The History of The Last of Us

when Naughty Dog released uncharted 2 among thieves in 2009 the video game industry was awash with praise after rising to prominence with the crash bandicoot series in the mid-90s the Santa Monica based studio had been delivering action title after action title for over a decade each new release saw the studio grow and mature in some fashion and uncharted 2 with its blockbuster like production values appeared to be the culmination of this maturity it was the apex of everything the studio had learned about how to engage players since its inception rolled into one swashbuckling package few could have predicted that four years later Naughty Dog would surpass itself yet again and rise to a whole new tier of stardom with The Last of Us an action-adventure game flush with supernatural horrors the last of us followed survivors Joel and Ellie on a harrowing journey across a post-apocalyptic America ravaged by fungal zombies its world was a sight to behold and its combat encounters left many dizzy with excitement yet when all was said and done players were captivated most by Joel and Ellie with the nuances of their relationship transfixing almost all who dared to join them on their journey from the outside the game seemed so masterfully constructed that it was hard to imagine Naughty Dog had so much as broken a sweat developing it in reality however shifting from uncharted to the Last of Us had been a painstaking difficult process one that forced its chief visionaries to accept failure for years and second-guess themselves on a continual basis this is the history of the Last of Us [Applause] the earliest seat of what would eventually become Naughty Dog's dark opus first took root in 2004 when Neil druckmann was a student at Carnegie Mellon University during a group project Druckman attempted to pitch a subversive action game in which a girl and a cop with a heart condition would attempt to survive a world of flesh-eating monsters the cop would do his best to defend the girl and keep the flesh-eating monsters at bay but whenever his heart condition would act up the girl would be forced to take over in his stead and the roles of protector and protected would reverse while this pitch ended up being rejected druckmann kept its core concept at the back of his mind and when he scored a job at Naughty Dog as a programmer a short while later he decided to revisit it as a comic book called the turning in the end despite cooking up a script for a six-issue story arc Druckman decided to put the project on ice after a comic book publisher rejected it it was apparent to him that the turning simply wasn't ready for primetime and by the late 2000s he couldn't claim that his day job was any less creatively fulfilling for by this point in time the designer had risen up the ranks within the company and been given a decent amount of control over the design and writing of the Uncharted series it's through the ladder that Druckman became equated with one Bruce Straley a naughty dog stalwart since the late 90s Straley had gotten his start at the company as an artist before eventually rising to become one of the company's foremost creatives after the hardships of the first uncharted development introduced him to druckmann the two became fast friends working closely together on gameplay and story scenarios for Naughty Dog by day and studying other studios as games together by night [Music] while some of the scenarios that Straley and druckmann conceived during this period eventually found their way into uncharted 2 on which strahle served as a co-director and Druckman is a code lead designer many others were left on the cutting-room floor of their imaginations yet one scenario lingered in their minds well after it was dropped a gameplay sequence that they dubbed the mute girl in this sequence Nathan Drake would encounter a rubble group in a war-torn city and become acquainted with a mute teenage girl fighting among their ranks after everyone would go to sleep the girl would wake Drake up in the middle of the night and lead him on a short expedition across the city without ever exchanging a single line of dialogue Drake would gradually form a bond with a girl over their journey becoming Us close with her as any one of his other companions from this scenario questions took root in the back of Straley and rukmi's Minds would it be possible for them to build an entire game around the concept of meeting a character early on and forming a bond with them that would evolve dramatically over time and could they express all of the subtle nuances of their relationship using just gameplay mechanics [Music] as time went on that you became more and more motivated to experiment with ideas like these and eventually an opportunity presented itself for them to do so in late 2009 hot on the success of uncharted 2 Naughty Dog's management realized that a decent number of its employees were itching to do something different and decided to split the studio into two teams the first would continue Nathan Drake's adventures and develop uncharted 3 while the second would be held by stray lien Druckman and be responsible for a new non Uncharted project originally Naughty Dog's management wanted Straley and Druckman x' team to home a reboot of the jak and Daxter series believing that it would be easier for them to work within the mold of an already existing franchise after a short period of experimentation however it became obvious to both designers that their ideas for what they wanted the reboot to contain were a little too exotic and that fans would likely be dissatisfied with their efforts it felt as if they were slapping the jak and daxter name on a project that at its core simply wasn't jak and Daxter Straley and Druckman discussed their concerns with their bosses and after a short period of negotiation they were given the go-ahead to develop an entirely original video game property instead eager to use this opportunity to its fullest the duo decided to base this new project on the most compelling concepts that had been milling around in their heads over the past few years its cast and setting would be based on those of the turning the way in which they would evolve over the course of the game would take a page out of the mute girl scenario and last but not least the zombies they would face would be inspired by the cordyceps fungi a ghastly parasite that zombified insects to reproduce the cordyceps fungi had entered Straley and rukmi's purview after they watched a clip from BBC's planet Earth that showed it in action and remained it lodged in their minds for some time after zombie games had been concocting all manner of explanations for decades to explain how the Living Dead had come to roam their universes yet so few of these explanations had offered anything remotely in the realm of plausibility but with the cordyceps fungi the duo had an explanation for their apocalypse that would make it seem plausible and this in turn would make it feel all the more scary Straley and Druckman believed that all together the some of these ideas would result in an experience that would be well worth its cost of development yet over the next few months the duo struggled to figure out how to best fit set ideas together and get the rest of the studio on their side the first version of the game that they attempted to pitch titled mankind featured a version of the cordyceps fungi that only infected women and was shelved after a number of their peers criticized it for being misogynistic after this they arrived at a version that featured a much less questionable iteration of the cordyceps threat and much more strongly resembled what would arrive on store shelves years later but in the end this version too was shelved after everyone realized - did a poor job of selling Joel and Ellie's relationship it would only be well into 2010 that straily and druckmann arrived at a version of the game that everyone was satisfied with and the project was officially greenlit even after they passed this threshold however what was now known within Naughty Dog as the last of us would be we worked on a continuous basis over the years that would follow every single aspect of the game from the feel of its cover mechanics to the length of its combat encounters were tweaked endlessly by all involved with special care given to how Joel and Ellie's relationship unfolded amidst all of their hardships making high quality experiences had been in Naughty Dog's DNA for over a decade by this point but with the last of us it became intensely a parrot as time went on that the studio had an opportunity to set a new standard for video games as a whole it had a chance to show through Joel and Ellie's character dynamics that games were no less capable of emotional nuance than any other artistic medium and nobody wanted to squander the moment [Applause] as the last of us entered into the final throes of its development more and more staff were siphoned off of Naughty Dog's other team which by this point had shifted over to working on uncharted for both this added support and a few well calculated delays helped the game shape up tremendously over its last few months yet up until the very end strahle and Druckman feared that their project wouldn't resonate with players its tone was a dramatic departure from almost all of their Studios prior projects while focus testing suggested that players were going to be very fond of its gameplay and even if they accepted the latter for what it was there was no knowing whether they were going to appreciate the subtleness of the story surrounding it when the Last of Us finally released in June of 2013 these fears were proven groundless players around the globe were riveted by Joel and Ellie with many finding their relationship with one another to be masterfully executed and believable equal acclaim was directed at the game's environments and soundtrack which together did a fantastic job of selling its worlds Dark Samus and no praise was feared for its assortment of enemies which rarely failed to strike fear or empathy in players as hearts the only major aspect of the game that players to coverage with was its combat while most found enemy encounters in the Last of Us to be grisly yet satisfying Affairs some felt they occurred too frequently and were overly arduous Straley and druckmann however would contend that these encounters were an integral part of the experience that they had crafted that their presence underscored the brutality of the last of us as world and made its rare moments of serenity filled that much more powerful you know what you two deserve a little privacy no Ellie Ellie this isn't just any regular motorcycle ok you get on that bad boy you feel that engine nothing like it oh yeah how would you know seen it in my dreams while the ending of the last of us left few plot threads hanging some questions remained unanswered after its credits rolled players had been thoroughly shown why Joel was willing to risk life and limb to save Ellie but what about Ellie herself what had her past been like and how had it informed her actions over the course of the game these questions became the basis of the Last of Us as 2014 single-player expansion Left Behind set shortly before the events of the base game Left Behind followed Ellie at her friend Riley on a coming-of-age adventure in a decrepit shopping mall with its massive attractions and hazards driving both characters to lay bare their feelings for each other and accept their destinies the expansion proved a hit upon its release as well as helped further cement Naughty Dog as a master of its craft among its fanbase and this base only became bigger a few months later when the studio re-released both titles on the PlayStation 4 as the Last of Us remastered the latter allowed players to experience Joel and Ellie's adventures for the first time in full HD resolution at 60 frames per second and came packaged with a small collection of new gameplay features and modes including a highly detailed photo mode according to Druckman getting all of this up and running on the PlayStation 4 was a considerable struggle as the studio had spent the previous four years optimizing his post-apocalyptic epics to work most efficiently with PlayStation 3 hardware and the PlayStation 3s Hardware alone when remastered arrived on Sony's new console however it went on to become the most popular way to experience Naughty Dog's masterpieces as well as one of the PlayStation 4's biggest hits and when the studio shifted his attention back to completing uncharted 4 its engineers were able to put everything they had learned about the PlayStation 4 his hardware during the production of remastered to good use [Music] today the Last of Us is set to storm the entertainment industry all over again a sequel set five years after the first game's conclusion is only a short while from releasing and an HBO series from Chernobyl creator Craig Mazin is slated to follow some time after whether or not more sequels and adaptations will follow however remains to be seen even though the series is a proven moneymaker Naughty Dog has made it clear that it only embarked on developing part two because it felt there was another compelling story to be told with in this series universe moreover a Kotoko report published in March of 2020 revealed that working on the sequel has been an intensely exhausting process for the studio and that a number of its staff believed that the capacity in which they're currently operating is untenable if finishing up part 2 kills Naughty Dog's desire or ability to continue the series it would be hard to imagine another developer taking up its mantle even if a great idea for a part three were to make itself apparent [Music] thank you for watching our video our documentaries are crowdfunded and made possible by your continued support for us we'd like to thank by name the generous patrons who have pledged to our highest rewards here Alex Moretti Daria top secret zone mu movies.com jefferson dos santos Olivera Maktoum saeed al maktoum nick timor to this bake-off if you enjoy our content please consider subscribing to our channel and joining us on patreon thank you you

Channel: GVMERS

Views: 147,330

Keywords: Last of Us, The Last of Us, Part 1, TLOU, Part 2, The Last of Us 2, Documentary, History, Uncharted, Naughty Dog, Neil Druckmann, Bruce Straley, 4K, 2013, 2020, Gameplay, Remastered, PS3, PS4, Sony, Left Behind

Id: 5v9JjC7hrHc

Length: 16min 14sec (974 seconds)

Published: Sun May 31 2020