The Last of Us 2 re-emerges with a release date and new trailer

The Last of Us Part II will release on February 21, 2020, Sony Interactive Entertainment announced on Tuesday.

The PS4 exclusive featured in a new trailer premiered during the platform holder’s State of Play live stream event. It was also showcased to select media at an event in California, USA.

It’s the first time the game has been shown since E3 2018.

Set five years after the events of the original game, The Last of Us Part II sees players take control of Ellie, who was a secondary playable character in The Last of Us and the star of the title’s Left Behind expansion.

Following a period of relative stability in the 19-year-old’s life, during which she’s forged meaningful new relationships, her world is shaken by a violent act that sparks a brutal revenge mission.

“We began working on this game over five years ago,” creative director Neil Druckmann wrote on the PlayStation Blog. “It’s hard to describe the immense pressure of following up the first game.

“We know how much you love this world and its characters — especially Ellie and Joel. Believe me, we’re fans as well. We love them. Which is why we spent years crafting a game that we feel will do them justice, telling a nuanced story that deals with the core question: how far would you go to exact justice against the people that hurt the ones you love?

He added: “It’s a highly emotional story with complex themes that befit the world of The Last of Us. What we realized pretty early on is that we were putting together Naughty Dog’s most ambitious and longest game in our 35 year history.

“To tell this kind of story the game needed to be massive. Without spoiling too much, at the top of this post you can watch the brand-new trailer that we debuted earlier today on State of Play, which just scratches the surface of what the game has in store.”