News

Troy Baker Believes We Haven’t Seen The Last of Joel From The Last Of Us

In a recent interview with Eurogamer, Troy Baker discussed how difficult it was to witness the death of Joel, the character he voiced in The Last of Us. He also praised Pedro Pascal for his portrayal of Joel in the television series and expressed his belief that the character may return in future projects.

“I hope that Pedro is not the last person to play Joel,” he continues. “I want to see this character be proliferated and iterated on in multiple mediums, whether it be TV, film, more games, comic books. I see people that cosplay as [Joel] all the time… he made an impact,” he said. “I definitely know we’ve not seen the last of Joel, whether that be Naughty Dog or somebody else,” he continued.

In a recent interview on the Lance E. Lee Podcast, Vinit Agarwal, director of the canceled multiplayer project The Last of Us Online, revealed that the game was scrapped 24 hours before its public announcement. He also spoke about his disappointment, noting that the project was “80 percent complete.”

“That was a devastating moment for me because I spent seven years working on that game, and it was soul-crushing,” said Agarwal. “I remember honestly finding out that it was getting cancelled 24 hours before it was announced to the public. That’s how I found out about the game getting cancelled, and it was just unfortunate, and they had to do that because they have to control the messaging.”

“Basically, at one point, a decision had to be made. ‘Okay, make this game or make the next game that Neil Druckmann was directing,” he continued. “The president of the company…They had to pick the game that was kind of the bread and butter of the studio rather than this experimental game that I was working on that I believe was going to be really big, but unfortunately couldn’t see the light of day.”

During an episode of the Friends per Second podcast in2024, it was revealed by Journalist Jason Schreier that Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us online title was a lot bigger than previously thought. According to Schreier, the game was in development for around four years with “a team in the hundreds” before it was eventually shut down. Additionally, he revealed that the cancellation of the title “made some heads roll at Sony,” alluding to the fact that layoffs were made following it. Naughty Dog announced the cancellation of The Last of US online title in a statement back in 2023. In the statement it noted that “to release and support The Last of Us Online [it’d] have to put all our studio resources behind supporting post-launch content for years to come, severely impacting development on future single-player games.”

Stay tuned at Gaming Instincts via Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook for more gaming news.

Abdul Saad

Abdul Saad is a seasoned entertainment journalist and critic and has been writing for five years on multiple gaming sites. When he isn't writing or playing the latest JRPG, he can be found coding games of his own or tinkering with something electrical.