Brand new The Last Of Us info - a unique, character-driven surival game about love and...ants?

by Chris Hawke at 6:20 pm on Monday, 23 January 2012

Official Playstation Mag were allowed into the Naughty Dog offices for a chat about The Last Of Us (alongside a bit a sleuthing about Uncharted 4), the survival shooter set to turn the gaming world on its head. How will the much-revered company do this? It's all below;

- The idea for the game came from BBC's 2007 TV series 'Planet Earth' with Sir David Attenborough; in one episode, a fungus called Cordyceps infected the body of an ant, causing it to become 'zombified'. The enemies in The Last Of Us are infected with Cordyceps.



- Neil Druckmann says "It's a love story - not a romantic one, but a love story between these two characters", referring to the unlikely pairing of the young Ellie and Sam Fisher lookalike Joel.

- Character Designer Mike Knowland said that "Getting the right amount of freckles [on Ellie] was tricky - not to make her too pretty, but still have appeal".

- The relationship between 40 year old Joel and 14 year old Ellie will be what sets the game out from other post-apocalyptic tales - "No one else is doing that character-driven survival game".

- Media that inspired the Naughty Dog team includes The Road, No Country For Old Men, The Walking Dead, and City Of Thieves.

- "[Character driven stories are] all about the pressures of the world forcing them to make really difficult decisions, and you learn something about who we are as human beings. And with games, no one's approaching it from this character side. It's all campy, over the top violence...how much more blood? How much more gore?"

This is Ashley Johnson's first foray into videogames, but she says she felt a deep affinity with Ellie the moment she saw her

- "Who unleashed the virus? Bleurgh! It has nothing to do with the characters."

- Hoping to replace Nolan North's soothing tones are Ashley Johnson, a Hollywood veteran, and Troy Baker, who's been in pretty much every game out there.

- No badass heroism from Joel - "He's a survivor", and nothing more. "I think he's going to turn the model of a hero on its ass"

- Artists and designers switch off their monitors as the OPM team pass - they're giving no gameplay secrets away.

- However, what is revealed is that it is third person, takes place in various US locations and it'll be different to any Naughty Dog game before it. "Uncharted is pulp action - with The Last Of Us, everything is constructed around the tone [of this particular title]."

- The gunplay will be very different, with sparse ammunition and mechanics probably similar to Resident Evil. Still, it's all powered by Uncharted's tech

- The story is king - "The definition of a story is that at the end, the character is irreversibly changed, and that's the whole focus of the project - getting through with these two characters".

So, place your bets on which one of them dies.

That's all you're getting for now. Pick up a copy of OPM 067 to get all the goodies yourself and have some lovely pictures to admire.

Labels: Chris Hawke, Naughty Dog, The Last Of Us

- Chris Hawke

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