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@Nell.aja

The following feature documents the creation of The Last of Us.

For maximum enjoyment, complete the game before watching.

Yeah, making the new IP is, uh,
how can I put it?

It's just, uh, just don't do it.

- NAUGHTY DOG AND AREA 5 PRESENT -

It's insane, it's a very difficult process.

You have more questions than you have answers.

Especially when you come from, like, you've

been making Uncharted 1 and Uncharted 2, just

kinda like, now like things are going, you just kinda like... like

good momentum and then suddenly that moment just drops, it stops.

GROUNDED MAKING THE LAST OF US

It's a very challenging process to create a new IP

and you're going to fail over and over again.

But that's what it takes.

New IPs are really hard.

They're hard because...
You don't know what's fun yet.

You're building new tech, new AI,

establishing new characters, new art, all this.

You don't get to get that controller

in your hand for, like, six months to a year.

You don't know, you don't know what it is yet.

I remember, like, ages ago, coming on to the project and,

what are the Infected going to do, like, what do they do?

"They're going to behave like this."

I'm like, "Okay," trying to imagine what's going to happen.

Fast forward, like, four months, they don't do that at all.

No.

'Cause it didn't work, right?

It's hard mode, right?

Like, it's game development on "Expert."

There's a big thing about making a game, right?
Which is a game has to be fun.

You got your first build where everything's working.

You've got player mechanics,
you can walk around the world,

you can shoot, you can melee attack people,

you've got the AI in there, theyr'e very intelligent, very

difficult, and it's totally not fun.

Because they snuck up behind you and murdered you

in a second and there was no way to figure out what was going on.

We're making a game, by the way.
Hey, Jane.

The company has grown quite a bit, since I started.

I think I was the 12th employee back when we got started.

But, we have tried to stay true to those smaller studio roots.

I've been here for 16... going 16 years.

There's just no reason to leave, I just...

I just the environment here, it's very non-corporate.

I think the way we work at Naughty Dog is really kind of special,

because we don't really like hierarchy or bureaucracy

and no one is really just a manager here.

Naughty Dog has a very flat structure, uh,

we pretty much all report to the co-presidents and the game directors.

I always tell people when we hire them,
like, my job is to be able to trust you.

That's what I want. I want
just to give you something

and you go with it and I know
it's going to get done.

We believe in iteration,
we believe in collaboration,

and we believe in the people making

the game working directly
with each other.

We have designers, and artists,
and animators all mixed up.

Anybody that's working
on the same tasks,

the same characters, the same areas,

put them next to each other so
they can communicate a lot better.

We don't have a lot of meetings because
if you need something to get done,

you just walk over and
you talk and you go back

to your desk and you finish it up.

And I really like that, I like
just walking in the office

and I see designers talking
with the programmers

or the programmers over
the animators talking to them.

That's when the, uh, "magic" happens.

At Naughty Dog, we really
try to cultivate a culture where

anybody can criticize
anybody else's work.

And we encourage people
to be blunt about it

and not try to sugar-coat it too much.

It takes too long to be nice sometimes.

It is not personal, it's based on more,
like, how can we make a better game.

We want everybody to have a voice,

we want to cut out all
the bullshit if we can.

Making sure that people
are making decisions,

not based on ego, but what is going
to benefit the game.

When you see that people trust
your opinion and that they value it,

it's such a great feeling,
you really feel like

you're working as a team
on a collaborative effort.

We want to sort of remember
where we came from and

why we were successful then and try
to continue that success now.

We make games.

That's what we like to do.

Back when Uncharted 2 wrapped up
and we decided that

we were going to build the second team

and create a new project,
we kicked around a lot of ideas.

One of the very earliest ideas was
to go back to Jak and Daxter.

It's really near and dear
to us, we really love

those characters and that universe.

We think that there are some

interesting stories
still to be told there.

We started to realize that
it was not going to do justice

to the franchise that the fans
had fallen in love with.

It would be shifting it so far in
a new direction that, um, we felt

that that effort would be more
justified in developing a new IP.

Neil and Bruce came to
Christophe and I and

said they wanted to do
a post-apocalpytic game.

I think the core essence
of what they wanted to do,

though, was to try to tell
a story about two people,

and how their relationship evolves
over the course of that entire game.

That potential. "Oh, wow.
There is something

very special about that game."

This is going to be polished.

You're not sure if it's gonna work
or not and you have doubts.

Should we be doing it
again, should we be doing

a first-person shooter... whatever.

You ask yourself all those questions.

And the creative director
and the game director are

the core of the team that have
to really see eye-to-eye.

That's why you have that balance
between Bruce and Neil.

And Neil's going to try to push
the story and the characters,

and Bruce is going to try to push
that with the gameplay as well.

And so it's kind of like they're...
those guys are

trying always to find
the right balance between the two.

It's a very delicate process.

We feel that the interactive
medium has an untapped

potential to touch the
feelings of the player.

You have that connectivity, the
fact that I'm actually in the world

and participating in what's happening
on the screen in front of me...

Gives us some sort of
an advantage to make

you feel connected with
what's actually happening.

At Naughty Dog that's
what we're trying to do

is pair a story and gameplay together.

If we can make you feel
like you're actually

with these characters on that journey,

and you're invested in those
stories and those characters,

then you're feeling in theory
the same thing they're feeling.

As the story evolved and took
different shapes and different

forms, the thing that was always
there was Joel and Ellie.

And because of that everything kind of,
uh, grew out of that relationship.

We've seen kind of that role
of the anti-hero change,

especially over the last
three to five years

where before it was the thick-necked
mercenary kind of guy.

For this game specifically... or this
story... we needed something new.

The reason we didn't want to
make Ellie Joel's daughter from

the get-go was because it
wouldn't have anywhere to go.

'Course at that point he'd be willing
to do anything for his daughter

because that is what a dad
would do for his daughter.

If they didn't even know
each other at the beginning

of this story, then we
start from scratch...

It's almost like the player has the same
relationship to Ellie as Joel does,

and we can take our time to build our
relationship between these characters

and if we do it right, the
player would be feeling

that same growth that Joel does

and we're kind of mirroring that
emotional relationship between the two.

What are you doing?

Killing time.

Well, what am I supposed to do?

I am sure you will figure that out.

Your watch is broken.

It's exciting that Neil wrote
something like this, where he's like,

"I don't want to make the
stereotypical characters."

I want to make real people
in this crazy situation and

they're forced to make decisions
that are really tough.

Like what would we be
like in those situations?

I mean, we weren't consciously trying
to pick male or female for characters.

You just try to pick
characters and just be honest

with who they are. It almost
doesn't matter, right?

Joel's daughter could've
been Joel's son, Ellie

could've been a boy and
Joel might've been Tess.

You could've swapped those roles and I
think the story would've still worked.

The focus on female
strength, it's so unique.

You get to see what's so powerful about

a woman through all of
these female characters

which makes this game
wonderful and unique.

There's a crew of Fireflies that'll
meet you at the Capital Building.

That's not exactly close.

You're capable.

You hand her off, come back,
the weapons are yours.

Double what Robert sold me.

Speaking of which, where are they?

Back in our camp.

We're not smuggling
shit until I see them.

I want Joel to watch over her.

- Bullshit, I'm not going with him!
- Whoa, I don't think that's the best idea.

Ellie!

How do you know them?

I do think having a
strong female character,

especially like Ellie, is
so rare in videogames.

And as a gamer, and more specifically a
female gamer, it's frustrating to me

because I'll see sort of
the stereotypical female

character where she's amazingly
beautiful and huge boobs

and she's there to be either
the love interest, or just

because they're like "well we
need to throw a chick in here."

We've seen the strong woman,
or we've seen the weak woman.

We haven't necessarily
seen the empowered

woman from this kind of standpoint.

There's that beautiful scene
where Joel finds her inside

the house and she's reading through
this girl's journal, going,

"Is this really what they
used to worry about?

What shirt do I wear and what
boy am I gonna go out with?"

And to be met with those
first-world problems that

we deal with every day and go
"how trivial is all of this?"

And I think it's going to
resonate a lot, not just with

a female audience, but with
a male audience as well.

The thing that was intriguing to
me, after the fact, is knowing

that we're kind of creating a
female action hero in a way.

This is her origin story, with Ellie.

To sort of be such a
strong female character

that is completely normal looking.

Regular t-shirt and jeans, and she's
14, and she's still a total badass.

It's really exciting
to be a part of that.

There's so few non-sexualized women in
videogames, especially in the main role,

that we were kind of proud
that we were creating one,

who's very complex, and without
the players knowing it,

she becomes the protagonist
by the end of the story.

And that's why she's on the front
of the box, and that's why

we've been promoting the two
of them together so much.

Who's there?

It is a dual-protagonist
game, and, uh, yeah...

I guess I get nervous when I
think about it in that way.

We couldn't talk about it.
In fact in interviews

we've been lying about saying
you never play as Ellie

because it was so important
for that to be a surprise.

Sorry, journalists.

Here we go.

Sorry.

Hold on. That's it.

The tone of the game was
set pretty early on that

we knew that we wanted to
make a really grounded story,

we knew that we wanted
to make the player

feel the sense of tension, and dread,

and go through the same
emotional rollercoaster

that Joel and Ellie are going through.

One of the things we kind of
struggled with is to say,

well if we really want to ground this
world and make it so, like, realistic,

maybe we shouldn't have anything that
could be perceived as a monster.

Maybe, like, just having an
infection that just killed people

and it's all about humans and how they
deal with this post-apocalyptic society,

and how different people
decide to survive.

Maybe that would be enough.

And what we realized is, because
we're making an action game,

a lot of the storytelling
happens on the joystick

and once we removed the
infected, all of a sudden

now we can't tell the
story through gameplay

of what happened to the world.

And that's when we kind of went back
and kinda brought the infected back in

because it lets you see,
once you're fighting them,

the threat that people had to deal with,

that otherwise would just be very
cerebral and people could talk about it,

but you couldn't necessarily
experience it yourself.

In a novel that might
work, in a game, for us,

and specifically an action
game, it didn't work.

And from there, we
started kicking around

those ideas, and we were just like,

"what would be cool just to play?"

The early inception for
it really came from

a BBC video we saw
called "Planet Earth,"

where they were talking
about a Cordyceps fungus.

This Cordyceps fungus gets
inside of the brain and

controls these ants and
mandibles start chomping.

They go up to higher areas, Cordyceps

fungus sprouts out and
then it germinates.

And, essentially, uses them
to spread its infection and

take over whole colonies,
sometimes wiping them out.

As soon as we saw that
we were intrigued by

the idea of, "What if
it jumped to humans?"

What would happen? How would people
react? What would happen to society?

As we were trying to develop
the look of the infected,

um, we went through so
many different iterations.

Some that looked really
alien and sub-human, um,

some that looked just,
essentially, like zombies

and we couldn't find, like,
an original place for them.

But one of our artists just did
this kind of photo mash-up

where he took a bunch of images of
diseases, images of fungal overgrowth

and he kind of mashed it all together
and he threw it on this person.

It was a very iterative
process, making sure

that the fungus felt
properly integrated,

like it was part of the body,
growing out of the body.

And not just fungus growing on the head,
but it's tearing the face apart.

Cleft down the middle, this gaping maw
of a mouth with the crooked teeth.

And it's in great agony as it's humanity

and its brain is still
somewhat functioning.

You still have some human

cognitive abilities or
thought process back here.

This isn't some decaying corpse
on the ground, this is a

living thing that's going to be
coming after you in the world.

The fungus is always the focal point.

So you can see from a distance, oh, this

guy's infected, I can
tell straight away.

In fungus, they have these
beautiful saturated colors.

We really like that concept of this...
something so horrific that it's

going to, like, stop at nothing,
it's this relentless, force of death

and yet, elements of it are beautiful.

It's not just about gore, it's not just
about everything about it being scary

because to us it's actually
scarier when things

on it are somewhat benign,
or somewhat beautiful.

It was evident that we were on to
something that was quite a bit different

and something that we
hadn't really seen before

which was eerily human,
but very disturbing.

And it seemed so creepy and so unique,

right away we gravitated towards
it, like, this is our base

infected, everything should
kind of come out of this look.

So once we had this idea of this
face-splitting kind of look

that eventually became what
we call the "Clicker stage,"

We went to great lengths to create a
full biological cycle for these things.

So, in the early stages you
don't actually see too

many signs of the fungus
surfacing out of the skin.

It's kind of underneath it, like,
people have lumps starting to show.

The eyes will be kind of
cloudy, um, or lopsided

because the fungus kind of
originates inside the head.

That moves into the next phase,
which is the Clicking phase.

And if they mess with the eyes, we end
up saying, well, how do they get around?

Oh, echolocation.

And they use a form of echolocation
to track down their enemies.

Just like bats or even some blind people
can see by making a clicking sound.

A sound that, on its own,
wouldn't be very scary.

And then to associate
it with something that

people in this world are very fearful of

so that as you're
exploring an environment,

all of a sudden you hear this "click,"

and you're seeing everybody
just get frightened,

just everybody ducks, everybody hushes.

Ah, great.

And the Bloater is the
most severe of the stages.

So, large pieces of the body has been

replaced by these, kind
of, fungal plates.

The fungus completely takes
over the body and blooms.

They're kind of covered in
things that have been growing

on them, things like moss,
and life on life, kind of.

What the fuck is that?

A goddamned bloater!

When an infected feels like
it's going to die, it finds

like a dark corner and it becomes
part of the environment.

The human elements aren't there anymore.

And then the body is gone.

They lay down, and sprout,
and then spew spores.

And if people can breath those spores,
they become infected as well.

It all had to kind of make sense of how
each state flowed from one to the other.

And that's hopefully how we've
created a world that you can

kind of look through it and
understand the science behind it

and say, "I could buy this.
I can get into this."

Mandatory evacuation.

Evacuate to where?

Where do you think?

Quarantine zone.

See, some places got a heads-up
before the infection showed up.

Most didn't.

Over the course of Joel
and Ellie's journey

through this game, across America.

You find all these different societies,
all this different enclaves.

And you get to see how do
they deal with the infected.

Without the manifestation of
this infection, you can't

have these people making
those interesting choices.

The world, we decided, was
actually its own character.

Really grounded with a lot of texture.

What happens, you know,
after 20 years of the fall

of man when no one's
taking care of anything?

This book called "The World
Without Us" describes in detail

how much fighting on a day-to-day basis
we have to do to keep nature back.

And once you stopped doing that, how
quickly nature can reclaim that.

They talk about New
York and how every day

they pump water out
of the subway system.

That system breaks down, within two
days that whole city is flooded,

and once water gets introduced, then
structures collapse pretty quickly.

Trees will sprout and wind
will carry those seeds over.

And gutters get clogged and when
it rains water fills up and

then pretty soon you have
vegetation growing over there

and once you have vegetation,
concrete breaks pretty easily

for... when there's a tree and
roots breaking through them.

Even some of the stuff
we did on Uncharted, you

know, exploration on how
temples were ruined,

what if you took those ideas and
put them in Pittsburg or Boston?

And obviously right when
that happened, you can

imagine that being pretty
terrible to look at.

But you think about
twenty years later, and

with rain water filling
up thos sinkholes

and those becoming little marshes
with lilly pads in them.

We had this wonderful piece of concept
art we developed really early on

and there are all of these
wild animals that have escaped

from a zoo and over the
past twenty years have bred

and now they have herds
roaming these cities.

And that's something that tells you that

life goes on and this
world is worth saving.

Shhh, don't scare it.

I won't, I won't.

What are you doing?

There's something really
pretty about nature

reclaiming its domain once we are gone.

So fucking cool.

We have another level
of OCD of the logic

that goes into some of
these environments.

Water damage seeps in and that creates
some little moss growing on the floor,

or a tree radiates energy
from its base and that,

over time, starts to
melt the snow around it

and that's the reason
why you'd see those

rings of leaves showing
through in the snow.

That gives it that extra,
you know, believability.

This is pitch art. I'll
try to start with an idea

that conveys sort of the
feel of the environment.

Something like this... very brush
stroke-y, very painterly.

You can see not a lot of detail,
just energy and conveying a mood.

This is sort of just a conversation
starter, and then this

would be more of an actual space,
so you start talking about,

is this too tight of a space right here?
Would the player

even fit through there? Do we
even want to include water?

Those are conversations you start
having a little bit later.

And then it usually needs
several more passes

back and forth in order
to be tightened up

to be the experience that you
would see in the final product.

So, dude, I was actually
trying to figure out right

here, there should probably
be some dead foliage.

It might be kinda cool to see
some of the dead stuff around the

edges of the green or, like, even
spilling out into the street.

Maybe what we do is, in some
of these areas we use it

as like a transition to form
from the actual concrete

up to the side of the
building, so they're

actually sitting on top
of a bed of dead foliage.

Yeah. Like the really rich, kind of,
orange-y brown color.

Sienna or something would be nice.

Something really cheddary.

That's how you know you're done.

The end product often
ends up being stronger

because that bouncing
back off somebody else

gives you a result that
maybe you wouldn't

have even thought of in the first place.

Alright, there's the bridge... that's
our way out of here.

As far as concept art goes,
definitely, the ultimate

goal is just helping everybody
as much as possible.

Me and the background
artist will work together.

I'll often just go to
them, 'cause they've got,

like a really, really
good visual imagination.

At some point, he came
in, almost like flat on.

So that's kind of good, because the bus

station is right in
your peripheral view,

and you're probably going
to enter the bus station,

you're probably not going to get lost.

But it doesn't at all utilize
this cool architecture here,

like the bus station sign, like that's
a really distinctive silhouette

and it's a really interesting
sort of architectural detail.

So we changed the entrance.

Look at that... another city, another
abandoned quarantine zone.

I think it's a better composition,
anyway. It's not so, like, symmetrical.

And I think that was done
so this sign read better.

If you can't see the word
"BUS" on it, you might

not know it's a bus station,
so I think it helps.

Everything we're doing in the
environments is relaying back to

what you should be feeling in the story
or what's happening to these characters.

Well, is that everything you hoped for?

Jury's still out.

But, man, you can't deny that view.

C'mon, this way.

When we first came up
with Ellie and Joel, we

had this idea in our heads
of who they would be

but we didn't necessarily
know the voice.

Took us a while to find
our Joel, but for Ellie,

I think Ashley was the second or third

candidate to walk in,
and right away we knew.

Why are you so scared all of a sudden?

Because I'm a coward, okay?

So just get your shit and
let's get out of here.

Damn it.

I'm not like her, you know?

What?

You think I'm gonna end
up like your daughter.

The way she delivered her lines,
the way she just embodied that

character is like, that's Ellie,
there's no question about it.

I saw the character artwork
and I related to her a lot.

I mean, she's kind of a tomboy
and she's kind of tough and,

I mean, obviously I'm not
fourteen and I think

that's the main difference
between the two of us.

I read the scenes and I was like,
"I need to play this part."

You wanna be my hero?

Forget the whole bit
about saving my life,

buy me a stack of these
bad boys instead.

Where'd you get that?

Back at Bill's.

I mean all this stuff
was just lying around.

And then once we had her, we said,
"Okay, we're going to do another round."

We're going to have Ashley this
time, in the casting sessions.

The chemistry of these two characters
was imperative to get right.

Troy was a really interesting
casting for Joel, because,

when you see Troy, he doesn't
look like Joel at all.

You know, he's so handsome, and he had
like, you know, the frosty hair and

totally looked like Final
Fantasy, and so...

I'm like, I don't know, he's
like this tall, pretty, um...

it didn't seem right.

I walked into the room
fully aware that I was the

youngest person that they
were seeing for this role.

There was a line that was on the
audition side that says that

Joel has few moral lines left to cross.

And so that became the anchor
point to the character.

But then as soon as he spoke and
he had that grit in his voice...

Warm, yet kind of dangerous.

And his movement, you
just bought into it.

Why are you so scared all of a sudden?

Because I'm a big coward, okay? Now
pack up your shit and let's go!

Goddamnit!

I'm not her, you know?

What?

You think I'm gonna end
up like your daughter.

Now, Ellie, you are treadin' on
some very thin ice right now.

It was Ellie and Joel.

After he read, it was just
like that was... that was it.

I've done some videogames in
the past, but to be handed the

mantle of a franchise like
this was a pretty big honor.

Is she alive?

She's alive.

She's David's newest pet.

Where?

In the town! She's in the town.

Now you mark it on the map.
And it better be

the same exact spot
your buddy points to.

Neil pulled me aside one day and
he said, "I have some ideas."

And as you're well aware,
Neil is a little twisted.

He came up with this character and,
you know, I just jumped at it.

It was such a departure
from everything I've

done here for Naughty
Dog, to say the least.

Name's David.

This here's my friend, James.

We're from a larger group.

Women, children. We're
all very, very hungry.

To be able to put on a voice
that hopefully a lot of

people won't know, won't
notice that it's even me.

'Cause we didn't want it to be Drake.

Drake eating people, that's... that's
a whole 'nother game.

How did you put it?

Tiny pieces.

See ya tomorrow, Ellie.

Ya know, certain voices that I can
do wouldn't fit David's artwork,

but he showed me the art, and
I said, "Maybe it's something

like this where everything's,
you know, is very quiet.

And you know, he's not really sure
and the voice can break a little."

And he just looked and he
goes, "Yeah, that's it."

So I'd love to tell you that we
hashed it over and we talked... no.

It was... I looked at the picture and I
tried something and he said, "Yeah."

A few weeks back, I sent
a group of men out.

Nearby town to look for food.

Only a few came back.

And turns out that... the others
had been, uh... slaughtered

by a crazy man.

And get this, he...

he was with... a little girl.

You see?

Everything happens for a reason.

Clear.

Ashley, she brought humor to it.

She just has some really
great comedic timing.

The way she reacts to the things around
the world with a little bit of sarcasm.

That teen, kind of like trying
to get a rise out of you.

Now watch your step as you're going
up, 'cause it's gonna be a little...

Pfft.

It just brought a certain levity to
the story that the story needed.

We didn't even realized
it needed it until

she started doing some of that stuff.

Oh, I'm sure your friend will
be missing this tonight.

Mm hmm.

It's, uh, light on the reading, but
it's got some interesting photos

Now, now, Ellie, that ain't for kids.

Woah! How the hell would you even
walk around with that thing?

Get rid of that!

Hold your horses, I want to see
what all the fuss is about.

Oh, why're these all stuck together?

Uhm...

I'm just fucking with you.

Bye bye, dude.

Throughout the course of shooting
over these past couple years,

Ellie and I have kind
of morphed into each

other, which I know sounds so cheesy.

Neil always asks, "Well, what
would you do in this situation?"

The most important thing that
Ashley brought is a sense of

capability to Ellie's character
that wasn't there in the beginning.

The very first thing
we shot involved her

being pulled out of a car and attacked

and Joel was supposed to go save her.

It was written that Ellie sort
of was just kinda watching

on the side, just waiting
'till he was done, and...

I was a little frustrated
because I was like...

well, I... if this were real
life, I would do something.

We did a couple takes, and at some point
she walked up to me and she said,

"I feel like I'd hit him."

So we added in a part, like, you
know, right there off the bat.

She's not just this damsel
in distress, right there she

wanted to fight back from her
very first day of shooting.

We didn't have it right initially.

She needs to be more capable than
initially we thought she would be,

and actually that made
us go back and rethink

combat, and rething a lot
of the areas in the game.

And now, she was going to
take a much more active part.

Anything that requires,
you know, a lot of body

movement we do with the
actors on the mocap stage.

And we try as much as possible to
use our actual principle actors...

Use their body motion
as well as their voice.

We capture it all at
once there on the stage.

Having the actors perform as
well as being recorded at the

same time was imperative to
get an accurate performance.

'Cause every time you
split up the performance

in any way, you lose some of that magic

where they did a gesture or they
delivered a line a certain way.

And those things have to
be in synch or there's

just something subconscious
that's just, like,

off-putting about the performance
when you don't do it that way.

You are treadin' on
mighty thin ice here.

I'm sorry about your daughter, Joel.

But I have lost people, too.

You have no idea what "loss" is.

Everyone I have cared for
has either died or left me.

Everyone... fucking except for you.

So don't tell me that I
would be safer with someone

else because the truth is I
would just be more scared.

It gives you the most authentic,
most realistic performance

because you're actually there... not
just making your own choices

but making your own choices based on the
other people involved in that scene.

So you get this truly natural
approach to things, and it shows up.

It's like theatre in the round... you
can do anything from any angle

and the smallest, most subtle
thing we'll be able to pick up.

There's no place to hide.

So you have to be
as prepared as possible

because you have no idea
which moments they're going to use.

There are these little improv moments
and, you know, little nuances

that you get that probably
isn't scripted that just

comes out of play, you know,
while they're performing.

That... that mistake that just
blossomed into a really good idea.

Did we improv on The Last of Us?

Yes. Yes, we did.

Doing this was a whole
lot lot being five,

playing in the backyard
with a stick, you know,

and this is my machine gun and, you
know, a pinecone is my hand grenade.

It's all your imagination.

I'm doing the exact same shit that I did

45 years ago, I just
get paid for it now.

We square?

We're square.

Then get the fuck out of my town.

I don't do a lot fo voice-over
work, so for me, it was

nice to be able to work
off of your other actors.

I can't imagine it working any other way

I'd never done mocap before,
I didn't know what to expect.

The suits were crazy.

Yeah, the suit gave me wedgies.

Like, deep wedgies that I had to
pick out with my middle finger.

Too much information.

Just how damn sexy I look
in a motion capture suit.

I look like ten pounds of sausage in a
five-pound casing in that thing, man.

Once you get passed the fact
that, like, everybody else,

and you, look like weird clown people

with these little dots and stuff,
once you give over to that

it really was pretty easy
to make it just feel

like you're in the
moment and in the scene.

Everyone that was on
this is a slam dunk.

This isn't just another gig to them.

And that creates a really
cool energy for people

to really start experimenting
and playing jazz.

Floor's yours.

And...

Action.

Get the fuck off her!

Hey, hey!

Let her go!

Don't worry, this is fixable.

But I can't come with you.

Well, then I'm staying.

Ellie.

I want Joel to watch over her.

- Oh, no, no... absolutely not, this has gone too...
- Bullshit! I am not going with him!

Ellie!

Look. Just take her to the north
tunnel and wait for me there.

Jesus Christ.

Just cargo, Joel.

How do you know them?

We craft the scene out
until it has a good feel

and then we pass it off to
animation to clean it up.

Real-life motions don't necessarily
always translate into gameplay

There's something that's
usually missing, so

we have to, you know,
maybe enhance a gesture

or enhance the shoulder movements or a
breath that you want to be able to feel

but you don't really see it, so you
can't really feel it unless you see it.

Is everything alright?

Yeah, everything's fine.

I could have him lean in here a
little bit more, like this...

Take his hand down.

When they're on stage, they don't
necessarily have windows, you know

so that weight of, like,
really pushing and leaning

in, it's something we
would have to accentuate.

You know, give him a
little bit more weight on

that turn, or put his head
down a little bit more

There's a lot of dialogue that gets
said between the two characters.

We have to bring that
alive through animation,

and we have what we're
using is gestures.

Why would they mow
down all these people?

Can't let everyone in.

If you turned off the sound, you'd
know they were talking to each other

and that really helps accentuate the
relationship that the two have together.

We have certain animations that play
in the beginning of the game on Ellie.

She's travelling with Joel
who she doesn't really know.

There's a lot of gestures to make her
look nervous, just her overall stance.

Later on in the game, they
develop a relationship

through the animation,
not just the dialogue.

You can see that she's more
comfortable around him.

If that reads well
with the player, then,

you know, we're doing our job right.

We want her to look scared...
when she gets a

gun, we want her to
look scared of the gun.

If she's going to aim, she wouldn't
be, like, super trained aim...

She would be more, like, scared.

But at the same time
it needs to look cool

and feel cool to the player that plays.

It's really just these little
tiny details that we're

doing, and it's coming across,
it's working out well.

We don't do facial capture,
we don't track eye

movements on stage, it's just
the motion capture data.

Everything that you see on
the faces is hand keyed.

You can see this is all
of her mocap data.

And so when I'm doing
something like this, I go

back and forth to the
performance she was giving

and I watch just this section
over, and over, and over again.

So this is our default face. I can make
everything super extreme and

make her all squinty and angry.

Turn her frown down.

I can open her mouth.

Stick her tongue out.

It's listen, watch, ok, where
is her mouth at this point

like is it open, is it... is
she making like a grimace?

About Tess... I don't even know where...

Here's how this thing's
going to play out.

You don't bring up Tess.

Ever.

Matter of fact, we can just keep
our histories to ourselves.

We shoot all of it to
just get the body motion,

then we will do a second
pass with the cameras.

The scene is playing back
on an overhead projector,

but it's also playing back on a
monitor that's attached to my rig.

Shaun and I would go to
the stage and motion

capture the camera filming the scene.

So he would get a whole wide shot,
a whole close-up for the scene.

You can change your lenses, you can use
your standard 35, 85, 50s... whatever.

All that sort of, live action camera

cinematography... you can apply it.
On stage.

We make sure to go
back in and add flaws.

We keep the confinements of the room so
the camera can't go past a certain wall.

'Cause then we have this
cheated perspective.

If the cameraman bumps
into the wall, we keep it.

Missing focus hits when
you're pulling focus,

going too close to the
character and reframing.

Those little moments in there
kind of keeps it cinema verite.

If everything was too perfect, you

wouldn't be able to put
your finger on it,

but you would be able to feel
it, it would just feel off.

It's very much about
grounding it, despite

having the option to
do whatever we want.

Being able to place the cameras anywhere
we want after the motion capture

gives us both advantages
and disadvantages.

The biggest advantage is
it means that we just

have to nail the best
performances we can get

and the luxury that we
can always swap it.

The 3D world gives you
limitless opportunities with

cameras and movements, exposures...
all that stuff.

Most of these cameras are sort of
set up like real-world cameras

So we have lens, we have f-stop that
will create the depth of field.

We have aperture to, you know, set
our film back and all that stuff.

A master, I have my close-ups,
my over-the-shoulders...

sort of just like a
live-action production.

Let's go to Camera 30, at the 23.458,

then I get that kind of weird,
you know, bend across his back.

The closer I bring the camera, the
more bend I get, which is, you know,

doesn't look right, it doesn't
look as... it looks less cinematic,

than if I I do that, which
flattens the whole thing.

And I'm trying to also catch Ellie,

like if you scrub a little more,
you know, catch her in the

back here, so I want a longer
lens for that kind of stuff.

Since I only had experience working with

live-action before I
got into videogames,

it was kind of a cool
adjustment to be able

to have this extra flexibility in post.

To swap a line of dialogue for
something different, even

though that's not what the
actors said at that time,

and to be able to still have a
close-up on them while they said it.

You get to make it probably more perfect

than you could ever
make it in live-action.

How far are we gonna take this?

As far as it needs to go!

Where was this lab of theirs?

Because our actors are
both the voice and their

body, they get to play,
they get to try things,

they get to work with our director
to kind of come up with new ideas.

Or even our director
will have a new idea on

the spot that wasn't
there in the script,

but realizing when he sees
it, "Oh, well this would

actually be better, this
might feel better."

And those changes all just happen
organically there on the set.

He could even lead
straight into his thing

He's like, no shit, yup.
Didn't wanna do that, so

we rented two Harleys and
we drove cross-country.

Keep it pretty succinct, like, "We got
the bikes, rode them cross-country."

Cool.

It's shocking to me that this
is Neil's first time directing.

There was a specific tone
and a specific approach

that Niel and Bruce
wanted to take with this.

It came down to nobody knows
the story better than you and

there's nobody that knows these
characters better than you,

why don't you just do this?

He and I actually had a
conversation about it.

He said, "I think I'm going to try
this myself and I'm not sure."

Neil was fantastic.

The floor is yours.

Okay, so remember you've been running
away from this turret-mounted truck.

You come to this dead end, you're gonna
look up and see a potential way out.

And... action.

Hey, check it out.

Here.

I mean his writing is honest, and
it's dangerous, and it's natural.

And I love his economy of words.

He doesn't hit everything on the nose

so he leaves it open for
you to interpret and

bring some nuances and things like that.

The entire process is
collaborative, but really

it's led by Neil's
willingness to change,

and flow, and decide
something doesn't work...

you know, fix it right
there in the moment.

And it is something that's very foreign
to the way that TV and film is done now,

where everything has
been micromanaged by

the time you get it to the table read.

And no one wants you to change anything,
and everything's very precious

and has been rewritten with
notes from 20 people in suits.

And you can't do that just anywhere
in entertainment these days.

Yeah, I just want to make sure, I think
I swung too far over to this way

and now it's a little bit of...
making jokes about it.

And if I bring it back to...

Yup.

...to center a little bit.

Okay.

There's one scene in the
game where we see Joel, um,

not as a ruthless survivor,
but as a father.

I knew from the very beginning that
he was going to lose his daughter,

and I just told Neil, it's like when
that day comes for us to shoot that,

I need a heads up.

About a week before, he said, "It's
time. We're gonna do that scene."

I was like, okay, because I knew that I
was going to have to go to this place

that, that you don't really
want to go to as an actor.

You want to find some
aspect of reality that

you can empathetically
draw from, you know?

Troy and I were both kinda
just walking around for

a while and, just, kind
of getting into the zone

and he... and... well, my grandpa died
when I was eight. He was like my dad

and so that's always what I use
to get into that, that place.

You know, I started
recalling all of those

memories and started pulling
up all those feelings

and they're just right, right
underneath the surface.

When I walk back in, everyone
realized something was

different and they kinda
like calmed down, you know?

You could feel the energy just,
like, drop a little bit more.

It... was brutal.

And I just... I lose my shit, I mean,
just completely break down.

Don't do this. Don't do this.
Don't do this! PLEASE God no!

God no!

Cut.

And the soundstage was deathly still.

It was the first take and I
felt really good about it

and Neil said, "Okay,
let's do it again."

And so you do it again and automatically
you feel like you're manufacturing

'cause you're trying to
go back to that place

and you're in that actor nightmare of,

you know, trying to get
back to that reality.

And we go through it again, and
fifth, and sixth, and seventh take

and I'm just exhausted,
I'm crying between takes.

And I'm looking at Neil going,
"This is really, really hard."

And, um, finally after, like,
the eighth or ninth take he said,

"Alright, I think we got it."

I was like, "Oh, thank God!"

And I went outside and I was just
jacked up for the rest of the day.

Just, just, I mean, a wreck emotionally.

But we got it.

Then two weeks later, he calls me.

And he says, "So we need
to reshoot a scene."

I'm like, "Cool, what
scene are we doing?"

And he just looks at me and I said,
"Dude, don't do this to me."

And you can either, at that moment,
throw your hands

up in the air and say,
"Fuck this" and walk away.

Or you can say, "Okay, this is
an opportunity to get it more right."

I'm like, "Okay, alright, yeah.
You think you got it? I'm

gonna show you that you got it.
We've got it in the can."

And so we go through it again, and
it just feels fake, feels artificial.

And Neil goes, "Go through it again."
So I start doing it again.

And I'm getting madder
and madder with each

take, and finally,
about the fourth take...

Neil comes over to me...
I love him so much... he goes...

"So I'm picking up on some resistance."

I was like, "You're damn right
you're picking up on

some resistance.
We've got this in the can already.

And we're just wasting
our time and we're

wasting all this effort and energy."

And then he started talking me
through this scene, and he's like,

"What I need you to do is I need you to
just strip yourself of all these ideas

and I need you to hit
this beat, and this

beat, and this beat, and this beat."

Which just makes it sound so
mechanical in such an emotional scene.

So we start going through
it and literally I am

mindlessly doing these
things at this point.

I know it hurts, baby.

I know, I'm gonna lift you up,

I'm gonna lift you up,
I'm gonna get you over here.

C'mon, baby, c'mon work with me, please!

God... Baby...

Sarah.

SARAH!

Don't do this to me, baby.
Don't do this to me, baby, c'mon.

Don't...

And he stops and goes, "Now we got it."

And I realized that the reason why
I wanted that first take to work

was 'cause I wanted everyone
to look at me and go,

"Wow, what an actor."

And that's not what the scene needed.

Those moments where you
just have to, sort of, calm

your ego down and just go
back and do your work.

That scene actually works... not
because of me, but in spite of me

and that really is the marker and

definition of working with a true...
Truly good director.

There are many like it.

But this one is yours.

Why don't you have a seat.

Alright. Everybody calm down, calm down.

Thanks, guys.

This is the director's chair.

Alright.

Working on the project,
we knew we wanted

to have a pretty minimalist soundtrack.

And we had a folder where we
just threw music in there.

Looked at the folder one
day and we saw, "We have

a lot of stuff here from
Gustavo Santaolalla."

We're looking for a composer,
what if we reached out to him?

Oh no...

Sarah...

Move your hands, baby.

I know, baby, I know.

Listen to me, I know this hurts...

You're gonna be okay, baby.
Stay with me!

Okay I'm gonna pick you up,

I know, baby. I know it hurts.

C'mon baby, please. I know baby, I know!

Sarah...

Baby...

Fucker...

My life has been, and still
is kind of like a road movie.

I grew up in Argentina.

I came to the United States in 1978,

because we had a horrible
political situation in Argentina.

We had a military
dictatorship where 30,000

people disappeared at the
hands of the government

and many other more were
tortured, and I was blacklisted.

It was just impossible for
me to keep on living there.

I've been in jail many times since
I was probably 15 years old

just because I had long hair
and I play an electric guitar.

So I had to embark on this trip.

I can relate to that, kind of,

need of movement and going
to the next, next place,

and the next place, and the next step.

I'm always attracted
to the possibility of

getting involved with a project
from the very beginning.

I like to work from the script
and talking to the director.

It's never been, "Oh,
give me a piece like

this, or give me a music that's this."

It's just been very high level.

Here's what the story's about.

Here are the themes.

Go write some stuff.

Since I don't know how to
really read or write music,

but the way I produce music
is actually recording it.

So I like to come early in the
projects and I did in The Last of Us.

One thing that was fantastic
from the very, very beginning,

was the freedom that I had to try and to
do whatever I felt could work, you know?

As the story was still being written.

You could listen to this
piece of music and just

get a sense of where this
needs to go tonally.

Because, the music was
still inspiring the story.

So that was the great thing of having
the music written so far in advance.

At the beginning, mean I was going
really out with some things.

And sometimes some of
those things were the

ones that they liked the most, you know?

So I really felt very motivated to work.

And I enjoyed immensely working.

There was this very organic
back and forth experience where

one element was inspiring
the other and vice a versa.

I needed to go into
some more dark places.

And more textural and not
necessarily melodic.

I'm always trying to
sort of push myself into

playing instruments that I
don't know how to play.

There's an element of a
danger and innocence.

Lenin once said, "You know give
me a tuba and I will be able to

do something, I'm an artist. I
should be able to do something.

I like to put myself in that situation.

So, these are just PVC pipes,
the ones used in construction.

Or instruments that I
know, kind of twist them.

From the concept of the
prepared piano, you know.

I mean, I've worked
with prepared guitar.

To stick things into a
guitar and things like that.

And also in The Last
of Us in particular,

I worked with a de-tuned guitar.

So I really tuned the guitar
extremely low and the

result is, you know, strings
that are very loose.

And will produce not only
sound, but produce noise.

Because I believe, you know, every
environment has its own sound,

we have in our, you know, small
studio, we have actually the

possibility to record almost
anywhere including the bathroom.

And we have done some fabulous
recording especially in the kitchen.

When you score to picture,
which is something that I

don't do, then you know what
you're going to expect.

But when you provide
people with music, like

I've done in all the
films that I've done.

And then you see, how the director
decided to use that, you know.

In what particular way he used
it, or where they edit it.

It's always fascinating to me.

I watch a scene and I'm going, you know,
it's fantastic how they used this piece.

I would have never of all
the music that I've done,

probably, I would have never
used this piece there.

But, it works, you know, great.

So, I like that feeling
of collaboration.

I think, you know, the guys,
also that work in

programming and adapting
that music to the game.

They should share a lot of
the credit for the end result.

In the beginning, their was silence.

Yes.

- Then they hired sound designers, then they regret,
- Then the dinosaurs came.

regretted that decision.

Hold it steady.

Ha, got you!

In a much quieter environment like that,

We all had to fill out the soundscape
with much more natural sounds,

much more detailed, delicate sounds.

The tension comes from the
lack of sound, in a way.

Your brain is thrown off, because we
expect to hear busses and crowds.

All a sudden I hear wind
and leaves rustling.

Again, its creepy and
beautiful at the same time.

'Cause, it's almost like I'm going on
a hike, but I'm in a downtown area.

To kneel on Neil, when we were
going the iterations so that

he'd just did not want like yells,
and screeches,

and what you call like, you know,
kinda witchy qualities.

- Right.
- The cackling witch.

He didn't want anything like that.

It was a little bit of a head
scratcher to figure out,

Okay, How do we make it
sound human but not human.

Yeah.

We really did not want
to use any animals.

We wanted these all to be human.

Derrick and I basically decided
to hire a couple of voice actors,

who did some interesting
work, uh, vocally,

to see if they can come
up with something.

And we worked with this girl, Misty Lee.

She started giving us these
really great screeches.

That's no process.

Yeah, that's just her voice.

And it started going
into this little click.

We also used a little
bit of Phil's voice.

We combined that also
with an occasional, um...

Derrick.

That's just me, you know,
moving my tongue, just...

And what that kinda did was it
sort of grounded it all, like...

Like, maybe in the mouth area,
the wetness, all that kind of stuff.

And it adds a nice texturing, actually.

This is a composite of all
the bits I just told you about.

It sounds like a Snapple bottle.

Oh, the lid.

Like the lid, yeah.

Hey, that's a good idea!

Fuck, where were you guys
like months ago?

Why didn't we think of that.

Why didn't we think of that.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid.

Viewers at home.

You're probably wondering what this is.

Let me tell ya.

About ten years ago, I saw
this Synthi A suitcase synth.

I wanted to get one.

This finally arrived in January
just in time to start using.

I thought,
"Well, what can I do with this?"

Uh, in Lakeside, there's
a white out that happens.

And this thing has a noise generator,

which gives really
convincing wind sound.

Uh, the military still has technology.

There's sirens, and alarms, so I
wanted to try some new concepts.

Man...

What?

Nothing, it's just... I've never
seen anything like this, that's all.

You mean the woods?

Yeah. Never walked through the woods.
It's kinda cool.

Huh.

We consciously take in consideration
lighting in the beginning.

Most of the game, we don't really have
any real man made light sources.

So everything is naturally lit.

In the past, you know,
we could use a lot of artificial light.

But the world has no electricity.

We have to hide
most of the time and that

requires getting very close
to certain assets.

Just stay back.

Another way.

Damnit.

Detail's expensive.

And if you build up to much of it,
you end

up running into
technical problems, right.

Your engines slows down.

When the framerate goes down, everyone
can bring up the profiling tools

and see which parts
of the frame actually

caused the drop of the frame rate.

This is the profiling tool,
these are all the

SPUs, here's the GPU,
and then here's the PPU.

You can see like,
here's the main process and

here's all the subprocesses,
and you can see...

It tells you like how many
milliseconds and cycles it's taking.

The programmers are a whiz at
modifying this stuff and realizing,

"Oh my God, why is
this thing so big? We're

taking ten milliseconds on this thing."

And then that's when
they come over and find

somebody and hit them
over the head with a club

and be like, "Why are you doing this?"

I love... we put the
30 frames-per-second

goal, 'cause that's what we shoot for.

Someone nicely put
the 60 frames-per-second

goal. It's like, yeah,
we're not gonna hit that.

Lighters usually can
come up with different

lighting setup that still looks great,

but is less costly
in terms of performance.

Um, did you talk to the character
artist about her hand?

'Cause her face is
getting a lot of spec,

but then her arm is just bone dry.

You think something we can
tweak in shader or have to

send back to character team...
Michael... to take a look?

I can play with the lights and see
if that creates more light spec.

Yeah

I've never ever focused
so much on lighting and

how much sensitivity
their is to that here.

One of the first lighting scenarios
I had to do was like 7am overcast.

I'd like wake up early and like
take photos with my phone.

What color the shadows,
what color's the light?

It is a masters course onto itself of
how to deal with ambient lighting.

Because I've never had
to use it so much.

Man, this is kinda sad.

What is?

All this music that's just sitting here.

No one's around to listen to it.

I don't know, doesn't seem right.

All the characters cast soft
shadows onto the environment.

Even when there's no direct sunlight
or no direct light sources.

We still have nice, fuzzy shadows.

When you're walking down a hallway
and you see your soft shadow

goes along with you,
projecting it on a wall on

the environment, that makes
everything look real.

Follow me, through here.

Okay.

The flashlight brought a
whole new spin on it.

So some of the environments end
up being really, really dark.

And you need the
flashlight to get around.

Give me your hand.

We want to have the
environment be really dark.

But also at the same time have colorful
surfaces that are sort of hidden

So when the flashlight hits one of
those it bounces off onto the ceiling.

If you shine a light on a
red wall it will bounce

the red lighting on the
whole environment.

And it's very difficult to do,
very expensive, but we did it.

Everything should have bounce lighting.

Otherwise the world is going
to feel dry and unrealistic.

I guess this is where
the assholes sleep.

I mean, slept.

This engine is really driven
in a way towards a very

high level of cinematic
control over each frame.

And hopefully, if we achieve our
goal, you'll see it is beautiful.

There are these truly beautiful moments
amid all this chaos and destruction.

Yeah, once we're done
with this whole thing

I'm gonna gonna you
how to play a guitar.

What do you say, huh?

Ellie, come on.

I got you.

Damn it, Bill.

What just happened?

Another one of Bill's stupid traps!

There, that fridge, it looks
like that's the counter-weight.

Okay.

This story really dictates sort
of the arc of the overall pacing.

The storytelling would
always want to be subtle.

They would always want to keep
the world grounded in reality.

But gameplay has requirements.

Where the player needs
to see this thing.

The player needs to immediately
know that the enemy is attacking,

that this room is dangerous, that this

room is a puzzle, that
you have to solve.

What are the things
that we can do on the

joystick to make you feel the same way

that these characters gonna feel when we

get to this next pinch
point in the story.

There's a turn in a scene that we
need these characters to take.

And we need you to feel it or understand
that and that means you have to play it.

SAM!

Oh, thank God.

We gotta keep running!

Doorway, over there!

Run!

We really want to make sure
that there's that contrast between

the negative space and
then the high tension spikes.

A lot of times we won't play music.

Or we'll play very minimal music
just to let you know kind of the

state where you're still in
stealth, or combat has broken out.

Hearing someones footsteps or
hearing a person breathing

on the other side of the door
has so much tension to it.

Hear that?

Sh, sh. Quiet.

You feel the tension of the world.

Make you question whether
you want to engage with

these guys or kind of try
to stealth around them.

That's another reason why we don't
have traditional cover in the game.

You smoothly move around
everything contextualizing

with the environment, but
you're never locked down.

We want the player to...
with that crafting

system, with the scavenging system,

with all of the abilities
available to them to constantly

be moving around and changing
as the moment arises.

Gameplay is all about, I
have a limited set of tools,

and how am I going to use those tools

and those limitations to overcome
this obstacle in front of me.

That obstacle might be infected,
might be another

class of humans that
wants to kill me for

a bottle of alcohol and my shoes.

It was important for us that we
don't underplay the violence.

Because then the threat
doesn't seem as real.

We see video games as this
incredible medium to tell stories.

We want to treat it as equals to
books or comics or tv or movies.

This is subject matter that would not
be considered out of the ordinary

to tell in one of those other
forms of entertainment.

Fuckin' hunters.

See, this coulda been us.

We wanted you to buy just the
desperation of these people

and why they're behaving
this way, because it's so...

brutal.

And at the same time we didn't
want to make it so over

the top stylizing it so then
it doesn't become as real.

It was important for us
to actually hit that

middle ground where it's
kind of disturbing.

That glint that's happening
on that curvature,

It'd be good if there
was a way that we can

guarantee that, from this
angle, we're seeing it.

But it's, overall, too
bright and opaque.

Yeah, it looks like paint.

Yeah, see that blood on the
ground works really well.

It's something about the
other shader is messed up in

this environment. We gotta
fix that to unify the look.

It shouldn't make you giggle
or laugh or any of that.

You should be kind of
appalled by what you have

to do, but you understand
why you're doing it.

You want to feel each hit.

You want to feel each concussive strike.

Lives are at stake.

You want a death animation
to have impactful

performance, not just have a
guy keel over in a ragdoll.

In real life a guy hitting a guy
takes a half a second, but in

the game world you want that to
be as instantaneous as possible.

I live my whole life in
this very ugly test level.

Basically, I just fight
dudes in here all the time.

Almost every move is divided
between an intro and a swing,

and one of the many things I
have to end up doing is, like,

counting frames and be
like, "Okay on frame 18,

I want you to get out of here, I
want you to be able to start moving.

Every hit reaction that
an NPC plays, they

are not necessarily in the correct pose.

When you strike them
the next time, we just

pop them with a 0 frame
animation change.

Which is usually kind of a
no-no, you know what I mean.

You normally want a characters to blend

smoothly and realistically
into animations.

But what we found is that you can cover
that pop up with a heavy impact.

They can go from almost any pose into
the pose that the impact starts from

and your eye just covers
up the transition for you.

So if you throw a brick
at a guy, it puts him

in this like kind of
staggering, stunned state.

And that changes the moves that you
do when you come up and punch him.

So now I'm going to
come up and punch him.

And now when you're punching
him, because you've

hit him down, you get this
like auto aim moment.

Where you get like a free head shot.

I try to make it so that, you know,
if you kind of know what you're doing

that you can set yourself up
for one plus two equals three.

Right here!

Memory on a console is a
very precious resource.

All of Joel's animations
with every weapon, all

the NPC animations,
the stealth kills, you know,

all of that stuff happening needs to fit
within a 4meg to 5meg memory footprint.

This is a list of
everything that's loaded

in game and how much memory it's taking

because memory is our most
precious resource right now.

So we have a level. We call it
the bookstore. It's in Hunter City.

And this is a zone for example,
so when I set an AI

to this zone he will never
leave its boundaries.

I want guys to guard this exit,
where you have to go through, so,

I'll zone a couple guys around
there to make sure that

they, you know, they can fight
you and use all this cover

but they want to stay around this door.

This is another key component of the AI.
It's what we call the nav mesh.

This defines the overall play space of
where an AI knows he can or cannot go.

Hey look, that's where
a cover used to be and

there's a hole cut out for it,
I gotta fix that.

Here's some other wonderful things.

See these little red polygons?

Yeah, that means they're not
linking right for some reason,

so that means they can't really
walk through here properly.

It's a bug and I need to fix it.

Welcome to my life.

Surrounded!

Surrounded! Hey!

If you look at a lot of games,
NPC's are usually only alive for...

you know, a few seconds
before the player

ends up shooting them
and then they're dead.

Uh, we want our guys to be much more
dangerous and much more threatening.

Which means they have
to be alive for longer.

They need to uh,
exist in the world for longer,

which means you as the
player can witness them

acting out their behaviors longer.

So we've been working really
hard on our AI systems.

Back of the box, biggest
bullet is going to be like AI.

So we tried a number of different
prototypes with the buddies, uh

including having Ellie be
super independent of you.

She would try to flank the enemies, get

behind them, or get
between you and them.

And a lot of times those decisions
should surprise you just

like a real person or a real
character would surprise you.

And we discovered after many
different prototypes the best

thing for her to do, generally,
is to stay very near you.

You need the exploration and
you need the scavenging,

you need something to say like, okay, if

we just crank it to
eleven the whole time

then it's pinned up there and
there's no time to breath,

no time to assess, or analyze,
no time to really contrast.

There's no way of shifting the pacing.

Puzles are really werid.
Especially Naughty Dog puzzles, I think.

Like, they're very
simple and satisfying.

Most of this puzzle is strict
exploration... you can

see the ladder here,
you can see the pallett there.

You can see a clear
route up to the ladder.

So you're like, "Okay, maybe I
have to get Ellie to the pallett,

push the pallett over
to this side and, like,

Ellie will climb up and
lower the ladder."

So that whole part is,
like, not a puzzle,

it's not regarded as a puzzle, but

when you feel like you've
got to the solution,

like, okay I've got
to climb this ladder.

And you climb it and it breaks off...

Hopefully then the player will
feel a little bit stumped and

they'll be like, "I'm not really
sure what I'm meant to do now."

This is where the puzzle starts.

Hopefully at this point,
like, all of the elements

that the player needs
to solve the puzzle

are very familiar to them,
'cause they've

been through the previous
exporation beats,

they're improvising with elements
that are at their disposal.

That's a really sort of, like, strong
theme throughout "The Last of Us,"

you're a survivor,
you'll take whatever tools you're

given and use them in
creative ways to survive.

We set out to create
something kind of new

to Naughty Dog, uh,
this crafting system.

Our lead designer, uh,
Jacob Minkoff, he got

this book of like
The Survivalist's Handbook,

and "Homemade Munitions," and
all sorts of funny stuff,

just to start reading about,
okay if I was just

wandering around in a collapsed
society in this world,

what's the stuff that
seems like I could find.

Alcohol, and sugar, you know,
if you want to make a smoke bomb.

It's difficult to balance the
right amount of resources

against what you think the
player's going to need

and making sure that
the player feels like

they're getting just enough to survive,

but not too much that they feel
like they're a powerhouse.

We wanted you to be forced
to make some choices in the

world that showed how
depleted the resources were.

He will stay inside of here.

So if there's a particular
point in the story where the

characters are having a particularly
difficult time surviving,

then we want you as the
player to be finding

fewer items, farther apart,
harder to survive.

We will item starve you at
the same time that those,

those characters are feeling
starved and worn out.

Then you expose something to them.

Oh, here's a cache and if
I can just get into that

cache, oh look there's a
wealth of things in here.

God, I was so worried,
my health was low, if I...

If I had run into a combat, because
it's always that thing in your head.

It's that Hitchcockian thing
about the danger that you see

is less meaningful than the
danger that's in your head.

When we're designing the levels,
you know, it's nice to

have the stuff that we know
people are going to encounter,

you know, we kind of call this
some of the critical path stuff.

These are things that nine out
of ten players are going to

find, their right in the way,
it's where you have to go.

And then whenever we design a level,
you want to

have that, that little
nook and cranny right,

you want to reward the player,
being like, oh you went over here.

And then you also want to have
that other, second nook and cranny.

The player's supposed to
go place a ladder here

and climb up through
the rest of the hotel.

But, what they can also
do is shimmy across this

area and I placed a really
cool like upgrade um,

kind of off the beaten path to
reward players for exploring.

So if they come all the
way over here, they're

going to get this really
cool training manual.

It's a funny little bit of trivia,
the actual... the HUD system,

not the menus, not like when
you hit 'start' and stuff,

but the actual HUD system where
you see the reticles and stuff,

it was literally created for an
E3 demo early in Uncharted 1

and that's been our HUD system...
the foundation

of our HUD system for
the last four games.

First time in Naughty Dog's history,
we hired Alex... she's awesome.

Uh, and she's got a
really good understanding

of UI and how it applies to games.

The thing that I hate
about any game's UI is

when it pulls you out of
the game for too long.

No one wants to spend time in menus.

Nobody loves UI, if we're being honest.

Weapon slotting has
probably gone through

more iterations than any other system.

This stuff that we finally
ended up implementing.

You press 'select,
' you get into this menu,

then you D-pad left and
right through the slots,

and then D-pad up and down
will change the weapon

and then you don't have to press 'X' or
anything, you just select out of it.

When you're still, like Joel
is here, that's fine, but

then as soon as you get
into an actual situation,

so I'm gonna go over here
and cause some trouble...

Okay, so here they come... oh God!

Alright so now I'm out of ammo,
now I need to, like, get

back in that menu... I have to,
like, run away from them.

Get into the menu, get out of it, and
it ends up feeling like super clunky.

Like again, okay, I'm out
of ammo again... get out of

here, I need to take out
one of my other long guns

and now Bill's in trouble,
Bill's in trouble over here,

and I've got to, like,
I'm in a menu now and it's like,

Aw, shit, whoever designed
this UI is so bad.

Like, what were they thinking?
Bill's gonna die.

In theory, it worked, but then in
practice it felt a little clunky.

We wanted it to be the absolute
minimum amount of button presses.

You don't say to yourself,
"Oh, I'm never going to be

able to do this in time,
so I'm just going to give up.

I'll die, I'll restart,
let me try again."

You want to always make the
player feel that there is a

way to survive if they can
just do this fast enough.

And like, what's going to go in now

if you just left-right-D-pad through
this stuff you swap out your guns.

Like, between long gun and short gun.

If you're now on this gun and you
were to hold 'X' to pick your gun.

So it all happens within the same system
that you're using to slot the weapons.

The first iteration I did
on that was awful.

I just took way too long to get in,
it was just a mess.

QA was so upset at me,
like, all the time.

I'm sure they hate me now
because of that system.

I think the way the industry is kind
of maturing and changing in general,

you're seeing a lot more focus and
importance on refinement and polish.

So having internal QA really helps.

The industry is kind of changing
from QA being this, like,

"Tighten up the graphics on
level three, bro," kind of vibe

to like, really being a more technical,
mental, investigative job.

On the publisher's side,
it's more reactive towards the

code being delivered in a stable,
controlled environment

Whereas, on the developer's side,
especially at Naughty Dog,

we are going beneath the art and the
design. We're given enough weight where

we can go up to somebody
and be like, "Look, you

have to fix this." "Why?"
"Come over I'll show you."

That kind of feedback I would
love to be able to say, like,

"That was us," but it gets
so diffused throughout the

iteration process, that you really,
you're just kinda like,

adding your, uh, I guess like

genes into the gene pool and just

seeing what happens,
you know what I mean?

Everyone's working all the time now. Um,

like, I tell people, seven weeks and
then you can have tons of time off.

Enjoy the sun, you know?

But, for now, it's like...
this... for everybody.

THE LAST FIVE WEEKS

Crunching has been... is
part of making games.

I feel it's human nature, right?

If I'm going to have a guest at

home, that's going to come
for a couple of weeks.

I'm probably going to clean their room
just the day before they arrive, right?

And they think it's the
same thing, and it's

just like everything comes
together at the end.

I personally enjoy crunch.

I think you get this,
like, absolute laser focus

because it has to come together.

There's a comraderie, also...

There's a comraderie, totally. Yeah.

The vibe is everywhere,
you know what I mean?

Everyone's kind of, like,
giving it 150% at this point.

We're getting there, right?
You start to get these glimmers.

And, I don't think anyone
who doesn't make games

realizes how late in the process
you get those glimmers.

One week before we
shipped that press demo,

we're all like, "This kinda sucks.

What's going on here? We need
to dig down here and find this."

And in one week... like, one week...
The fun came together.

You're shooting at a guy and
then somebody flanks you

and you hit him, and you avoid
the other guy who's shooting you

and then you flank and go
behind cover and you're like,

"Oh, that five seconds in that 15-hour
game was really, really fun."

How do we make that five seconds
happen thousands more times?

My favorite videogame
is making videogames.

It is as challenging and as
complex and as interesting.

We had to try all the
things that didn't work.

What's hard about crunch, it's like

marching through that swamp
of it not working.

I mean nothing's ever
really final because

you can always make something better.

Always. So we're constantly changing
and constantly reiterating

and trying to make it better and better
and better pretty much until we ship.

As an artist, you're never
really happy with your work.

You can be given, like,
a hundred years to work on something,

you'll still find things to
nitpick and things to fix.

Yeah you can work on
the game for 10 years

and you'll still be
crunching at the end.

So, it's like... okay.

All of a sudden, as
I'm getting ready one

morning in the shower, and I was like,

"Oh yeah! I'm about to ship

another title and this is going
to be a really good title."

And it gets you excited and
you're like, "Alright!"

Do I think the game's gonna be good?

Yeah, it's gonna be awesome.

I think it was good a little while ago,
and now we're gonna make it...

- ...kind of amazing.
- Extra good.

What'll it take to get there
in these next five weeks?

It's going to be a lot.

I'm excited, I have faith.

Every time we're shipping
a game, it's terrifying.

You just hope for the best.

You don't know, right?
I mean, like, people have

different opinions, we
have to go with our guts.

But, I trust the team
just to pull it off.

This, hands down, is the hardest,
most challenging thing I've ever done.

We sweat a lot, and we worked a lot,
and we all went home tired, you know?

But I think that's what's...
you're gonna see

that on the screen.
I think that's gonna pay off.

Ellie?

Ellie?

What?

The ladder, c'mon.

Right.

After David, Ellie's visibly distant.

You could've done a cutscene
to show, "Hey, you're

being very distant," and
she's not responding.

But to also do that in gameplay
to where something that you've

done just countless times
throughout the game with, you know,

let me boost you up here,
get the ladder, bring

it down, so we can do
this systemic thing...

and the character responds with that and you

have to actually go over to her and go,

"Hey, come on, the ladder?
We've done this, let's do this."

It's a subtle choice.

Bruce and I talked in the beginning, it was like,

we have these mechanics, how can we exploit them in a narrative sense.

And that's one of those opportunities.

I just think it's incredible that happens in game, it's not a cinematic.

You know, it's something that adds weight

to that controller they're playing.

Waah! So good!

Let's go eat.

Let's go eat.