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You've likely waited over six months for a fresh hit of The Last of Us's story - so the last thing I'm going to do, with less than a week to go, is spoil for you what makes Left Behind, a prequel of sorts that explores some of Ellie's backstory, so special. I'll share a few numbers with you, though: Left Behind takes some two hours from beginning to end, and in that time I welled up once, while thinking to myself that Naughty Dog has done it again a couple times more. It's an expansion as brave and thoughtful as the original, retaining the quality of Joel and Ellie's story and enhancing it in subtle, moving ways. "We were worried that we'd somehow diminish the experience of The Last of Us," Neil Druckmann, writer and creative director on The Last of Us and its Left Behind DLC, says when I tell him that, in my opinion at least, it's a success. "So that's great to hear."
Seeing as we can't exactly discuss what it is about the story-beats and set-pieces that works so well right now - we'll be looking to do that soon after Left Behind's release - the best place to start is exploring what this DLC isn't. Naughty Dog was open about working on another chapter within the world of The Last of Us soon after the release of the original, but before the precise details were made clear there was some speculation that it would centre on Ish, a character sketched out through background detail as players made their way through The Suburbs. This was a possibility considered by Naughty Dog, but one it ended up opting out of.
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