Naughty Dog Boss Creates The Last Of Us And Elden Ring Crossover
2022 is a massive year for gaming, but more than just delivering another crop of titles that will be forgotten next year (we're looking at you Vanguard), some of these will be remembered as genre-defining legends. Up there with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, GTA IV, and The Last of Us, FromSoftware's Elden Ring is already a contender for one of the best games of all time.
While Elden Ring is set in its own fantasy realm and The Last of Us takes place in a near-future USA. That being the case, you might struggle to connect the dots between them considering one is a hack 'n slash Souls-like game and the other a survival horror, but that hasn't stopped Naughty Dog's Neil Druckmann from bringing them together.
What Is Neil Druckmann's The Last Of Us Crossover?
From the Arcane Sphere of Faces to Basilisks, Knolls to Lesser Wormfaces, the Lands Between is populated by some weird and worrisome creatures. Still, most are a way off the imagination of the Clickers from The Last of Us. In Naughty Dog's game, the cordyceps infection has ravaged the human race and the survivors have to fight off these mutated monsters.
Clickers are the third stage of infection and are probably the game's best-known enemy thanks to their horrifying sounds. You might expect to see Clickers, Bloaters, or Shamblers in Elden Ring, while the Rat King mutation also sounds like a perfect FromSoft boss battle. Instead, Naughty Dog boss Neil Druckmann has used his character customisation to make his own version of a Tarnished Clicker.
Posting on Twitter, The Last of Us Game Director shared his Tarnished wearing the Body and Head of the Mushroom Set. As well as making it look like a creepy creation from The Last of Us, the Mushroom Set actually has advantages for the likes of Immunity and Vitality. Captioning it "click, click, click," it's a clear nod to The Last of Us' fungal foes.
Are We Getting More From The Last Of Us?
Maybe Druckmann should spend less time playing Elden Ring and more time working on what's next for The Last of Us? We've heard reports of multiple games in the works, and while most of us have written off The Last of Us Part 3, that seems a long way off considering we are still waiting on the Part 2 multiplayer standalone and a possible remake of 2013's first game.
But it's clear that Druckmann, like so many others, is a big fan of Elden Ring, meaning we could maybe see some of its influences in his next outing. Remember, he recently compared Elden Ring's poison-filled Caelid as "Clicker Land" thanks to its scarlet rot pustules. Still, don't expect to see Margit, the Fell Omen popping up in the inevitable The Last of Us Part 3.
