More Details Released for The Last of Us

By Yannick LeJacq | December 12, 2011 | News | 2 comments | Share

Naughty Dog, creators of the acclaimed and successful Crash Bandicoot, Jak, and, most recently, Uncharted series, revealed its new post-apocalyptic zombie/monster IP on Saturday, December 10th, during Spike TV’s annual Video Game Awards. Though details are still scarce, the reveal trailer shown at VGA centers on a pair of survivors travelling across the desolate wasteland of America’s former zombie-free glory.

Shortly after the ceremony, Naughty Dog issued a press release with some additional information to flesh out the game’s central concept:

The Last of Us is a genre-defining experience that blends survival and action elements to tell a character driven story about a population decimated by a modern plague. Abandoned cities are being reclaimed by nature and the remaining survivors are killing each other for food, weapons and whatever they can get their hands on. Joel, a ruthless survivor, and Ellie, a brave young teenage girl who is wise beyond her years, must work together to survive their journey across what remains of the United States.Naughty Dog

Naughty Dog has long been respected for building gorgeous, immersive environments for their games and fully-rounded, human characters with which to populate them. The Uncharted series was universally lauded for setting a new bar not only for the quality of its gameplay mechanics in terms of interactive environments, platforming, and cover-based shooting, but also for the quality of writing, voiceover work, and facial animation for AAA studios. Zombies and post-apocalyptic worlds have become ubiquitous in the world of videogames in recent years, so it will be interesting to see how Naughty Dog handles this delicate material.

By the looks of it, Naughty Dog is adding the compelling narrative and unique characters so sorely needed to add more humanity to a flagging genre. One interesting detail that stands out already, for instance, is the ambiguity of Joel and Ellie’s relationship. Is Joel Ellie’s father, making the story similar to Cormac McCarthy’s profound and wrenching novel The Road? Or did they just meet by happenstance as the world began to crumble, as in 28 Days Later or Night of the Living Dead? In either case, Naughty Dog seems to be taking an interesting direction that may save the studio from some of the pitfalls of Dead Island and more recent Resident Evil releases by centering the game on the characters themselves, rather than a larger and inevitably hokey plot about finding some virus/cure/special primate that can save the day.