Following the confirmation of Naughty Dog that "The Last of Us 2" is on its way to the PlayStation consoles are the rumors that it is planning to have a prequel, which might exclude the characters of Ellie and Joel.
Gamers are still positive about the nearness of the upcoming sequel as voice actor Nolan North confirmed that Naughty Dog commenced on working on the game. This was further emphasized by Neil Druckman, Naughty Dog's Creative Director, when he revealed the list of the games they are currently brainstorming about. The games, among others, include "Unchartered 4," "The Last of Us 2," a sci-fi game, and a fantasy game. They are even building prototypes for these games.
In fact, now that "Unchartered 4" has been released, gamers cannot help but expect that Druckman's team would work on "The Last of Us 2" next so that it could be finally released soon; however, reports suggest that the game developer is not in a hurry to have the game finished anytime soon because they are after the quality of the game, attempting it to be better, bigger, and more interactive than its predecessor. And talking about the upcoming sequel, there are a few things that fans expect to see in the game.
There are gamers who think about what will happen to the storyline between Joel and Ellie, since the game is considering about having a fantasy or sci-fi sequel. Those who prefer to have a fantasy game speculate that new characters will be introduced for a wider explorations of the duo. On the other hand, a sci-fi based game for the sequel would probably have a time leap into a more advanced era.
There are also speculations that the plot for "The Last of Us 2" could either be an apocalypse worse than the ending of its previous version, or it could be a prequel where the start of everything will be revealed. However, there are rumors that doing a prequel would mean that Elli and Joel might not be the main characters, or worse, they might not be in the sequel at all.
Currently, the game is reportedly on its pre-production stage, which means that developers are still brainstorming and drafting everything.