During an interview at the now-concluded San Diego Comic-Con, The Last of Us‘ director Neil Druckmann told GameInformer that certain aspects of the four issue comic mini-series The Last of Us: American Dreams actually influenced the development of the video game.

“During the last speech Ellie gives during the game, she lists off all the people that have died on this journey, and the first name she lists is Riley. She was the first to die. They were both kind of bitten at the same time, but that little snippet in the comic influenced the development of the game, because originally we didn’t have anyone with Ellie when she was bitten,” Druckmann explained.
Druckmann also added that there are a number of things in Ellie’s backpack in the video game that gets explained a bit further in the comic book.
“During Winter, in the game, there are a few artifacts in Ellie’s backpack and you can look at them, and you can see how Ellie got some of them in the comic. That was something that came up fairly late in development and we had to make some changes, but I felt like it really helped tie those two stories together,” he said.
According to Eurogamer, The Last of Us: American Dreams will be available as a trade paperback later this year.
(Read our Top Five Moments From Naughty Dog’s The Last Of Us here)
Charlie Fripp – Consumer Tech editor