Naughty Dog will tell the backstory of The Last of Us‘ Ellie through a series of four mini-series comic books dubbed The Last of Us: American Dreams, the developer announced at Comic-Con in New York today.
Written by Naughty Dog creative director Neil Druckmann and published by Dark Horse, the series will show how Ellie first meets Joel.
““At first I was very reluctant to do anything like this, just because we’re still developing the game. There’s a lot to be done in the game and it requires so much energy that I didn’t want to be distracted by something else,” Druckmann told IGN.
“At the same time, I didn’t want to just hand off these characters and find a writer, find an artist and do this thing and just say it’s not canon. If we were going to do this, we wanted to do it right.””
The Last of Us: American Dreams will launch in spring 2013. Asked how that relates to the timing of the game’s release, Druckmann said: “They’re both coming out in the same year. That’s all I can say at this time.”
Druckmann also confirmed the release of a separate, Dark Horse-published deluxe hardcover artbook, in conjuction with the release of the game, “exploring the characters, the infected humans, and the intricately realized world of the game.”