The Last of Us 2 took seven years to make, and everyone can agree that a lot of hard work and time went into Last of Us 2's development. This is clearly a game that the devs cared a lot about creating, but something also has to be said for the incredible creations fans have put out. One major fan of the series took to Twitter to share a pretty cool work of art.
Twitter user @IconicNephilim created and shared a poster that explores Ellie's changes through the two games. Anyone who's played through The Last of Us 2 and its predecessor can agree that Ellie went through a major character arc, and whether some fans sympathize with Ellie or not, she's clearly a much different person at the end of the second game than at the beginning of the first.
Spoilers ahead for The Last of Us 2.
This The Last of Us 2 fan poster shows a series of seven versions of Ellie, starting with a young, ponytailed girl wearing her backpack and ending with a tall young woman walking confidently off the poster. Behind each image of Ellie are overlapping images from important settings in the game, including the Tyrannosaurus Rex statue from the museum, and the farm she stayed at with Dana in the second game. The composition and visual appeal of the poster is really amazing, and clearly required a lot of image editing and manipulating skills to create.
The comment accompanying the image includes one of Ellie's quotes from an argument with Joel in The Last of Us 2, where she tells him her life doesn't matter anymore. The top of the image doesn't say "Ellie" as one might expect, but instead pays homage to Ellie's voice actress Ashley Johnson, who has spoken in interviews about the vast amount of time and emotional work she's had to put in to portray the character.
IconicNephilim is clearly a huge fan of The Last of Us 2, and his Twitter page has a lot of cool fanart for the apocalyptic action-adventure game, as well as other franchises. The designer also has a lot of thoughts about the game's new Permadeath and Grounded mode that are proving to be a challenge for a lot of players.
Five years passed between The Last of Us and The Last of Us 2, and both Joel and Ellie went through a lot of trauma as they fought to survive. The series shows Ellie's growth from a naive fourteen-year-old into a hardened nineteen-year-old who's seen a lot, which this fan's poster encapsulates beautifully.
The Last of Us Part 2 is out now for PS4.