Naughty Dog has come out and stated that it’s a “complete coincidence” the developer made changes to Ellie’s appearance and character once comparisons to recently revealed star of Beyond: Two Souls Ellen Page, had been made.
The Last of Us is published by Sony Computer Entertainment while Beyond is tied to Sony’s European branch. The games are both due out in 2013 on PS3.
“We didn’t event know what was going on with that,” came The Last of Us’ director, Bruce Straley. “We don’t know what’s going on with other games.”
Straley said the team had in fact been surprised with comparisons made between the Inception star and their character. “We hear what people are saying – we didn’t realize that ourselves, because we just try to push for the characters that we want. And when we see the reactions we’re like, OK, we don’t like that… We want our characters to stand on their own two feet.”
Straley pointed out, as the team has before, that Ellie’s updated appearance was changed to match that of Ashley Johnson’s, the actress playing her role. “We went a little bit younger, and we think that we got a little bit more Ashley inside of there, which we like. And we really want to respect Ashley for the great performance that she’s giving us.”
Thanks to Allgamesbeta for this rather nifty gif:
