The Last of Us Fan reacts to Grounded II: The Making of The Last of Us Part II

I think it's actually hitting me it's actually hitting me that I'm about to watch this hello welcome back to my channel if you're new here my name is Jude I am a Last of Us Enthusiast and today I'm going to be watching the grounded two making of The Last of Us Part Two documentary and I am so excited I have literally been waiting for some sort of making of video about this game for three and a half years like since it came out they've given us a little bit but nothing as in depth as the grounded one documentary that they made for the first game I cannot wait to see what this has in store for us I have not seen the trailer for this either so I'm coming into this completely blind I really wanted to be surprised and come in with um as little expectation as possible I don't want to wait anymore I just want to jump in I just want to jump in we're just going to do it let's go oh my God this is so exciting I might have to pause in stem a few times okay in 2016 naughty dog and Playstation began production on a documentary about the making of The Last of Us Part Two due to the covid-19 pandemic the footage had been left unedited until now okay so they were always planning to make one it just got delayed because of Co that makes sense oh my God look at all those Network wires relatable uh thank you all for what is about to be a very long presentation oh my God his long hair uh so Anthony and I ran some numbers and to our best guess uh The Last of Us Part Two is 10 to 30% longer than Last of Us Part One however this is the most detailed story presentation we've ever done like um every character is accounted for every cinematic is accounted for in this presentation which means it's going to feel twice as long as the first game so when you freak out that's normal that's part of [Music] this and it literally is twice as long as the first game oh this is about an hour and a half to two hours so hopefully you got your PE break okay oh my God I would so we open 15-year-old Ellie this is a few weeks after the events of the first game wait I didn't even see how long this is oh we don't know doorway leading down to this basement and Ellie sees Tommy and he's just finished climbing out of this basement and he's hurt bad and he's rambling about something needed to go after these people at Le trying to ask him what happened where's Joel and he's doesn't make any sense to her and she starts to go downstairs okay so he must be cuz I know originally Ellie was going to show up after Joel was already dead so this must be because of course this is the first internal story presentation so we're going to see like some of the original ideas oh my God I'm so excited Tommy grabs her hand and tries to stop her but he's too weak she rips her arm away and she heads down and with each step her heart races faster and faster as she sees this trail of blood she opens the door revealing Joel's mutilated body and then shock just sets in and she screams and tries to grab his body and that guy's life is flashing before his eyes he's just he's foreseeing all the reaction he's like oh my God what are we getting ourselves into okay the one thing that I really I really want to see in this documentary that I hope you see is just some of Laura Bailey's map that's all I want I just want to see Laura Bailey in her suit doing her thing we haven't seen any like the only clip we really have of Laura Bailey's map for this game is like her in the boat with Yara I need to see it please please I've been there I've been working on this game since we finished well really been thinking about it since we finished the last of us so many people were like last of us one is so perfect it should never never have a sequel they shouldn't make a sequel they're like oh it wrapped up super great uh but I think actually if you look at the ending swear to everything that you said about the fireflies is true like like it could have absolutely ended there definitely but it left it open there like there was room for more it's not like it was you know they forced it there was always going to be room for more this this this conversation that they have at the very end here just left so much room for for consequence I swear oh my God look at the original Graphics okay she has a very good [ __ ] detector she knows something doesn't feel right but I think is too scared at that point to ask how long can you really live with accepting a lie like that especially as a young teenager you know especially as you're growing up and you're like fighting for your Independence and to figure out who you are yeah like she was never going to be able to to accept that for that long we did this thing called One Night Live where we had the actors come on stage and reenact certain scenes I wish I could have seen this man they say we get you to the fireflies what happens next rip Annie woring so sad our original test passed away in January last year Marlene she's said that they have their own little quarantine Zone and that doctors are still trying to find a cure I wrote this new scene that takes place after the ending of The Last of Us but it was only shown to people in the audience like we cut off the stream right before we showed them the scene that's so cool imagine being there and seeing this and that was 2014 like that was just a year after the first game came out that was um um six years before the second game came out they already had this scene that's crazy I wish I could have been there man so I said okay before I come on like in full force on Uncharted 4 I just want to CT this see cap walk through the valley of the shadow of death Resto my soul the dead body's on the ground I can't walk during the entire production of Uncharted 4 I all I could think about I had a lot of investment in Uncharted 4 but the day we were done with Uncharted 4 went right back to that trailer to wrap it up wow anything for this shot that's still happening uh not an animation this is so relatable like just going shot by shot and picking it apart and making sure it's perfect um this the kind of thing that I do in my job so this is really cool to see actually my biggest fear with this announcement is that it leaks early more than anything I have nightmares about this trailer leaking early before we get to PSX oh God that reveal was so iconic though PSX the PlayStation experience hasn't set itself up yet as a place where big titles get revealed that's E3 oh my God Troy Baker being there kind of gives it away though doesn't it with Neil there's one more there's one more special unveil we have for you tonight please enjoy there's H oh my god I didn't even recognize her The Naughty Dog logo came up and the crowd erupted and and it was such a high that that's almost been like chasing the dragon like wanting to recapture that feeling why does this look like playing I remember the hype I wasn't even there similar feel [Applause] oh they're both there look at them [Applause] a they're so [Applause] scared this was so iconic I'm going to cry what are you doing kiddo people outside the studio have such an attachment to the first game and I've definitely seen fears about not wanting to make a sequel because somehow if it's bad it will tarnish your feeling about the first game I'm going to find look at all the reactors this So Co every last one of them we're doubling down on those fears and not calling it The Last of Us some subtitle it's The Last of Us Part Two to say it's all one story [Applause] [Music] [Applause] oh my God Laura's there too the concept for the sequel had to feel compelling enough um having a fight that felt like okay this is an experience worth creating worth spending the next three years on yeah and they've said similar things about if they were to do part three like you got to find something that's that's worth telling to continue this amazing story and like put all those resources in and push push the the previous game even further and that's why I'm like I'm not surprised that they're struggling to like find a concept for part three because T 2 goes so far in so many directions and I just I don't even know how they would begin to top that to push that even further and they might not or they might I don't know I'm here for it either way I became really um intrigued with the idea of the cycle of violence and how like certain events would trigger acts of violence that then would be get more acts of violence it's almost never satisfying it never brings the person you love back and despite you thinking is going to bring some closure it doesn't nope we just need more empathy would it be awesome if we could create an experience that let you safely explore those feelings we're going to start the game where you're playing a new character that sequence ends with this character killing Joel and we really have to paint her as this monster then when you play the next chunk of the game and you're Ellie and you're going to pursue Justice quote unquote and you're going to go kill this entire crew mhm we're going to go back in time and show you that same sequence of events this character that you saw as a monster to now get you to see things from her perspective I love those concept arts and how this crew is a bunch of people trying to survive in this world and they had their reasons for pursuing and finding Joel and killing him and I had a few parts that I was kind of stuck on and I felt like to kind of shake things up I wanted to bring in another writer H I thought it was a very thoughtful story about violence and obsession he had Abby sort of like this girl who was the daughter of the doctor and that Ellie would go on this Vengeance Quest and when he was like and then Ellie actually kills Abby I was like what I can't believe that was the original plan do it not only she in lot ways I feel like she's wanted to add more romantic intimacy between the characters yeah those are areas that I've been I don't know more uncomfortable writing that stuff so important these are young women with their own relationships and desires and I love that we get to see both Abby and Ellie like come up against those feelings and have physical intimacy and have moments of just being a human and being a young woman I love that they added that in there thank you hie Ellie is this very relatable character I thought she was a perfect vehicle to challenge this notion that violence doesn't have a cost because it does have a cost in reality mhm it's going to ruin this girl you know people love Joel and Ellie and we are about to kill one and make the other one a villain I was very nervous telling Troy we're going to kill off Joel when the first game he was advocating that Joel should die oh when I read the ending to part one I was like you're going to piss a lot of people off let me go Marlene is the closest thing to a parent that Ellie has had outside of Joel you just come after her a lot of people got hurt and Marlene would be one of those people Joel has crossed these moral lines and therefore he deserved to die and he thought he might be a more dramatic ending and I was like no you're crazy like but then in the second game that's why I was like thought like oh he would take it pretty easily he goes so Joel dies and he's like so this happens and then and and I literally had to stop I like can you give me second a because it literally was as if someone was telling me about how my friend had just died I think he kind of took it hard it was like the character meant so much to him understandable we're going to kill off this character his role is going to be much smaller on on this one all of a sudden it was please don't take this from me yet Ellie is scared to be alone yeah everybody that she's loved up until that point has died or left her it's hard to imagine the story without Joel dying like you feel that hate Ellie feels that hate you're one to one you're on the stick and that informs the rest of the story I'm literally going to cry I don't know why you okay yeah we get you through interactivity to really connect and empathize with this character like like you heard of us or something and then make you feel like I've LED Joel to a trap oh that's so interesting I hadn't really I mean I think I have but like the the the complicity that maybe a player would feel because you were playing as Abby of getting Joel into that situation that's interesting it's an interesting angle I don't know why I'm getting emotional right now but it's going to happen probably throughout this entire video just warning y'all now Neil actually wanted to be very ambitious about changing the game almost entirely in the first like four or five months the game was actually kind of an open world uh inspired by bloodborne whoa could you imagine I just made a video about these games too melee Focus like it was all hand to hand combat oh my God look at these Concepts this is so cool oh my God hey Abby o it wasn't just the melee combat we were also looking at sort of layout structure bloodborne had a very open space that sort of kept getting bigger and bigger as you explored I really like that feeling that you get of Mastery over the world but that's so not the last of us like the characters they don't have control over the world at all like the the world of The Last of Us is a character in its own right and it's it's forgiving so I'm kind of I I can see why they ended up CH I mean it would have been really cool to see an open world game I mean I think they they kind of they had that open world section when Ellie and Dena first arrived in Seattle but thematically I think it makes way more sense that that the world is the way it is and that the characters have to find their way through it without dominating it it starts to become kind of almost a character in the game itself what did I say figure out some it's crazy in all these videos when they're doing all the level design and like the rest of the level is still in the building block phase but the characters are very much like almost complete it's kind of cool you can see like what order they were doing things in versal stuff a lot of climbing and balance beams and seeing how far we can sort of push in that direction without it getting over the top like Uncharted uh my name is Arnaldo Lis and what do you do here uh I do design I know how long have you been doing that a day I got an opportunity to work in QA and that was um QA that was a great learning experience I shipped the last of us and Uncharted for the thing I'm proudest of is the people who came in to a quality insurance job as a contractor which is entry level work and uh used that job to get to where they ultimately wanted to be hell yeah when I interviewed for the QA position I specifically said that my goal was to be a designer y he had formed this relationship with design where they knew they could rely on him spending his free time designing a demo and at the same time him going to them and not being like here's 50 bugs you need to fix he went to them and was like what do you need how do I help you what kind of bugs do you need and for their part they embraced him and were like why don't we show you how to lay out nav mat wow we're trying to figure out at the moment uh how we handle big spaces bigger than the first game the enemies are like too spread out to be really considered like one single small encounter um what happened to what behaviors we need to start developing for them to make it look good like okay so de Dena has to get off the horse and take cover with me and help me engage with the enemies okay but the horse is still there so what happens with this horse does it ride off on it own in order to like protect itself and then come back after that feels too intelligent for a horse that seems a little funny soon as there's range combat the horse kind of makes it fall apart before I could Rush forward and go into this building climb up and take out the Sharpshooter that was harassing when they when they can just move the character around like that it's called ghosting and animators will they decide like what position the character will ghost in in this case it looks like they just have them you know cross-legged like this um I've seen some instances where the character is like doing this sometimes they're like more standing up like this sometimes they just freeze in a normal pose but it's funny most a lot of the times animators will will be sillier about it and I love it also I love this conversation this is fascinating like the logistical questions about how a player might react and what your companion will do based on that reaction it's definitely it's so cool to think about now there's tension guys can come from anywhere like from this rooftop from these windows and that really inspired us to take some pretty drastic changes as far as the flow okay I love whiteboard stuff infected qz backstory hints of the wlf show The brutality killing of trespassers find Tommy clue and Dena puke moment okay so these are all the beats that they want to hit then there's the Ambush the horse is killed Ellie's taken prisoner we got the School kill Jordan first humans the wlf Y and then Seattle on foot explore oh this is so cool this is my [ __ ] I love this stuff like at my work if I like I would literally go and like get a whiteboard and write stuff out just like this because I just find the act of actually like writing it out and then seeing it so much more effective than like a digital whiteboard I don't know why there's just something about like the physicality of it I love it where is the map o this reminds me I tried at one point to see if I could get through the the whole like gate section of Seattle without getting the map or the gate codes you can't you can't but they had to come up with a contingency for that in case somehow a player missed picking all those things up you can't actually go to the console to punch in the code unless you have the paper with the codes on it so even if you know the code ahead of time you physically can't like access the console without it climb down to sub leave Dena enter old scar Hideout and rock pile that would have been cool the rock pile I remember in the director commentary of the remaster they mentioned a rock pile being like how the scars bury their dead because originally Le was going to die and Abby was going to find his his rock pile grave on the saifi island R seems to agree that the thing we're building is going to be cool once it's done it's just that it's such a big such a big game huge our games have become more and more ambitious and uh this T has gotten a lot bigger when I started here were 40 people now we're over 300 you can't handle that many people with a flat hierarchy there's so many talented people here that you can rely on and lean on it makes the game better and that's really kind of the secret sauce of naughty dog is how collaborative it is you find the right people who really want to do the best they can possibly do and then you kind of give them the resources to try you're getting what you asked for as a creative person right you like you're kind of getting the freedom to go as far as you can go but sometimes I think we need to be safe from ourselves a little bit this is the first project that has had the proper pre-production period where we have locked down for the most part the story beginning middle and end before we started production that hasn't happened I don't know if that has ever happened about it it's a very very messy process which is again why it's a lot of times really difficult to schedule I think right now we are planning on Springtime of 2018 so when Springtime 2018 Comes Around The Last of Us two isn't in stores um my God you look back at this and say uh well I guess they their plan wasn't exactly set in stone nope two years later and a pandemic next D3 6 months away we need to look at a gameplay demo E3 it's always been the biggest and most extravagant showing of the game industry there's something special about the energy of e3 we need to figure out what the gameplay is cuz right now it's just we've got a bunch of like cool prototypes and stuff like that so it's scary but we work well under pressure once that meeting happened it was just like right of course I'm not in the Twilight Zone um it makes sense not to do this it felt really nice seeing the leadership kind of have having the team's back and seeing the logic of the situation in important is it so important I feel relief just watching that okay so are you pissed off am I pissed off uh no uh what am I are you sure uh I guess in one sense it's relieved because relieved to disappointed probably there was concern of whether we could hit the quality that we know we need to hit for both lost legacies and for our what was going to be our E3 demo and then on the other hand it's kind of disappointed because yeah it's excited to get this demo done and get it out there and get the reaction but now it's going to have to happen at some other point this seemed like a pretty intriguing scene to introduce Abby that whole scene is going to be our next marketing beat and then we're not going to say much about it about how this fits into the game where it fits into the game iconic ionic and I remember here's the thing I defin I watched that trailer like I watched that that Abby trailer scene once I think and I completely forgot about it until I was playing the game and I got to that part in the game and I saw lanara and I was like oh yeah this was the trailer and of course at that point when you're playing the game you have all the context you know know who Abby is and I was just like holy [ __ ] they showed us this scene before the game came out this scene which is still to this day one of my favorite scenes in the entire game it's amazing and what a Gamble from a marketing perspective and remember when they dropped it and everyone was theorizing that Abby was going to be um Ellie's mom and it's so funny like they just announced sort of that maybe Katherine O'Hara will be in the second season of the show on HBO and people are like maybe she's aby's bomb and I'm like guys we're not going to do this again we're just going to get embarrassed Abby evolved over time and you if you look at the concept art like the character looked very different than where We've Ended up so many iterations she looks like Ashley Johnson there I don't remember at what point we decided to go with someone like really kind of muscular and Broad but I remember once the idea came up it felt very fresh we sort of nailed down the body of Abby we played around with different ideas of how we wanted to accentuate her arms or not and there's something interesting in Abby feeling a lot like Joel mhm oh my God look at her Queen that's so when I got cast Neil was like joking around he's like you should probably beef up in order this is what I've been waiting for is Laura oh I'm so excited I wonder if they're going to talk to Joselyn at all too oh my God player and I'm like ha yeah it's moap whatever he goes no really you should probably beef up to player and I was like oh yeah you're right I should totally start deadlifting as much as possible so I did and I was training like crazy and then I got pregnant it what are you going to do we need to separate her from Ellie it shouldn't feel like I'm playing a reskinned Ellie that Abby should in many ways look behave fight differently differently yeah absolutely my baby I love her so much so overwhelmed so in gameplay we've discussed well she needs to have a different upgrade trees it means we have to make the investment of capturing a whole different move set for Abby we can't just remap ell animation onto Abby mhm holy [ __ ] Abby has a fear of height and there stuff we're doing with the camera to make you feel vertigo mhm uh and that helps build empathy it makes this character real we let you both live and you wasted it she's aesthetically a very intriguing and iconic and powerful character yes she is they saved my life can you take a look at love once she's killed Joel what is aby's motivation what is she trying to achieve her Redemption has really taken care of Yara and Lev these two kids that are from a Waring faction mhm you know she has been taught to hate them there is an inherent xenophobic uh reaction to them it's about saying can you come to love your enemy scars built all this seraphites yeah I was going to say that these are kids that grew up in a very different context as Ellie and you know how they live their lives and experienced the world is totally different now you present I'm getting really attached to Lev he's been able to keep his head up despite losing so much himself in a world that is so harsh I love you can't move any faster I don't do your sister any good if we're both dead I really like his Dynamic with Abby her having this like [ __ ] brassy little sidekick who who calls her on her [ __ ] in a way that nobody else can mhm what's going on between you and your friend Owen oh my God Le now it seemed really awkward just go who understands the sort of sense of being orphaned in the way that um a lot of people can't I am not trans so it's a very delicate thing to tell a story of an experience that I've not had um and that's something that we want to take seriously did you hear what they called me yeah do you want to ask me about it do you want me to ask you about it no some of my favorite dialogue in the game man it's really about trying to create a multifaceted character who is trans and that is absolutely an important part of who he is but also a part of who he is not the whole of who he is look at [Music] that as far as the Paris cut scene I'm pretty stressed out this is all I wanted we 13 days less than two weeks to finish this thing and there are still some big ticket items we've got the green light demo done she's uh putting on quite the show oh my God the stand in for Jesse it's very real we're in full production now so I guess that's the short of it is we're in full production now let's have the first in-depth look at a much anticipated an exclusive title Last of Us two Last of Us two please please please be last of us too our fans they want to know every last thing about what's going to be in this game is this is this the last of us Neil has taken the way you know he kind of creates an arc or like this sense of drama this kind of sense of mystery or like dramatic tension and I love ocra brought it wait hang on I kind of just zoned out for a second they put OC Dr this I love that oh my God she's great I love her that's so cool marketing I view marketing as part of the game it's very calculated what we put out there and how we want you to connect different marketing assets when we first released the teaser trailer too many people right off the bat said Joel's dead yeah the blown out light really really [ __ ] us in a way I don't think any of us are coming we actually underestimated our audience a little bit they're so sophisticated now so you have to get more sophisticated like how am I still going to surprise players and viewers you start on characters you've never seen before in a world that like could be the last of us could be anything she looks and she looks different here like she is thinner in in this original trailer that they dropped of this scene so maybe they were still iterating her design or maybe they didn't want to go that far with her phys physique at that point you know oh my God I'm still I'm still obsessed with the fact that they just dropped this with no context just simply iconic amazing scene just just story-wise cinematically it's a wner it's one shot just chef's kiss anyway it's like a really really cool sense of tension at no point are we're going to Market that you play as this other character what is this oh that looks good though I was so excited working on it and I couldn't say anything it was so rough oh she going to cut a baby out of her belly and then TR before you find a comic book that shows Ellie's mom pregnant so people already had theories that last of was part two was going to have Ellie's Mom oh if we just kind of black out the letters she has the same number of letters as Anna Ellie's mom's name that's true will'll get people to think this is Ellie's Mom oh my God girl got a good look how thin her arms are that Hammer's from the outbreak poster uhhuh so we had that poster with of a character you've never seen before with this like kind of wolf's head in the background what does that mean you know kind of prompting this mystery you want people to feel like they've figured everything out and then have the story surprise them man if this is the last of us to bro I'm going go crazy is oh my God oh my God of Last of Us two yeah that was a [Music] clicker yes everything we put out there is shaping expectation and then the final game hopefully if we do our job right should subvert those expectations in an interesting [Music] way we knew we were pushing boundaries with that cinematic we are making a violent game we're not going to shy away from how violent it is it is part of what we're trying to say and I thought it was a great discussion initially about what is the appropriate level of violence when is something so violent that it just turns you off where you just don't want to experience it at all I like that they were wrestling with those things I didn't like some of the insinuations about the trailer being misogynistic uh towards the female characters what I don't think this story ever glorifies violence against women there's no bias towards women or men it just so happens that the two protagonists of this story are female yeah and therefore that's what you're going to see the most of there has to be fail States yeah it's not it's not gendered violence at all at all which is one of the things that I love the most about the game like the the the two protagonists just happen to be women uh like but the the way that they interact with the world and the way that the world interacts with them like it doesn't make it about that like I think I like Jordan calls Ellie [ __ ] at the beginning when they when he like is kicking her in the stomach and I think that's the only time that there's like like violently gendered language even used against Ali um Ally Ally Ellie or Abby um I can't remember if the WF called her I know they called her a snake but like it's just I love that they they don't lean into that in the game at all so does that mean that there can be no female protagonists in video games um because that feels super sexist to me and frankly like period women are the victims of violence and don't we want to see women [ __ ] fight back once in a while [ __ ] yeah it's just chronically online people they got to make [ __ ] issue with and getting hurt it has consequences for hours of gameplay to come one article even like asked the question were any women involved in the making of this and it's like yeah Co writer the lead character designer the lead character artist all the actresses that worked on on that scene period I so f [ __ ] here's what I hate about that article I'm sorry do [ __ ] re just a just a modom just a modom of research just like a little bit before you put something out there to suggest that no woman could have worked on this because of the level of violence because there was violence against women because it is a video game speak your [ __ ] hie is so [ __ ] sexist yes it is I like watching graphic violence does that make me less female no like I like having a conversation about what power is does that make me less [ __ ] female I like working at a video game I like playing video games does that make me less [ __ ] female like suck a dick yes put that in I can't I can't Neil's gon to say put it in but don't yes um it in I also don't represent all women but I represent like I can represent this and say I [ __ ] wrote this I wrote this like I literally wrote the sentence and then Yara eviscerates his his is eviscerates his esophagus from his throat [ __ ] yeah I wrote that sentence that is in the script and I [ __ ] stand by it speak your [ __ ] I'm afraid of being turned into a token rather than the truth which is like we're being thoughtful about the female narrative these characters are more than just their vaginas if you want to have a serious debate about feminism and feminism in video games and female depiction uh of violence and you need to not see it as a binary conversation it is a incredibly nuanced conversation you cannot make blant statements and you cannot make presumptions [ __ ] do your homework I'm right here I feel I'm tweeting oh that was so good I'm so glad they kept that whole thing in that's so important like until we can see female characters like making these mistakes and being brutal and like doing everything and anything that you would see a male character do and not question at all then we have not achieved feminism in video games like I'm so glad I don't I don't even know if I if I read that article that she's referring to and I'm glad I didn't because it would just make it even just seeing those Snippets of it in this video made me so angry and I viscerally felt hi's frustration there these are young women living in this inherently violent and brutal world you think they're just going to like not participate in it not defend themselves [ __ ] off the tone of the violence in the game has always been important to portray as realistically as possible our job outside of just drawing up Concepts is really pushing our reference pipeline um to make sure that the character artists are getting the most realistic examples of whatever they're working on we can't find certain things so we make the reference ourselves simulating brain on wall one two GRE how do that drip fall down what does canvas look like when it's soaked in blood that's so cool splashing blood on them dripping blood on them a little thi this is so cool we put down some wet mud pulled blood onto it to see how blood would react to a wet dirt surface so there's like little pieces of uh grass and like twigs and things that carry through like there's actually movement following the edge damn one of the animators got a piece of lamb and we stuck it in yara's shirt sleeve and hit it with a hammer here we go oh God God yeah we have a break she's going to need to hold this as straight cuz if she does this this it's going to oh God just the weight of it's going to want to make it fold oh Jesus Christ keep it as straight as possible this past week's shoot was specific for the infected eating U people's jugulars and there was a concept that was done with like blood running down the mouth but like would that happen like let's find out uh I got on the ground and pretended to eat away like a bloody soak drag that we made oh my God that's crazy It produced some pretty surprising results because like most of my face got covered in blood look up a little John but yeah teeth that's nuts people here will go to that length of trying to make sure that things feel as real as possible yeah we do a lot of crazy crazy stuff here nobody gets hurt but wow it's really hard to see these characters that you spend so much time with and for lack of a better word kind of like you know birthing into existence tortured and abused here we go oh God we're shooting the Joel death scene which is like the Catalyst opening of the game this scene has all of aby's crew it's a complicated scene because it's the most actors we've ever had in a single shot y all act like you heard us or something yeah um sorry I hate to pause here because this is visceral for me but like I in the director commentary at the beginning he Neil was talking about how it's hard to have more than eight performers in the the volume at once cuz they start to lose data and I was thinking well in the Joel Des scene there are 10 people in that room there's the eight Salt Lake crew and then there's Joel and Tommy and it's all one shot I mean they still could have spliced things together but I mean they must have figured out a way to have 10 bodies on that sound stage and I guess we're going to see it here I am I feel kind of sick because I'm so excited I think okay I need to brace myself for this cuz they have is that Chelsea right there or or Joel doesn't [Laughter] die there's Ashley bur that's Chase Austin there I think so then what happens is all of us become friends yeah that's right there knowing there's Jeffrey was going to happen I am very fearful there's so much weight to this scene this scene has to be right it's really difficult to re-shoot it if we need to with on the first game having to call Troy and Hannah back to reshoot Sarah's death was very very very difficult for me the last time I tried to do a big emotional scene don't do this please don't do this don't do this don't do this don't do this please God no God no that didn't go too well and we had to re-shoot it don't do this to me baby don't do this to me baby come on thank God they did thank God they did how the hell am I going to play this like how are we going to do this I don't know if I can do this I don't know if I have the the chops am I going to put put Laura through this cuz I know how hard it's going to be on her look at her oh my God action Joel Miller who are you guess only you just get out whatever spee you rehearsed get this over with look at her eyes you don't get to rush this at the end I really loved what he brought to it I couldn't wait to get back into Ellie's shoes again because it's where weirdly I feel most comfortable in a lot of ways because it feels like a a character that feels the most like me that I've ever played which is a little disturbing I mean minus like the murder and the killing so it's almost like a bit of step forward like you're about to like lunge and shoot sweet the biggest change that has happened since initial pitch is Ellie is there when Joel is killed it used to be she came across the body and then she had to rely on Tommy's testimony of what happened and we shifted it which made it much more dramatic and intense for her and I think puts more of it on screen and again allows you better to understand why she needs to pursue these people the hardest part for me was looking over at Ashley no knowing that that Troy was going to not be a part of it as much was really hard and knowing that Joel was not going to be in Ellie's life anymore it was just it was hard so much of that day kind of feels like a blur cuz there were so many feelings involved in it what I had to do I felt was very very little there's one reaction and beyond that we're on Ashley there was no acting there was pure raw emotion I'm staring in the face of [Music] that why are you doing this get the [ __ ] off me I'd lost a little bit of my voice I couldn't scream like as loud as I wanted to you know to get that frustration and that sadness out Ashley oh my God was behind crying and God and knowing Abby was taking this away from her was very difficult um and so I was crying when we were filming that scene yes it was very emotional and they're like best friends I'm sorry I'm such a mess like this is all I wanted and now that I'm watching it it's like it's hard it's just I love how much they love each other and oh my God it's Patrick fuget I'm just I've wanted to see this for so long I can you can feel it you know you you can feel the emotions that they were all experiencing in this this horrible scene and how much they love each other and it's just so see actually getting to see I mean you you can see so much of her performance in the final game for sure but just actually seeing her face in live action and her eyes it's all I wanted but it's also really overwhelming to see sorry I'm going to try and pull myself together here this is embarrassing you want what I want right end it now wait please stop no no Joel Jo no [Music] we want him to die in this really unforgiving sort of way like it needs to feel senseless for you to say [ __ ] these people I'm going to pursue them to the ends of the Earth and make them pay look at them all oh my God there's Alejandro like this is just so it's just seeing them all in the suits like finally it just it just it kind of like peels off a layer you know like obviously we've seen Troy and Ashley in this environment and so we can have a reference for like what they're actually doing in the in this in the volume but we never really got that for this side of the story I don't know why it's hitting me so hard I'm just so grateful so I like the concept I feel like there's a lot of repetition and it felt long once like Joel's head gets smashed I don't want a close-up look of him okay I wonder if we could do like the smash from the back of his head yeah i' wanted just like you it' be like a black shape and you see like a silhouette change and like Blood starts pouring out but I don't focus on it like I don't see the details yeah it's a good call when the club comes down and it's just like she's screaming I feel like we could just take all their audio out and like music could take over and again we're trying to build more rage than sadness that's going to really set up our journey okay yeah okay play Jo [ __ ] get up please stop please [Music] don't yeah definitely keeping that moment on Ellie I think was 100% the right call overall it's [ __ ] awesome like I I got emotional just the part where before he gets killed it feels so [ __ ] tense there certainly is still a ton to do we still have like 45 scenes that haven't even been looked at yet it's terrifying given our deadline um the process right now is just getting Neil we just need need to get Neil into the room I got bad news ma your is this he's canceling he's canceled but we have the cameras set this is he's supposed to come in he's the it's good we're getting this on K this is what it's not about this is what it's about um yeah he melee stuff to review today he said let's pick it up tomorrow oh [ __ ] so yeah that's what happens I feel for those guys okay all right that's fine I don't care I don't care a but you do and it's okay yeah it must be hard like to have such a massive game and only have one person person kind of at the helm who kind of has to like make all those final decisions like he I'm sure he was like just running around busy right like like having his fingers and so many different things so speaking of of e3 that remember way back when like you guys said you were going to lock that content didn't then that touch it how's that going well they didn't do it and then we shipped just the glossiest best looking demo you've ever seen we burn that to a disc at the beginning of January and then we don't touch it again no body sees it until E3 well I think way I think we we knew at the time that we weren't going to not touch it it's going to be really interesting to see if we can really really commit to being done and not be tempted to say like it could be a little better let's go back cuz the you know the game's been making progress for you know the the 10 months or something since we locked that demo down a lot of advances have been made a lot of new ideas new mechanics and we we really just need to have the discipline not to do that honestly it feels like we are addicted to being late you're not addicted to being late you're addicted to making sure that whatever you're working on is ready and as as good as it can be and that's commendable honestly like it can wait for it to be in the proper place in might op there it is the E3 demo was a version of our original Green Light demo I remember going to Neil's office and being like how much can I change this and he's like well what are you thinking I'm like well I'm thinking like this big thing and I'm like just like brand new designer I'm just throwing out like everything like I want to do this I want to do that I want to make sure that feels like a Sandbox that it feels like this big space that has multiple paths it's like something like we really haven't done before in The Last of Us and he just goes go for it let's do it it's a really amazing level to be fair any one mechanic is not any maybe anything you haven't seen before it's the combination of how it all comes together the way it works with the animation system the new stuff we're talking about is like oh you can be in Grass she went into the grass watch yourself like one of the biggest things we do in the demos jumper Gap oh yeah jumping jumping wasn't in the first one crap you can jump you know like it's like but it's new to our game we have to have the best prone mechanic of all all time yeah yeah no one's ever seen when I aim in prone and she actually like rolls up on her back and aims like this like it can never clip through geometry being able to rotate 360 in all directions it can never like do a janky thing when she's reloading while doing it or aiming in water there's like a ik thing that like lift her chest and head up and then it get too deep now we're in the special prone underwater move set thing so cool there's no such thing as like oh you know it's not as good as you know this other game's one but like it's fine it's got to like no we it's [ __ ] naughty dog we have to have the best version of the thing whatever that is so true you kind of take it for granted especially if playing it a lot kind of forget how much of a technical Marvel it really is E3 overall was amazing the press conference was you know very different venue they usually have them like these big auditoriums and this was kind of like almost like a [Music] popup decorated they buil the whole crazy church thing which was pretty rad oh yeah super cool it was better than we expected that's so cool it's like you're in the Jackson dance I think they have a picture of Shannon and Ashley here yeah there's there's Shannon oh I wish I could have in there you feel like the tension of people trying to figure out what is this press conference what's going on what game are they going to show here wow look at all the people on The Naughty Dog logo you get this big cheer on the reveal you get this big cheer every moment that we've constructed and planned like meticulously for really a year now hit and hit the way we wanted it to hit maybe they're jealous of you not a threat a look yes look at Dina's hair and now we're [Music] into oh so good so good holy [ __ ] [ __ ] her one of the biggest reactions was when the HUD came on sh they looked at that forest and thought there's no way it can look this good like that's impossible but when we Flash the HUD and be like yeah that's it this is the real game people are not ready for this like this is going to [ __ ] you up it was electric my skin was like tingling the whole time like as soon as it's done playing I'm like on my phone and it was wild it was wild to see it just everywhere see it on YouTube see people commenting on it ruthless and gay yep that's the last of us but it was it was a really special moment I shipped something like as a level designer there was such a reaction to the animation Fidelity holy crap this is the best looking animation I've ever seen are you kidding me we're on the forums going through the messages seeing how much people think it's amazing someone's like sort of cynically that our stuff was fake I guess it's kind of a compliment to the animation team for like someone to say it's fake when they're working so hard and right away I respond I was like don't respond don't do anything like it's just not professional I was also little anxious about it because it's a little fake you know fake is an interesting word there's an argument that he's right it's not the final polished game you can't just play this demo in any way you have to play it in this very specific way but before we even show the demos like let let's not put anything in there we feel like we can't look how look how much gray is in Neil's hair in this clip versus like at the beginning of this documentary this man has been through it dude there was no thing of like we don't know how we're going to do that it was just we literally just don't have it systemic yet you know like systemically a guy pulling you out from underneath a car we didn't have it hooked up yet now we have a hooked up in the game Arthur all over ultimately as we're building the rest of the game if anything feels like it's not the right call for the game we don't mind changing it like we had certain things in the demo for the first Last of Us where like Joel picks up a pistol and takes out individual bullets from it and then Pockets it and like we could have done that it just took too long so for gameplay purposes we cut that out I was talking to other animators and they were like Yeah man they think it's fake they have no idea like it's awesome the same animators who made this demo are going to make the final game so like I don't know what you're talking talking about they were confident which I'm glad we knew what we were doing and we knew how special it was it was a little bit of a microphone drop to the industry and for many it was inspirational and they were excited to uh be able to add some of those details to their games and their future games and for some of them it absolutely freaked them out to see this might be the new bar that's expected for uh other games to follow oh her falling into the car like that like they're [ __ ] calling us out it's like we have to deliver this we always were gonna but now it's like people have called us out so we have to do a full body throw animation when you pick up a bottle and you're running and not just a partial animation because that guy [ __ ] called us up and she does do it the real challenge is making the whole game look as good as this one controlled situation we come out of e3 and and hopefully we've set the standard for this what the rest of the game needs to feel like when you already know exactly what you're supposed to do in the game you memorized everything it's hard to have a true experience with it they have to bring in people from the outside to play it fresh and so we try to start Play testing as early as possible we've got test in bright and early they're going to start playing the game they're actually just right across the hall over here imagine being one of those oh my God I wish I wish I could work in the states so I'm currently watching the 10 people that we have in at the moment Focus testing we've got all of their screens up um so I can kind of watch all of them at the same time generally keep track of any kind of recurring patterns or how long people generally take in certain areas that's yeah it's really cool just like observing player behavior and like things they might think of that like the developers animators wouldn't it's imagine it's a very important part of the game development process it's just cool to see I just wish I could have been one of them we've had a few people on the team that have been really passionate about making our games even more accessible for people with different kinds of disabilities and making sure as many people as possible can experience our game accessibility is something that like really touches a lot of people as we get older pretty much all of us are going to have probably some sort of accessibility need it's important to welcome people with disabilities into all of our public spaces into our shared culture and that video games are a rich part of that I I love this that you don't have to have like a two button feature to keep her Crouch down this is this is awesome I love that Brandon Cole he said I I heard you announce this game what do you think about the possibility of someone like myself being able to play it and Brandon is blind I hadn't really thought about that before I I don't even know if that's even possible but I want to try cuz that sounds interesting if you click on the L3 button turns the screen and the character towards your um next objective so you're able to sort of instantly flip that was very much inspired by the uh the talk you gave last time you were here I figured I figured hopefully that's that's a beautiful thing we have the spe that let you navigate along the golden path and we also had this other feature you could like put out this sonar pulse and You' hear where all the items and enemies are located but Brandon was playing that and was like this navigation feature is great but I don't want to just follow the golden path I want to navigate to other things it kind of occurred to us like oh we can combine these two features we can let you scan for items and then navigate to that item this gives you more room if you do it this way for different types of sounds for different types of items you know what I'm saying different sound for ammo different sound for parts different sound for explosive different sound for keys or craftable and collectable yes yes exactly but since we want to hunt for Secrets just like anyone else you're also going to be want to know that hey there's something way over there players with disabilities still want to have challenge it's not about just making an easy mode what happened there was an auto Vault so you pressed into a wall and it automatically vaulted I feel happy about this this is an example of actually the good part of the studio culture which is self-empowered that that I think allowed us to do this crazy thing this thing that you know I couldn't tell you if it makes business sense to some degree but but it was something we were passionate about and interested in it was a way we saw we could make the game better it was something we saw we could like push the frontiers of and we went with it stud your leadership was supportive of us but this really was like a bottomup kind of initiative yeah absolutely and I think that early success um really helped to build momentum for the rest of the project shielding everybody from the cost from the budget of these decisions helps them focus on their discipline don't worry about money worry about making the best game possible trust that there are people at the top that are looking at the budget and considering that at a certain point in the project we start offering dinners to the team good I wondered if they were going to dress crunch this is crunch building these two major demos and a trailer next to the rest of the [ __ ] game and it felt impossible early on yeah it's the thing that's always hard for us is to [Music] Polished I just got goosebumps we wanted to show the team the final trailer before we show you the trailer just to say thank you to everyone we're we jumped from doing a three-hour demo to this trailer where we had almost nothing and it's like pretty amazing what we can do when we all come together in fact it's so amazing you can forget and I've been here for a long time and I can forget so to remind you and maybe reignite some of that Panic uh we're going to show you two trailers one from exactly a month ago and one from about an hour ago when we wrapped up trailer wow okay holy [ __ ] decided to join us Jesse all right you all know the drill the horse where are you think i' let you do this on your own oh there it is Joel reunite lie it says only get one clap keep in mind this is what the whole game's going to look like we're going to make it this awesome in a month a difference of a month you can't stop this this was a good reminder look when we come together when we rise to the occasion when we do this thing the people outside the St you talk about like this na dog magic this is what it looks like so when you look at parts of the game that aren't there yet know that we could get there in a pretty short period of time when we're so focused holy [ __ ] the date was the scariest part we got the trailer done wow just wanted to take this moment to run through the events of outbreak week which is when the trailer is going to debut oh man back when they called it out the big press event in K Town at this giant Warehouse having 80 journalists from all over the world come chair for three hours I want to go outbreak day is the day the outbreak happened in the United States in 2013 in real life we celebrate September 26th as Last of Us day oh the score for this V is just so highest level of how naughty dog is perceived as a company it's that we story first and mechanic second a lot of it is I think proving to the press and proving to people that yes we can do both we had a number of sessions where the animation team design team and programmers all got together and we acted out a number of scenarios and what that does is it gives us really great reference and touch points that we can always look back to about the way that we naturally behave the way we naturally respond to each other and those are the types of details that we want to weave back back into the game there's a cost you killed that person his friend now feels a loss you know his dog is now alone the dog dogs are really difficult to start off with because they're quadrupeds they just don't turn around they kind of like wheel around a little bit smell something girl the main concern we had is how is it that we can actually get a dog to perform a dance card on the motion capture set and when we finally brought them on set it was just incredible what these dogs were capable of doing and what the trainers were able to to accomplish in a short time jump jump jump jump they're so cute they move extremely quickly uh so they're super hard to shoot here [ __ ] yeah they're fast they're fast in the game too they are very low to the ground you have like these attacks that are designed go up here and now you have to kind of do them down there killing a dog has gotten people more like upset than anything else in the game than hanging people than eviscerating people we're going to break new ground in dog murder she's the only one you have to kill though scriptor start like two months ago first question she walks into the mild room I have one question does the dog survive and everyone's like oh no oh the puppy that's I think rip we killed it and then you have to love it knowing that it's already dead so there's going to probably be people that are upset about that mhm hey Al you want to go to the trucks let's go to the trucks puppy with the notable exception of Alice we took great pains to ensure that every combat encounter that you fight against a dog uh you do not have to kill any of them nope you don't have to kill any of the humans either uh it's more palatable to kill people because they're all there because they choose to be there uh but all of these dogs were trained to do this exact thing uh and so you're killing an innocent creature that feeling of discomfort it's exactly what we're trying to explore with with The Last of Us ironically making them more realistic makes people feel more okay about killing them we had like kind of a goofy art prototype we had like just a very rough dog we found that that goofy dog that had no fur people felt really bad about killing that dog like when you would shoot them they would fall over dead and like give one last wine as they're like dying breath and stuff so uh we just really tried to like tone down the pity ability of of all the dogs and stuff do you want more of those the [Applause] clickers we're trying to yeah play play with that a little bit like mixing that tonality in is cool yeah yeah the enemies themselves especially the infected have had to go through a big part of those recording sessions is is working with the voice actors it's much more collaborative ah yeah that's cool um I I kind of want to see what your more natural voice sounds like you're basically trying to coach people that they're not zombies people yeah now imagine now imagine sprinting right out no dud yeah take your time that reminds me of that Meme of that old man like imitating the dog attack man give us the vocal H sounding Roars and breaths and wheezes and really interesting stuff that I've never heard come out of a person [Music] ever e like the wetness of the of the shambler sound is there were times when I was writing like 40 pages of in-game dialogue a Night Neil kept saying stop you have to like give it to somebody else El we will hire somebody we will make this work and I was like I think it'll just be you will hire somebody you will you'll you'll hire you'll hire somebody you you'll you'll hire a writer really really please I'm a writer I was just bullishly like are going to handle it I'm tough I would like somebody to teach me how to have work life balance what if this doesn't come together what if this is the one that sucks what if this is the one that that SS na dog so then you have to like kind of bury it compartmentalize it who knows what damage it does to your body while you're doing that CU ultimately you can't let that fear dictate how you work and just keep the faith yeah primary filming in this project ceased in December 2019 due to the covid-19 outbreak the following interviews were recorded in 2023 looking back at the push to get the game out oh dear this is Eerie the game was just about done was content complete we were fixing bugs when there's these like Rumblings of this pandemic happening like I remember when this Co hit and we're like bro really like for real pandemic you know at first it feels like oh it's this is nothing we need to worry about and then all of a sudden you do have to worry about it and like are people going to want to play a game that takes place in the pandemic when there's a real pandemic yeah we had never worked from home ever like was strictly against working from home we did not have the infrastructure set up at this studio to work from home and it's because we were so intense about security and leaks that all of our data including our emails and our chats and IMS it all had to be on a server inside the building mhm is this how it was leaked because they were working at home they didn't have the same Security man we were like air gapped from the outside world look at all the dev kit the operations team the IT team our engineering team they all had to coordinate in a very short period of time to get us working from home we don't even know when the game can come out Sony was like we don't know if we can physically ship this product with like the supply chain and stuff we had to come out and say the game can come out in this date and we don't even know when it will come out it's delayed indefinitely [ __ ] so a lot of our most hardcore fans are angry with us around the same exact time we started having these leaks we're like we didn't put out this video like where is this coming from it's a video from one of our reviews so you could hear the notes and um people that can't attend the meeting can watch it after the fact [ __ ] man we store all these videos on our server did it come from the inside someone with a naughty dog my first thought was this isn't like a developer leaking this isn't it this isn't someone on the team it's this person in the Netherlands download terabytes of videos through a back door in the server oh and then this is where we made a fatal eror let's close this back door and then this person put out everything a video goes up on YouTube and I don't remember what the first video was but it was something relatively benign but they weren't like super important scenes you know they were like little clips and it was like okay that's a little weird what what is that all out of order and stuff and I was like oh dude them using this soundtrack for this part is making me so anxious this is horrible like I don't know what kind of punishments there can be for people who do [ __ ] like this but I really hope they were able to find this [ __ ] [ __ ] and punish them oh that's bad and you kind of wanted to just say stop stop stop wait wait wait don't don't don't watch it like you're going to ruin things for yourself there's YouTubers I've watched for for years and they're making entire videos and the title is like [ __ ] naughty dog and [ __ ] the Last of Us Part Two there's just all this negativity and no positivity because no one has played the game they just have these videos out of context and all these rumors mixed with them them Abby is playable they thought Abby was trans cuz she has muscles here's the ending if they kill Ellie and then just turn into the whole political thing oh night dog there doing this political [ __ ] and then I get this text from Evan they just post to Joel's death [ __ ] and my heart sinks I can't even describe this feeling it's just this like Dread it's almost like you just heard someone you care about died I don't that's the closest I could I could come to I felt it he said that Choy would be looking at that be like you see you see you were wrong he saidd do you think we did the right thing and I said I don't know Neil I haven't played the game yet I was livid I was I was real angry I'm bombarded with hundreds of negative comments death threats anti-semitic comments it's putting me in a deep depression there's some stupid stuff that's like you're a feminazi you're whatever [ __ ] like that but it's like some stuff was really like you know God disturbing the hatred I think that was behind it I was sad like there were a lot of days where I would just cry every time I went online it was just that's all I saw was death threats and threats of violence and the worst of it the really like hardcore death threats got passed along and um they you know made sure that they weren't anyone that like lived close by Laura um yeah they were like threatening my son you know who was born during all of it and yeah know it was rough it was rough but you know more than anything it just kind of like it kind of like taught me to kind of keep a distance you know I don't want to look watch her cry I don't watch Laura Bailey crying so horrible it's so horrible what what these [ __ ] people did it's not fair like they didn't deserve that even even a modicum of that any of them and not to sound parasocial but I wish I could just give her a hug like when I see stuff like that and like when I heard her talk about it at the end of the director commentary like and I can't help but Wonder like how it affects her her reflection on this whole project you know like AB is such an amazing character and like from an acting standpoint like such a meaty role to be able to seek your te teeth into and such an iconic character and I just I fear that this whole backlash I hope and I think part of the reason why I get so emotional about it is because Abby means so much to me too and I you know I see all the the hateful things that people say about her and I know she's not real but it's like because I relate to her in so many ways it just feels it feels so personal and I hope that Laura can I hope that it hasn't like completely ruined her perception of her own work and this experience working on the project and it just shatters my heart to see her upset like that I don't even know her but I know she's a lovely human and she did not deserve any of that this thing that I spent 4 and 1 half years on it's kind of getting violated and then for 2 months before release there's like nothing you can do you can't release the game sooner cuz it's not done yet the final experience will be worth it yeah and that was the lowest point in my life I'm working on the game [ __ ] towards the end at home by myself feeling very alone and I said who am I doing this for like why am I why this is it's too much and I barely squeaked by and then we were able to finish it and you know we sent it to reviewers and reviewers are through the roof yeah cuz it's amazing and I called Troy and I said like dude I'm sorry I feel like I I failed you and and he's like what are you talking about and I'm like yeah I just know how some people talk like oh dude I don't care I played the game and I love it and I got really emotional I was like I I realized how much I care about Troy caring about the game and that that was a huge sense of relief there's not a single aspect of the game part two that I would change and anytime someone comes up to me and says you know over again I didn't really like what they did to Joel I was like great awesome tell me a better version of the story and to this day they still can't exactly it was a traumatic experience for myself and many people on on the team and the kind of hate we got because of those leaks will stay with me forever and I can't even describe how how angry I was of what the damage this person did to us I want them punished in every sort of way I wanted this to be this really this villain and this person is like you know in their 20s or whatever they live with their parents and it's a fan and then when we delayed the game indefinitely that's this is what they said it's like I wanted to force n dog's hand I wanted to force them to release the game so I thought if I just put out all the videos eventually they'll put out the game which again was never an option for us and I remember sitting there sitting in my anger and then go like slowing down and just so okay if anybody should take the lesson from last part two it should probably be us just let it go isn't that so interesting cuz what did I say not five minutes ago that I want this person to be punished and I don't mean like in a violent way just to clarify I just mean legal repercussions for the damage they did um but yeah that's so that's that's so true just a basement delling kid who just wanted to play the game so bad and I mean obviously doesn't excuse what they did [ __ ] them for what they did but he's right Let It Go and I mean they still did the thing it still won the most gotis until Elden ring and uh rave reviews from critics who actually know what the [ __ ] they're talking about and three and a half years later still has fans like me and people who watch my content who adore this game Who adore this story and the characters and appreciate all the work that they did so I just it it breaks my [ __ ] heart to hear him talk about that and to see Laura and Ashley crying I just [ __ ] hope that they know how much how much the story means to some of us I really hope they [Music] do the paral of showing that scene all right enough Eddie veter to play Future Days for the game awards my huge Pearl jump fan really yeah I know shocking to many people what a fascinating way to tell a story it's just getting better and better all the time and I really appreciate the way that Future Days was used um especially bringing Joel and Ellie together uh connecting through music it was cool to be part of it so uh thanks for having me and enjoy the rest of the show how lucky am I like how cool is this this person that I admire since I was a kid is now like mentioning this game that we all made and then we start winning award after award after award dude when she won the best performance award at the game boards I was in I was in this apartment but in the other bedroom because I had a roommate at the time and I was in my room and I was watching it live and I when she won I like screamed and I ran out into the living room where my roommate was with her boyfriend and I was like Laura Bailey just won best performance for Abby they had no idea what I was talking about but I just was so excited I felt like so Vindicated on her behalf and like and then it won goie and everything else but I was most excited for her because I knew how much fital she was getting and I was like [ __ ] yes she deserves it just for her performance alone but but also because of all the [ __ ] [ __ ] she had to go through I for and everyone at nauy dog I I can't wait to hug and high five and get drunk with each one of you that's going to have to wait till next year and more than anything and I know that I speak for the whole team when I say this we'd like to thank our friends and family that stood by us and support us throughout uh us making this game you inspire us not only to make better more meaningful games um but to improve how we make games and here we are April 2023 the pandemic kind of brought up that question of like health and mental health are we developers that are going to stay at the studio and have full careers how do we make this sustainable I like I chuckle in retrospect just how absurd the failure of trying to alleviate crunch was if you have great processes and you're super organized that doesn't fix crunch what that does is it allows you to make a bigger game we read the postmortem feedback for the last of us too and it was really really upsetting to see what co-workers had gone through so we were highly motivated to try to figure out how to fix it everything about our workflows were already being upended with remote work and everything so it's like okay well yeah this is we got to do this now and we knew that to make the real changes we did it would take the entire Studio working together we now have the goal for n to eliminate crunch the only thing that fixes crunch the only thing is deciding that you're not going to Crunch uh when we onboard people we tell them you know we have a reputation as a studio for crunching and it's something we don't want and it's something we're not going to do anymore first we had to do what is crunch let's let's define it because when you just look at hours that that turn out to be too simplistic it's a multitude of factors it's not just like one thing it's not just oh because of this this is what's called cing crunch it's literally like so many of these little things how do we get make sure no one at Nolly dog burns out you know every couple of months we sent out a a a 90c questionnaire that goes are you worried about your workload are you worried about having to work over time if you feel like I'm overburdened with work you have to tell somebody being able to work from home um is hugely helpful for me from my mental health of like you know my daughter's there my my wife is there hybrid is is her wife yes queer Queen lead designer mem [ __ ] you The Sweet Spot because I think the benefits have just been enormous in the past our leads our managers were the people that were best at the craft but not necessarily the best managers so we created the role of principle we really gave people the choice like do you want to make stuff or do you want to lead and manage and our Aldo is now a lead designer here now I'm responsible for a team and I really enjoy that being able to share that knowledge and kind of work with someone even if they're more experienced than me and it's been great so far it feels so much like a different Studio I hope that we can keep changing for the better and make sure that we're making the games that we want to make that we're really passionate about that we don't stop doing that we want self-driven healthy designers we want to have it all we want to have it both and and can we do that that'll that'll be the question I [Music] guess oh God we're getting into the show how long is this thing has been a wild ride hey yay I just wanted it to be like good like dude if it just comes out and it's a good show like that's that's going to be huge so good I'm sure it will be very different when I actually see Abby being portrayed that will be so weird I can't imagine what Ashley and Troy must be feeling specifically because Ellie is a part of my heart in some ways it was really hard I feel like Bella was the only person who could play her because I feel like she is Ellie there's a part of me that's like weirdly protective of her I remember when Neil told me they're perfect he like we found Joel I was like he wasn't missing um um Pedro Pascal and I went we're bulletproof it felt like Craig and Neil together saw that this was a story about humanity and they made it story about Humanity yeah we got Frank who knew that was waiting Craig's screaming from the sidelines going hi did when Neil and Craig asked me to play Ellie's Mother Anna no it made me so happy I know I'm crying so it doesn't seem like it but it was symbolic in so many ways to me it was so being able to sort of bring Ellie into the world be the first one to fight for her oh my God it breaks my heart felt like on the other side we could get this story to people that will never play a video game my mom is watching the show and like she can enjoy this story and she can be a part of it and she's so excited in working on season 2 and getting to see that oh my God I'm so excited I love this idea that someone could watch the show and then realize wait that's based on a video game and come back and check out the game and realize oh there's like all these rich games Tria a ND and all sorts of stories that are really unique to this medium oh yeah what are they going to do for the show I did some other interview where someone asked me about the last of us and would there be any more stories or something and and I mentioned like you know we have written a story that takes place after last of us to um that stars Tommy and I hope one day we get to make it and the headlines across the industry were like um Na dog has outlined Last of Us Part three and that's actually wrong yeah it was always it was always a small story it was never like a full title at the time we had higher priorities than n dog was like to fix our pipeline to fix work life balance issues just based on where we were I didn't want to prioritize this story so that story was sheld and I still believe one day it will see the light of day I don't know if it's it'll be a game or a show TVD first game had such a clean concept of like the unconditional love a parent feels for their child the second one once we landed on this idea of the pursuit of Justice at any cost Justice for the ones you love it felt like oh there's a clean concept here and there's a through line from the first game about love if we never get to do it again this is a fine ending point and right last bite of the Apple the story's done the great thing about working at naughty dog is that we don't have to um it's it's always like we would love another last of us but if you guys feel like are passionate about something else we'll support this other thing very privileged position to be in I I I never take that for granted I've been thinking about okay is there a concept there and for now years I haven't been able to find that concept yeah uh but recently that's changed and um I don't have a story but I do have that concept that to me is as exciting as one as exciting as two um as its own thing and yet has this through line for all [Music] three uh so it it does feel like there's probably one more chapter to the [Music] story what what what what did what that's the end oh my God I can't breathe he said there's one more chapter I'm going to throw up oh my you just ended on that you jerks oh my God one more chapter he's found it oh my God I was not expecting that holy [ __ ] there is no way they would have put that in there if it wasn't happening if there wasn't like a possibility of it happening and you know it's crazy because everyone's been speculating for so long that there're would be a third one and and everything that we'd heard directly from him and from the studio had been you know we don't know like we haven't found it yet and I I was I believed them but he's found something I have I have this like and I don't know if I'm going to keep this in because this is just this is so raw but I I just I have this it's so strong in me it's so strong this need to be a part of this and to to contribute to this story because it's so it's such a big part of me and it's so important to me it's informed everything it's it's changed changed it literally I know this sounds hyperbolic but no it has literally the second game changed my life in so many ways it changed how I it changed the kind of work I want to do as an artist the kind of stories I want to tell it helped me with my coming out journey it it it it it propelled me into the games industry I was in a completely different field I have to I have to be a part of it somehow I don't know I I'm not American I can't work in LA but I it's so it's so strong it's so strong I don't know what I'll do if I can't like I have the experience I have the knowledge I have the skills I I don't know how to make it happen but it has to oh my God I never really believed in like manifesting but I think I'm going to have to start because I have to put this energy somewhere oh my God oh my God I can't believe they just did that I can't believe they just did that all right it has been like two and a half hours I need a break I need I need to go touch some grass thanks for watching this I'm sorry I was such a mess I figured I was going to get emotional at some of this but I this was unprecedented unexpected so I'm I'm sorry you had to watch this blubbering I'm so grateful that they put that together and they released that for us that just there was so much there was so much closure in it new and interesting things but also a lot of familiarity I loved seeing Oh my God the map I I almost wish there was like a little bit more of it but even just getting to see Laura's face and that the Joel death scene was was was enough like that's all I wanted that's all I wanted and they gave it so thank you and again like I said earlier like this game it does it does mean so much to so many people and I really hope that they know that and um I hope that they're proud of themselves and I hope that I hope that they like their reflection on on the whole creation process and and you know the reaction with the leaks and everything I hope that that doesn't taint everything for them you know I just hope one day I can be part of it somehow some way I'mma start manifesting I have to follow me on Tik Tok if you don't already that's where I post most of my content um and uh yeah I'll see you around endure and survive

Channel: TLOU Explained

Views: 21,694

Keywords: the last of us, grounded, grounded ii, the last of us part ii, the last of us 2, tlou, naughty dog, making of, documentary, troy baker, ashley johnson, neil druckmann, laura bailey, evan wells, sony, playstation, remastered, ps5

Id: 5mYFjMpv6H8

Length: 101min 53sec (6113 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 04 2024