The Last of Us 2 interactive guitar was born from Ellie's voice actor's singing

The Last of Us 2
(Image credit: Sony)

The Last of Us 2's interactive guitar came about from Ashley Johnson singing Take On Me.

Earlier today on November 26, several Naughty Dog developers pulled back the cover on The Last of Us 2's interactive guitar and how it came to be, over on the PlayStation Blog. Specifically, the developers highlight Ellie's actor, Ashley Johnson, as providing the development team with the bedrock for the guitar minigame, thanks to her rendition of Take On Me by A-ha in a motion capture session.

This, as players of The Last of Us 2 will no doubt know, was the scene where Ellie first plays her guitar for Dina, when the pair reach Seattle. From here, the developers reveal that when they threw out the idea of the guitar branching out into the fully-fledged rhythm game, they ended up going with the interactive guitar with the DualShock 4's touch pad thanks to Johnson's performance.

Additionally, there's also a neat little behind the scenes look at a pre-visual effects version of Ellie in The Last of Us 2. It might be something akin to nightmare fuel, as Ellie's arms, hands, and mouth aren't really functioning as they're obviously meant to in this video, but it's still a small glimpse at what characters models look like in Naughty Dog games before they're perfected by animators and programmers.

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Hirun Cryer

Hirun Cryer is a freelance reporter and writer with Gamesradar+ based out of U.K. After earning a degree in American History specializing in journalism, cinema, literature, and history, he stepped into the games writing world, with a focus on shooters, indie games, and RPGs, and has since been the recipient of the MCV 30 Under 30 award for 2021. In his spare time he freelances with other outlets around the industry, practices Japanese, and enjoys contemporary manga and anime.