaves. Or, that's how it played for me. Other people did it differently; killed all three doctors, or tried to do it clean. Given how little "choice" there is in The Last of Us, it's fascinating that people have approached this one "optional" part in such different ways. But as it turns out, that scene could have been a non-interactive cutscene. Druckmann: "The ending, when Joel walks into the operating room, it used to be one giant cutscene. It was quite a bit different." "The ending," Druckman said, "when Joel walks into the operating room, it used to be one giant cutscene. It was quite a bit different. And there was a designer, Peter Field, who advocated for it to be playable. And he argued for it, and we'd kind of wrack our brain for how to do it, and eventually he was right. We scrapped the whole cinematic and made it playable. And it helped even moreso than we had initially, the beginning really mirrors the end." I asked if Druckmann could estimate how playtesters fared when called upon to shoot the doctors. "I don't know the numbers," he said, "it's interesting. Sometimes people don't realize they can shoot all the doctors, and sometimes they don't realize that they don't have to shoot the doctors. And sometimes like, "Hey, I don't care, I just went in there guns blazing, how dare they do what they're doing!" And some people were disgusted that they have to shoot the first doctor." "We have exit interviews after our playtests in-house," Straley said, "and we ask questions about difficulty and weapons and all sorts of different ramping things, and at some point, we walked through the game linearly. And once they get to the doctor's office, you'll always have, because we'll have like two or three people in the room at a time, and inevitably, there will be an outbreak of an argument between somebody and the other people in the room about like, 'Did you kill them all?' 'I murdered 'em all.' 'No, I let them all go, I wish I didn't have to kill that one,' 'I took out my flamethrower and burned them to a crisp.' Those *crag*ing Awesome Giraffes As "climactic" as the operating room scene and subsequent denouement felt, the emotional peak of the game for me (and, I bet, for a lot of others) involved giraffes. Ugh, those *crag*ing awesome giraffes. As it turns out, for a long time they weren't going to be giraffes, they were going to be deer. Bo-ring! Let's back up. First, I asked Druckmann and Straley, "Why giraffes?" They both laughed. "I don't know," Druckmann said, "because deer are too mundane. Deer are pretty small and mundane. And giraffe are pretty incredible. You go to the zoo and you see a giraffe up close… I was in Tampa, Florida and there was a place where you could see giraffes, and it's pretty incredible, seeing this majestic animal up close." (My boss Stephen, upon seeing this quote, remarked to me: "When I was in Tanzania on a safari, I watched one giraffe try to mount another. It was not majestic.") Straley: I think it's one of those things where, we had deer as a concept, it was gonna be a herd of deer, a lot of them... Druckmann: We even had a zebra concept at one point. Straley: We had a zebra. It came down to sort of that 12 Monkeys aspect of when the community zoo has sort of like, there's nobody maintaining it, the animals break free, what would you see roaming around? And the giraffe is very docile, beautiful, elegant… it's such a fascinating creature, and then what's the most… if you look at Ellie's perspective, that's the most interesting thing that you could possibly see. This elongated neck, this weird, alien animal. Druckmann: It's a very gentle animal, as well, there's nothing threatening about a giraffe. Straley: It just fit, when we were talking about what we wanted to do, giraffes fit. Me: So the giraffes survived for 20 years? Druckmann: Or its children survived. Straley: Yeah, they just keep breeding. That's the idea, right, nature is reclaiming the earth and its got its own ecosystem that doesn't need humans to maintain it. Druckmann: And it's funny, I saw people complaining, or critiquing, that the cold climate weather, that the giraffe wouldn't be able to survive there during the winter months. Straley: Maybe they migrated. I asked them about Geoff Keighley, the well-known games journalist who essentially trolled all of games media by starting a loud, bizarre-to-most Twitter campaign about giraffes while the game was still under review embargo. All of us who had played the game were stuck, since we couldn't tell him to knock it off without revealing that we knew what he was referring to... and in so doing reveal that there were giraffes involved in The Last of Us... and in so doing spoil one of the game's more lovely surprises. I asked if they saw Keighley's tweets. "Yes, we saw," Druckmann said, laughing. "We knew why he was doing it, and we couldn't say anything the whole time. I think he kind of prides himself on insider info. I think he knew no one could say anything, so he could just keep running with it." Curse you, Keighley! It was brilliant, really. Diabolical, but brilliant. The giraffe scene is cool on its own, but it's all the more effective for where it occurs in the story. At the start of spring, Ellie is clearly suffering from some form of post-traumatic stress after her near-death encounter with David. Joel is trying (and failing) to re-connect with her. She's withdrawn, and almost seems to have given up hope, likely in part because she knows their journey is coming to a close and that she might not come out of that hospital alive. I captured the scene; it's worth re-watching to catch just how well-put-together it is. At the outset, Joel assumes the position for the traditional "Naughty Dog Boost," ready to help Ellie up to one more ledge… but she doesn't come. He calls out to her, and it's clear that she's not okay; she's been so attentive and chatty for the whole game. We know something's wrong. He boosts her up and she immediately sees something, drops the ladder, and runs away. (And remember, this is like, Ladder Carrying: The Game. First she ignores the boost, then she drops the ladder! Such symbolism.) You don't know what she's seeing; is it a tank or something, or a bunch of soldiers? What is it? Of course, it's nothing of the sort. After that, a great scene where Joel and Ellie stand next to each other, looking out over the giraffe herd. Ellie calls back to her first genuine interaction with Joel, where they paused to look out at the sun rising over the Boston skyline. "This everything you were hoping for?" he asks. "It's got its ups and downs," Ellie says. "You can't deny the view, though." Druckmann said they weren't initially sure where to place the giraffe scene. "We knew we wanted a section where Ellie would be out of the quarantine zone and just be enamored by wildlife," he said. "And we just called that section of the game 'wild animals,' that was the code name for it. And then we just were struggling with where to put it. And once we put it after the David sequence, the whole structure kind of fell into place. It just flowed so well from one to the other, and I think without that structure, it wouldn't have worked as well." They certainly pulled it off. Who'd have thought, that in a game filled with complex morality, intense violence, zombies, bandits, sacrifice and death, that a herd of giraffes would steal the show? I'll have a couple more things from my talk with Druckmann and Straley, including a more catch-all thing about the overall process of making the game, tomorrow and next week on Kotaku. In the meantime, go hug the giraffe in your life.

Within The Last of Us, Joel and Ellie stumble upon various in-game magazines and postings littered with hotline numbers, first revealed two weeks ago after the game's launch. Turns out, some of those numbers are functioning phone sex lines - a mistake Naughty Dog is hoping to rectify.

"That was an artist's mistake," creative director Neil Druckmann told Kotaku. "What happened was, they put some phone numbers in the game and then they thought they could just change the area code to 555, then it's invalid because it's what they do in movies. But I guess that doesn't work when you have a 1-800 in front of it. We're now working to take it out." Druckmann concluded that the working numbers are "just an honest mistake."

The Last of Us launched on June 14, a game our own Richard Mitchell felt he had survived rather than completed. It would seem the majority of game critics agree.

The Last of Us has plenty of easter eggs; some of them goofy, some sly. And one of them, a little bit naughty. Last week a tipster sent in a photo taken from the game depicting two phone numbers on a bulletin board in Pittsburgh, both of which he said were phone-sex hotlines. I called them up and, sure enough, they were real. Ha, right? Good one, Naughty Dog! Well, not really, as it turns out. I asked the game's creative director Neil Druckmann about the phone numbers, and how they got into the game. "That was an artist's mistake," he said. "What happened was, they put some phone numbers in the game and then they thought they could just change the area code to 555, then it's invalid because it's what they do in movies. But I guess that doesn't work when you have a 1-800 in front of it." "We're now working to take it out," Druckmann said. "It was just an honest mistake." Aw. Well, we'll always have Fahey's recording of the greeting for 1-800-555-2545:

The Last of Us may have ended; the credits may have rolled. But this is a video game! Of course it's not over. SPOILERS FOLLOW for The Last of Us. The game's ending was so strong and, well, final that I don't really feel like it needs a sequel. And no sequel has been announced. But we're definitely going to get more stories from this world, if only in the form of the single-player downloadable content we know is coming. Yesterday I had a long chat with TLOU creative director Neil Druckmann and game director Bruce Straley about, well, everything related to The Last of Us. Among the things we talked about were their plans for the announced single-player DLC, and the likelihood of Joel and Ellie returning for future stories. I asked about a quote from an interview Druckmann gave to the PlayStation blog in which he said: I think the world is ripe for more stories, but as far as the journey Joel and Ellie goes on [sic] it ends with this game. We were very conscious that we didn’t want to leave this story dangling. If we never do a sequel we’re okay with it, because we told the story we needed to tell. That quote has been taken to mean that Joel and Ellie won't feature in any possible sequel at all, though my own reading was always more loose. After all, their journey did end, but it'd seems awfully unlikely that any sequel wouldn't feature Joel and Ellie in some capacity. "I can clarify that quote, because I've seen it misquoted," Druckmann told me yesterday. "I said this journey for Joel and Ellie is complete. In a spoiler sense, I was referring to the journey with the Fireflies and what they're after with the cure and all that. We're not continuing that. "But as far as whether we come back to Joel and Ellie or not, or whether we come back to the world or not, that's all up in the air. I can tell you there are people in the studio that would love to come back to these characters, but the only way we would do it would be if we had something new, something meaningful to say. Because the last thing we would want to do is repeat ourselves." Druckmann: "As far as whether we come back to Joel and Ellie or not, or whether we come back to the world or not, that's all up in the air. I can tell you there are people in the studio that would love to come back to these characters." As for the DLC, that's much more set, though neither Druckmann nor Straley would share many details. "We're creating from scratch," said Druckmann. "Some people out there, they're asking, they're implying that we've cut things from the single-player campaign. That's not true. I wish that were the case, because we could just take it easy right now, polish something that was cut instead of [figuring out] how do we do this, how does it fit into the story. And we're taking the same approach as we did before, how do we do something that's meaningful, that is going to tell you something interesting about these characters, something new about this world. And add to the bigger part of the narrative." "I think that's the big thing, what Neil just said," said Straley. "We're not just doing it to fill some fluff need to get DLC or something. We're actually doing it to tell more about the characters. We're gonna reveal more about the characters and about the world." Druckmann says that they're making this DLC in part as a sort of test. "Usually between games we've just put out multiplayer DLC and we're like, that's a long time for fans to go, for us to go, without putting more narrative stuff out there. So it's like, well, let's see how we do! It's a challenge to ourselves, we want to show we can put really meaningful singleplayer DLC out there." I'm looking forward to seeing what Naughty Dog, a company known for their single-player games but not their single-player DLC, does with the smaller, episodic DLC format. I've always thought that downloadable content gives game-makers opportunities to take risks and tell more interesting, specific stories than the larger games they accompany. (Think BioShock 2: Minerva's Den or Mass Effect 2: Lair of the Shadow Broker.) Given how risky and often unconventional the main story of The Last of Us already is, any DLC should at the very least be interesting. I'll have much more on Kotaku from my conversation with Druckmann and Straley over the next few days. Stay tuned.

Continuing a little tour I've been taking of the Naughty Dog artists responsible for The Last Of Us, and who I haven't yet featured here on Fine Art, today we're looking at the work of Nick Gindraux. Nick is a concept artist at Naughty Dog who, prior to his work on The Last Of Us, helped out on PSN shooter Retro/Grade. You can see more of his work at his personal site. To see the larger pics in all their glory (or, if they’re big enough, so you can save them as wallpaper), click on the “expand” button in the bottom-right corner. Fine Art is a celebration of the work of video game artists, showcasing the best of both their professional and personal portfolios. If you're in the business and have some concept, environment, promotional or character art you'd like to share, drop us a line!

It's no secret that the "infected" from Naughty Dog's The Last Of Us are based on the parasitic fungus known as Cordyceps. It even formed part of the game's announcement. But hey, science, it can sometimes be a little dense. So thank Kyle Hill over at Scientific American for writing a beginner's guide to not just the fungus, but the way it's expressed in the game, a quasi-fiction that combines the "best" of the two real Cordyceps into a single killer outbreak. The Fungus that Reduced Humanity to The Last of Us [Scientific American]

Naughty Dog has apologized for the unauthorized use of an unofficial Boston subway in The Last of Us. The map, examined intently by protagonist Joel above, wasn't made by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority or Naughty Dog. It's the work of a Portland-based artist named Cameron Booth, who posted earlier this week that it was used "without permission or payment."

e attacked Naughty Dog for stealing the work, and wrote (in a since-deleted post version) that he believed it unacceptable "to casually appropriate someone else's work and incorporate it into their game without any discussion."

Since Booth revealed his complaint, Naughty Dog has reached out to him and Booth has now deleted his initial post, replacing it with the news that an agreement has been made. "It seems as if matters will be resolved to everyone's satisfaction shortly," Booth now says. Booth also apologized for his "initial vitriolic post," adding that both sides share "a lot of mutual respect for each other's creative work."

A transit-map enthusiast who painstakingly redesigned Boston's MBTA rail map says The Last of Us took his work, without his permission and without compensating him, for use in the game. He's not happy about it. In his own words, Cameron Booth said he was "*crag*ing furious," before cooling off later today. Still, via his Twitter feed, he says he's received no response from developing studio Naughty Dog nor publisher Sony regarding his allegations and, it should be said, neither have we. Booth's Tumblr and a personal blog features his detailed study of transit maps from all around the world. Back in 2011, he called the T's map a "hot mess" and set about to clean it up himself, altering its scale and some of the lines' colors. His effort is marked as copyrighted under his name. Following the release of The Last of Us, Booth discovered the use of his work through a Twitter search he has set up to scan for discussion of transit maps. Some Last of Us Fans praised an environment in the game for depicting Boston's T map with detailed authenticity. Booth checked it out and says he saw his map, which is more rectangular in scale than the square official rapid transit map for the MBTA. "Naughty Dog seems to have known that they couldn't use the official map without paying a hefty license fee," alleges Booth, "so it looks like they just went on the Internet and found another one. Cos, you know, images on the Internet are free for anyone to use, right? Not." Booth says "at no point have Naughty Dog contacted me about using my intellectual property," and that he was trying to contact them ("with very pointed questions about their approvals and legal process.") I reached out to representatives of Naughty Dog and Sony Computer Entertainment America but have heard nothing back as of publication time. Specifically, I wanted to know if a Naughty Dog artist simply mistook Booth's map for an official work and assumed it to be in the public domain, as the MBTA is a public authority. Booth insists that any map would still require a license. As angry as Booth was in his original post on the matter, he seems to have backed down the tone somewhat. "I'd really prefer to come to an amicable agreement without resorting to legal measures," he said via Twitter about an hour ago. "To clarify, I'm not after a 'payday,'" he said an hour before that. "An acknowledgement of error from [Naughty Dog] and a token licensing fee would be fine." Boston Theft [transitmaps.tumblr.com. Images from transitmaps.tumblr.com] To contact the author of this post, write to owen@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @owengood.

John Sweeney is a concept artist at Naughty Dog who didn't just get to work on The Last Of Us, but had one of his images from the game selected as a winner in this year's Into The Pixel awards. You can see more of his work at his personal site and CGHub page. To see the larger pics in all their glory (or, if they’re big enough, so you can save them as wallpaper), click on the “expand” button in the bottom-right corner. Fine Art is a celebration of the work of video game artists, showcasing the best of both their professional and personal portfolios. If you're in the business and have some concept, environment, promotional or character art you'd like to share, drop us a line!

Our panel of experts debate which companion is the favorite. Who's yours?

Now that the game's out, and it's rather good, you can bet we'll be up to our eyeballs in cosplay paying homage to The Last of Us. Cosplay that's going to have to work very hard to beat this effort, which transformed a model from a regular human into a "clicker", one of the worst monsters you'll face in the game. The shoot was made possible thanks to the efforts of three people: make-up artist Jon Wilks, photographer Adrian and model/infected Emma Franks, who earlier this month visited an abandoned mental hospital in England (so perfect) and took a series of amazing photos. I am looking at these, I am hearing the noise, I am picturing her making the noise, and I am getting nervous. The Last Of Us [JWBeyond] To see the larger pics in all their glory (or, if they’re big enough, so you can save them as wallpaper), click on the “expand” button in the bottom-right corner. Fancy Pants is Kotaku's weekly round-up of the best in video game cosplay (costume play), where fans dress up as their favourite characters.

This video, produced by SoundWorks Collection's Michael Coleman, shows the audio team from The Last of Us discussing the sound effects and music from the game. Specifically, the game's audio designers discuss the challenges involved in creating a soundtrack for the more desolate points in the game.

Game Director Bruce Straley explains the "less is more" approach to The Last of Us' development, as heard through the game's audio tracks. It's a fascinating look (or listen?) into the ways Naughty Dog's sound and music team did their part in creating the game's environments.

Jokes referencing the villager character of the new Smash Bros. started to get stale a few days after E3. Then, suddenly, hilarious videos like this popped up, squeezing out the remaining potential of the character. Outside of E3, newly announced and newly released games inspired people to capture the best moments as animated GIFs. Let's check them out. Last week's huge LAN event, DreamHack Summer 2013, included some StarCraft fun with rather funny commentators. Spock can act strange when it comes to defeating the Gorn in Star Trek... or doing simple things, like entering a shuttle... EA announced Mirror's Edge 2 at their E3 event, which made quite a lot of people replay the first one. And therefore get a chance to experience these moments. So NHL stands for the National Hulk League? ArmA III and snipers, what could go wrong? This must be one of the coolest Street Fighter gifs. Even The Last Of Us can glitch out sometimes, and produce moments like this one. No more hiding for Joel. Found a cool animgif or made something better during the week? Storm the comments and post them! To contact the author of this post, write to gergovas@kotaku.com

Here's a weird thing. The cover of the latest issue of Scandinavian mag GameReactor features, as many covers will this month, The Last Of Us. What's different about this one, though, is that it's caught the attention of developers Naughty Dog, as the image has been altered from its original form. The piece, by Naughty Dog artist Maciej Kuciara, appears on GameReactor's cover with hero Joel front and centre. But as the game's creative director Neil Druckman pointed out on Twitter earlier this week, that's not how the image appeared when it was sent to the magazine. Hey Gamereactor, appreciate the coverage, but is there a reason why you removed Ellie from the cover we provided? http://t.co/jG3vsX6BG4 — Neil Druckmann (@Neil_Druckmann) June 18, 2013 What could have ca-Joeled them into Ellie-minating the game's other star off the cover (Oh god I'm sorry...)? While many were happy to fling allegations of sexism at the magazine, and others took the opportunity to have a little fun at the mag's expense as a result, GameReactor's Petters Hegevall has a far more logical explanation, saying the decision was an aesthetic one, based both on the fact Ellie's "layer" in the image file was of a lower resolution than the rest of the image, and that by removing her the cover not only looked better, but gave them the perfect spot for a headline. Why am I posting this now? I think it's fascinating that we live in a world where design decisions on the cover of a video game magazine can become something. I also wanted to see if anyone who cared enough about the initial exchanges earlier in the week cared to take a look at the original image, since the team at Naughty Dog were kind enough to send it over for comparison's sake. You can see the image as Kuciara (who we've featured here previously) originally penned it, complete with co-star Ellie, below.

Watch our own Kirk Hamilton join Rev3's Adam Sessler and Zac Minor as they spoil the hell out of The Last of Us in a lengthy dissection of the game.

Just a quick reminder that you've got a ton of different options to listen to Gustavo Santaolalla's exceptional soundtrack for The Last of Us. You can listen for free on Spotify can also get it on iTunes, or listen to the whole thing on Soundcloud, which we've embedded below. There's also a cool feature from a bit ago on the PlayStation blog in which Santaolalla talks about the process of scoring the game, if you'd like to learn more about the process of making it. I don't know how they got this guy to do a video game soundtrack (money, probably!), but I sure am glad they did.