Category: Video Games

The following article contains spoilers for The Last of Us season 2, episode 6.

Season 2 of The Last of Us has thus far presented events in chronological order, a departure from the game’s frequent dips into non-linearity. That means there are several important flashbacks it has skipped over – fan favourites like Ellie’s birthday at the Wyoming museum and Joel singing Future Days. Thankfully they were not consigned to the cutting room floor: we got a whole bunch of them in episode six, grouped together for an hour-long look at Ellie’s past.

Three key flashback sequences from the original game were adapted for this episode. Here we’ve compared them against the original source material, analysing what’s changed and what’s stayed the same. You can see both versions in the video above, or read on below for our written explanations.

Prologue

Episode six takes us back a few years to one of Ellie’s birthday’s. Now living in Jackson, she’s treated to a birthday cake and a present from Joel: the musical instrument that some folks call a gee-tar.

This is an adaptation of The Last of Us Part 2’s second scene, and so arrives much later in the story than it did in the game. The framing of the scene has been changed significantly, as in the game it was not Ellie’s birthday, rather just a random late night. After having spoken to Tommy about what he did at the end of the first game, Joel visits Ellie to bring her the guitar. The shift in framing means the environment is much darker and more somber in the game, but otherwise the events of this scene are largely identical.

We see Joel play Pearl Jam’s Future Days in both versions of the scene, and both Troy Baker and Pedro Pascal perform the song in a similar fashion. In the show Ellie urges Joel to play, while in the game Joel offers himself. The show’s version of Ellie is more animated as she listens, while the game version is more reserved and stoic. But the differences are minute; this is very clearly the same sequence. Both versions of the song end with Ellie saying “Well, that didn’t suck.”

In the game, Joel then gives Ellie the guitar and promises to teach her how to play. In the game the gift is already made obvious; this is Ellie’s birthday, after all.

The Birthday Gift

Originally taking place at the end of Seattle Day 1 in the game, The Birthday Gift flashback that takes up the middle portion of this episode is a fan favourite. It sees Joel take Ellie to the Wyoming Museum of Science and History for her birthday, where she has a close encounter with a T-Rex and blasts off into outer-space (sort of). Of all the recreated flashbacks in this episode, The Birthday Gift is the most lovingly replicated. This is pretty much a 1:1 clone of what we played in the game. I do wish they’d done the pulling faces in the mirror, though.

The scene begins outside, with Ellie discovering the overgrown Tyrannosaurus rex statue and climbing up onto its head. The dialogue here is nearly line-for-line the same as in the game, and the clothing and backpacks used by both Joel and Ellie are very close matches.

The scene skips slightly ahead of the game to take Joel and Ellie to the museum’s space exhibition, which opens on a perfect recreation of the game’s orrey room. This mechanical model of the solar system functions exactly as it does in the game, with the sun orb lighting up and the planets moving through their orbits when Ellie turns the crank.

Of course, it’s the next room where the important stuff happens. There we find a great recreation of the overgrown rocket shuttle cockpit from the game. Ellie acquires her helmet in a very slightly different fashion – in the game she simply picks it up from a display, where in the show she breaks a glass cabinet to get one – but both versions remark that the helmet smells “like space and dust”.

Inside the shuttle, Joel gives Ellie the tape that contains the lift-off recording. He does so with exactly the same dialogue: “This is something that took a mighty effort to find.” The scene then proceeds into a near identical recreation of the “launch”, with the camera focused on Ellie’s face as the lighting replicates that of a space mission. The only real difference is that where the game’s camera is locked directly on Ellie’s face for the full duration of the sequence, the show sometimes uses a side angle to show the shuttle’s window and the bright light pouring in.

Epilogue

The final sequence of this episode recreates The Last of Us Part 2’s epilogue, and so arrives much earlier in the show than it did in the game. A flashback to the night of Ellie’s kiss with Dina and Joel’s subsequent attack on Seth, this scene sees Joel and Ellie hash out their issues and finally arrive at some kind of resolution. In the game it’s a powerful end point – a reveal that Ellie and Joel didn’t part on a bad note. It’s interesting to see that brought forward to an earlier moment in the story, where it now feels more like season 2’s farewell to Joel.

Despite the relocation, the scene remains largely the same. Ellie arrives at Joel’s porch to find him drinking coffee. The dialogue here is practically identical to the game’s script, with Joel explaining that he’s “a little embarrassed” about what he traded for the coffee. The duo proceed to discuss the same topics as they did in the game; Ellie’s complaints about Joel’s behaviour at the dance, Joel quizzing Ellie on Dina’s intentions. This all leads to the real topic at hand: what Joel did at the end of the first game/season.

While the script is broadly similar for this part of the conversation, the characters are notably more distressed in the show. The game’s tone has always been very subtle, its characters very reserved and stoic. In the show, there’s tears and broken voices from both sides. When Joel explains that, if given the chance, he’d make the same decision again, in the show he expands on those thoughts, saying that Ellie will never understand the way he loves her. He ends by saying he hopes that she’ll do better than he did, should she ever have a child of her own.

Both in the game and show, Ellie concludes their conversation by saying that she can never forgive Joel, but that she would like to try. The scene then cuts to black in the show, but there’s a little extra in the game, as Joel responds that he’d “like that”. It’s a line that actually makes the whole sequence feel a little more uplifting – a hope that things may return to “normal”, or something resembling it.

For more from The Last of Us, check out our spoiler-free season two review and our spoiler-filled review of the sixth episode.

Matt Purslow is IGN’s Senior Features Editor.

After Stellar Blade‘s Steam rollout was mysteriously blocked in countries like Egypt, Vietnam, Estonia, and Cuba, developer Shift Up said it was “closely discussing the region locked issue” with publisher Sony.

While there’s still no formal explanation on why sales have been blocked in over 100 countries around the world, it’s thought the list broadly matches that of places where PlayStation Network is not available — although neither PlayStation nor Shift Up has explicitly confirmed that. Instead, the developer insisted it was “doing our BEST to resolve most of it as soon as possible.”

“PSN connecting [is] entirely optional and NEVER required,” the studio added.

In the same message, Shift Up sought to assuage fears that adding DRM — an additional system to help protect against tampering and piracy — would adversely impact the game’s performance. It comes after players of Resident Evil Village essentially proved that the game’s anti-piracy technology was behind a persistent stuttering issue a couple of years ago.

“As shown in the test chart below, the DRM has been hard tuned to maintain the same average frame rate, with even higher minimum frames in some cases,” the studio explained, adding modding is also “fully supported without any restrictions.”

🔸️We are closely discussing the region lock issue with the publisher and are doing our BEST to resolve most of it as soon as possible.
🔸️As shown in the test chart below, the DRM has been hard tuned to maintain the same average frame rate, with even higher minimum frames in… pic.twitter.com/JDimvKiKte

— StellarBlade (@StellarBlade) May 16, 2025

At the time of writing (Monday, May 19), there has been no further update on the issue.

The PC version of Stellar Blade launches via Steam on June 11 along with a raft of PC-specific features, including AI upscaling via Nvidia DLSS 4 and AMD FSR 3, an unlocked framerate, Japanese and Chinese voiceover, ultrawide display support, higher resolution environment textures, and DualSense support for haptic feedback and trigger effects.

IGN’s Stellar Blade review returned a 7/10. We said: “Stellar Blade is great in all of the most important ways for an action game, but dull characters, a lackluster story, and several frustrating elements of its RPG mechanics prevent it from soaring along with the best of the genre.”

Vikki Blake is a reporter, critic, columnist, and consultant. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.

A month after launch, a small percentage of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered players have completed the main questline. But for a game like this, that’s not particularly surprising — fans are saying they’re way too busy doing other stuff.

I’m one of those fans! I’ve been playing and enjoying Oblivion Remastered since it shadow-dropped on April 22, and upon leaving the sewers and handing over the Amulet of Kings to Jauffre at Weynon Priory, I’ve done everything BUT the main questline. I’ve joined the Fighters Guild, explored Cyrodiil, and completed loads of side quests. I’ve even tried to brute force my way out of the map, as one player managed to do.

Why? Well, the side quests in Oblivion are brilliant fun (I won’t spoil any story stuff here), but I’m also trying to avoid the main quest (and potentially difficult parts of it like Kvatch) for the time being while keeping leveling up to a minimum.

So, I’ve decided to enjoy Oblivion until I get bored enough to play the game properly. Although there is no properly with a Bethesda game like this one, is there? That’s why they’re brilliant. You do what you want whenever you want, and the game still works.

It seems a lot of other players are doing the same thing. “I’m BUSY doing OTHER STUFF like hunting for SLAUGHTERFISH in Lake Rumare,” the wonderfully named redditor MrCrispyFriedChicken said in response to the percentage completion stats for finishing Oblivion Remastered’s main questline.

“I spend 160 hours in already and Kvatch is still waiting for me,” added Roffear. “I’m one of those weirdos who actually likes the Oblivion gates so I purposefully don’t finish the main quest until I’ve found all 60 gates in my world and closed them,” said Ellert0. “44 hours and an actual in-game year, and I haven’t even been to Weynon Priory,” said PlayaHatinIG-88. “Those poor Kvatch city guards never stood a chance.”

At the time of this article’s publication, a paltry 2.97% had completed Oblivion Remastered’s main questline on Xbox and a slightly better 4.4% had on Steam. Why the difference? I presume that’s because Xbox factors in Game Pass, which will have seen a number of players dip their toe into Oblivion Remastered before bouncing. Steam players are all in, of course, because they actually bought the game outright.

Either way, it’s still a low percentage for Oblivion Remastered, which has so far seen over 4 million players. But in truth most video games have a surprisingly low campaign completion rate, whether it’s an epic, 100-hour open-world fantasy role-playing game like Oblivion Remastered or a five-hour story like Call of Duty. Indeed, a lot of games have a surprisingly low percentage of players who stick around after an hour or so or continue playing after the tutorial. Such is the fickle nature of the gamer.

For Oblivion Remastered, the stats may be skewed further because it’s a remaster of a beloved game many of its players finished back in the day. If you completed Oblivion’s main quest 20 years ago, perhaps you’re less inclined to do it again now, and would rather focus on all the pretty new visuals and upgraded bits and bobs. Or, as one player has done, spend seven hours lining up books to get a Dominoes chain reaction just right.

Thaddeus122 said they were almost 100 hours in and hadn’t even completed three of the main quests. They have, however, completed the Arena and the Mages Guild. And the rest of the time? “Leveling, getting money for homes, closing all the Oblivion gates, the Nirnroot quest, a bunch of little quests. To be fair, also don’t fast travel anywhere.”

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.