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The subtitles are manually created by:
@Nell.aja

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

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For maximum enjoyment, complete the game before watching.

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

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

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- NAUGHTY DOG AND AREA 5 PRESENT -

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

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You have more questions than you have answers.

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Especially when you come from, like, you've

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been making Uncharted 1 and Uncharted 2, just

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

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

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GROUNDED MAKING THE LAST OF US

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

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

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But that's what it takes.

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New IPs are really hard.

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

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You're building new tech, new AI,

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establishing new characters, new art, all this.

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You don't get to get that controller

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

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

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

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

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"They're going to behave like this."

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

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

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No.

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'Cause it didn't work, right?

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It's hard mode, right?

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

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

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You got your first build where everything's working.

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

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you can shoot, you can melee attack people,

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

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difficult, and it's totally not fun.

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Because they snuck up behind you and murdered you

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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because we don't really like hierarchy or bureaucracy

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and no one is really just a manager here.

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Naughty Dog has a very flat structure, uh,

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

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

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

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

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We believe in iteration,
we believe in collaboration,

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and we believe in the people making

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the game working directly
with each other.

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

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Anybody that's working
on the same tasks,

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the same characters, the same areas,

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

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

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you just walk over and
you talk and you go back

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to your desk and you finish it up.

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

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and I see designers talking
with the programmers

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or the programmers over
the animators talking to them.

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

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

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anybody can criticize
anybody else's work.

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And we encourage people
to be blunt about it

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and not try to sugar-coat it too much.

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It takes too long to be nice sometimes.

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

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We want everybody to have a voice,

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

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Making sure that people
are making decisions,

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

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

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

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

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We want to sort of remember
where we came from and

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

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We make games.

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That's what we like to do.

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Back when Uncharted 2 wrapped up
and we decided that

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we were going to build the second team

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

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

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

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those characters and that universe.

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We think that there are some

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interesting stories
still to be told there.

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

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

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

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

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Neil and Bruce came to
Christophe and I and

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said they wanted to do
a post-apocalpytic game.

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

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

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

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That potential. "Oh, wow.
There is something

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very special about that game."

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This is going to be polished.

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

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Should we be doing it
again, should we be doing

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a first-person shooter... whatever.

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You ask yourself all those questions.

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And the creative director
and the game director are

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

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

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

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

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

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trying always to find
the right balance between the two.

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It's a very delicate process.

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We feel that the interactive
medium has an untapped

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potential to touch the
feelings of the player.

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

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

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Gives us some sort of
an advantage to make

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you feel connected with
what's actually happening.

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

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is pair a story and gameplay together.

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If we can make you feel
like you're actually

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with these characters on that journey,

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

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

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As the story evolved and took
different shapes and different

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

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

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

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especially over the last
three to five years

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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that same growth that Joel does

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

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What are you doing?

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Killing time.

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Well, what am I supposed to do?

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I am sure you will figure that out.

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Your watch is broken.

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

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

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I want to make real people
in this crazy situation and

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

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Like what would we be
like in those situations?

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

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You just try to pick
characters and just be honest

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

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

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

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

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

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You get to see what's so powerful about

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a woman through all of
these female characters

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which makes this game
wonderful and unique.

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

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That's not exactly close.

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You're capable.

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

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Double what Robert sold me.

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Speaking of which, where are they?

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Back in our camp.

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We're not smuggling
shit until I see them.

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I want Joel to watch over her.

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

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Ellie!

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How do you know them?

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I do think having a
strong female character,

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especially like Ellie, is
so rare in videogames.

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

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because I'll see sort of
the stereotypical female

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character where she's amazingly
beautiful and huge boobs

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

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

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

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We haven't necessarily
seen the empowered

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woman from this kind of standpoint.

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There's that beautiful scene
where Joel finds her inside

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

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"Is this really what they
used to worry about?

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

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And to be met with those
first-world problems that

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

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

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

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

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

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This is her origin story, with Ellie.

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To sort of be such a
strong female character

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that is completely normal looking.

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

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

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

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

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

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she becomes the protagonist
by the end of the story.

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

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

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Who's there?

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

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

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

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

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

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Sorry, journalists.

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Here we go.

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Sorry.

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Hold on. That's it.

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The tone of the game was
set pretty early on that

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

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we knew that we wanted
to make the player

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feel the sense of tension, and dread,

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and go through the same
emotional rollercoaster

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that Joel and Ellie are going through.

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

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00:12:33,667 --> 00:12:37,709
well if we really want to ground this
world and make it so, like, realistic,

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

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

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

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and how different people
decide to survive.

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00:12:50,709 --> 00:12:51,709
Maybe that would be enough.

234
00:12:52,626 --> 00:12:55,901
And what we realized is, because
we're making an action game,

235
00:12:55,902 --> 00:12:58,542
a lot of the storytelling
happens on the joystick

236
00:12:58,584 --> 00:13:00,952
and once we removed the
infected, all of a sudden

237
00:13:00,953 --> 00:13:03,083
now we can't tell the
story through gameplay

238
00:13:03,125 --> 00:13:04,292
of what happened to the world.

239
00:13:04,334 --> 00:13:08,250
And that's when we kind of went back
and kinda brought the infected back in

240
00:13:08,292 --> 00:13:10,738
because it lets you see,
once you're fighting them,

241
00:13:10,739 --> 00:13:12,667
the threat that people had to deal with,

242
00:13:12,709 --> 00:13:15,876
that otherwise would just be very
cerebral and people could talk about it,

243
00:13:15,918 --> 00:13:18,250
but you couldn't necessarily
experience it yourself.

244
00:13:18,501 --> 00:13:20,847
In a novel that might
work, in a game, for us,

245
00:13:20,848 --> 00:13:23,292
and specifically an action
game, it didn't work.

246
00:13:23,334 --> 00:13:24,837
And from there, we
started kicking around

247
00:13:24,838 --> 00:13:26,125
those ideas, and we were just like,

248
00:13:26,167 --> 00:13:27,459
"what would be cool just to play?"

249
00:13:27,501 --> 00:13:29,845
The early inception for
it really came from

250
00:13:29,846 --> 00:13:32,083
a BBC video we saw
called "Planet Earth,"

251
00:13:32,125 --> 00:13:35,042
where they were talking
about a Cordyceps fungus.

252
00:13:35,083 --> 00:13:37,882
This Cordyceps fungus gets
inside of the brain and

253
00:13:37,883 --> 00:13:40,626
controls these ants and
mandibles start chomping.

254
00:13:40,667 --> 00:13:42,703
They go up to higher areas, Cordyceps

255
00:13:42,704 --> 00:13:45,125
fungus sprouts out and
then it germinates.

256
00:13:45,167 --> 00:13:48,656
And, essentially, uses them
to spread its infection and

257
00:13:48,657 --> 00:13:51,959
take over whole colonies,
sometimes wiping them out.

258
00:13:52,000 --> 00:13:54,084
As soon as we saw that
we were intrigued by

259
00:13:54,085 --> 00:13:56,167
the idea of, "What if
it jumped to humans?"

260
00:14:01,709 --> 00:14:04,584
What would happen? How would people
react? What would happen to society?

261
00:14:07,417 --> 00:14:10,625
As we were trying to develop
the look of the infected,

262
00:14:10,626 --> 00:14:13,541
um, we went through so
many different iterations.

263
00:14:13,542 --> 00:14:16,980
Some that looked really
alien and sub-human, um,

264
00:14:16,981 --> 00:14:20,417
some that looked just,
essentially, like zombies

265
00:14:20,459 --> 00:14:23,918
and we couldn't find, like,
an original place for them.

266
00:14:24,292 --> 00:14:27,751
But one of our artists just did
this kind of photo mash-up

267
00:14:27,792 --> 00:14:32,125
where he took a bunch of images of
diseases, images of fungal overgrowth

268
00:14:32,167 --> 00:14:35,501
and he kind of mashed it all together
and he threw it on this person.

269
00:14:36,083 --> 00:14:38,173
It was a very iterative
process, making sure

270
00:14:38,174 --> 00:14:40,125
that the fungus felt
properly integrated,

271
00:14:40,167 --> 00:14:43,209
like it was part of the body,
growing out of the body.

272
00:14:43,250 --> 00:14:46,626
And not just fungus growing on the head,
but it's tearing the face apart.

273
00:14:46,667 --> 00:14:51,626
Cleft down the middle, this gaping maw
of a mouth with the crooked teeth.

274
00:14:51,667 --> 00:14:54,872
And it's in great agony as it's humanity

275
00:14:54,873 --> 00:14:56,209
and its brain is still
somewhat functioning.

276
00:14:56,250 --> 00:14:58,759
You still have some human

277
00:14:58,760 --> 00:15:01,042
cognitive abilities or
thought process back here.

278
00:15:01,125 --> 00:15:03,420
This isn't some decaying corpse
on the ground, this is a

279
00:15:03,421 --> 00:15:05,959
living thing that's going to be
coming after you in the world.

280
00:15:06,000 --> 00:15:07,584
The fungus is always the focal point.

281
00:15:07,626 --> 00:15:09,392
So you can see from a distance, oh, this

282
00:15:09,393 --> 00:15:11,292
guy's infected, I can
tell straight away.

283
00:15:11,334 --> 00:15:14,584
In fungus, they have these
beautiful saturated colors.

284
00:15:14,626 --> 00:15:18,224
We really like that concept of this...
something so horrific that it's

285
00:15:18,225 --> 00:15:21,876
going to, like, stop at nothing,
it's this relentless, force of death

286
00:15:21,918 --> 00:15:24,167
and yet, elements of it are beautiful.

287
00:15:24,209 --> 00:15:28,375
It's not just about gore, it's not just
about everything about it being scary

288
00:15:28,417 --> 00:15:31,253
because to us it's actually
scarier when things

289
00:15:31,254 --> 00:15:34,209
on it are somewhat benign,
or somewhat beautiful.

290
00:15:34,250 --> 00:15:37,459
It was evident that we were on to
something that was quite a bit different

291
00:15:37,501 --> 00:15:40,709
and something that we
hadn't really seen before

292
00:15:40,751 --> 00:15:44,042
which was eerily human,
but very disturbing.

293
00:15:44,083 --> 00:15:47,334
And it seemed so creepy and so unique,

294
00:15:47,375 --> 00:15:50,799
right away we gravitated towards
it, like, this is our base

295
00:15:50,800 --> 00:15:54,167
infected, everything should
kind of come out of this look.

296
00:15:59,584 --> 00:16:02,620
So once we had this idea of this
face-splitting kind of look

297
00:16:02,621 --> 00:16:05,459
that eventually became what
we call the "Clicker stage,"

298
00:16:06,042 --> 00:16:10,125
We went to great lengths to create a
full biological cycle for these things.

299
00:16:10,167 --> 00:16:13,054
So, in the early stages you
don't actually see too

300
00:16:13,055 --> 00:16:16,000
many signs of the fungus
surfacing out of the skin.

301
00:16:16,042 --> 00:16:19,042
It's kind of underneath it, like,
people have lumps starting to show.

302
00:16:19,083 --> 00:16:21,968
The eyes will be kind of
cloudy, um, or lopsided

303
00:16:21,969 --> 00:16:25,209
because the fungus kind of
originates inside the head.

304
00:16:27,459 --> 00:16:30,417
That moves into the next phase,
which is the Clicking phase.

305
00:16:30,459 --> 00:16:33,709
And if they mess with the eyes, we end
up saying, well, how do they get around?

306
00:16:33,751 --> 00:16:35,292
Oh, echolocation.

307
00:16:35,334 --> 00:16:39,501
And they use a form of echolocation
to track down their enemies.

308
00:16:39,542 --> 00:16:44,459
Just like bats or even some blind people
can see by making a clicking sound.

309
00:16:44,501 --> 00:16:46,792
A sound that, on its own,
wouldn't be very scary.

310
00:16:46,834 --> 00:16:49,798
And then to associate
it with something that

311
00:16:49,799 --> 00:16:52,501
people in this world are very fearful of

312
00:16:52,542 --> 00:16:54,308
so that as you're
exploring an environment,

313
00:16:54,309 --> 00:16:55,876
all of a sudden you hear this "click,"

314
00:16:55,918 --> 00:16:57,981
and you're seeing everybody
just get frightened,

315
00:16:57,982 --> 00:16:59,667
just everybody ducks, everybody hushes.

316
00:17:03,667 --> 00:17:05,209
Ah, great.

317
00:17:13,584 --> 00:17:16,626
And the Bloater is the
most severe of the stages.

318
00:17:16,667 --> 00:17:18,798
So, large pieces of the body has been

319
00:17:18,799 --> 00:17:21,334
replaced by these, kind
of, fungal plates.

320
00:17:21,375 --> 00:17:24,626
The fungus completely takes
over the body and blooms.

321
00:17:24,667 --> 00:17:27,897
They're kind of covered in
things that have been growing

322
00:17:27,898 --> 00:17:30,959
on them, things like moss,
and life on life, kind of.

323
00:17:35,209 --> 00:17:37,125
What the fuck is that?

324
00:17:37,375 --> 00:17:38,334
A goddamned bloater!

325
00:17:38,375 --> 00:17:40,748
When an infected feels like
it's going to die, it finds

326
00:17:40,749 --> 00:17:43,250
like a dark corner and it becomes
part of the environment.

327
00:17:43,292 --> 00:17:44,959
The human elements aren't there anymore.

328
00:17:45,000 --> 00:17:46,791
And then the body is gone.

329
00:17:46,792 --> 00:17:50,709
They lay down, and sprout,
and then spew spores.

330
00:17:50,751 --> 00:17:54,083
And if people can breath those spores,
they become infected as well.

331
00:17:54,125 --> 00:17:58,000
It all had to kind of make sense of how
each state flowed from one to the other.

332
00:17:58,042 --> 00:18:00,851
And that's hopefully how we've
created a world that you can

333
00:18:00,852 --> 00:18:03,709
kind of look through it and
understand the science behind it

334
00:18:03,751 --> 00:18:06,667
and say, "I could buy this.
I can get into this."

335
00:18:17,292 --> 00:18:19,626
Mandatory evacuation.

336
00:18:20,375 --> 00:18:21,792
Evacuate to where?

337
00:18:22,417 --> 00:18:23,167
Where do you think?

338
00:18:23,667 --> 00:18:24,626
Quarantine zone.

339
00:18:25,417 --> 00:18:28,501
See, some places got a heads-up
before the infection showed up.

340
00:18:29,876 --> 00:18:31,042
Most didn't.

341
00:18:33,334 --> 00:18:35,561
Over the course of Joel
and Ellie's journey

342
00:18:35,562 --> 00:18:37,334
through this game, across America.

343
00:18:37,375 --> 00:18:40,751
You find all these different societies,
all this different enclaves.

344
00:18:40,792 --> 00:18:44,209
And you get to see how do
they deal with the infected.

345
00:18:44,250 --> 00:18:46,948
Without the manifestation of
this infection, you can't

346
00:18:46,949 --> 00:18:49,501
have these people making
those interesting choices.

347
00:18:59,709 --> 00:19:02,000
The world, we decided, was
actually its own character.

348
00:19:02,042 --> 00:19:04,209
Really grounded with a lot of texture.

349
00:19:04,626 --> 00:19:07,166
What happens, you know,
after 20 years of the fall

350
00:19:07,167 --> 00:19:09,459
of man when no one's
taking care of anything?

351
00:19:09,501 --> 00:19:13,834
This book called "The World
Without Us" describes in detail

352
00:19:13,876 --> 00:19:17,501
how much fighting on a day-to-day basis
we have to do to keep nature back.

353
00:19:17,542 --> 00:19:21,584
And once you stopped doing that, how
quickly nature can reclaim that.

354
00:19:21,626 --> 00:19:23,712
They talk about New
York and how every day

355
00:19:23,713 --> 00:19:25,751
they pump water out
of the subway system.

356
00:19:25,792 --> 00:19:28,542
That system breaks down, within two
days that whole city is flooded,

357
00:19:28,584 --> 00:19:32,375
and once water gets introduced, then
structures collapse pretty quickly.

358
00:19:32,417 --> 00:19:35,501
Trees will sprout and wind
will carry those seeds over.

359
00:19:35,542 --> 00:19:38,017
And gutters get clogged and when
it rains water fills up and

360
00:19:38,018 --> 00:19:40,292
then pretty soon you have
vegetation growing over there

361
00:19:40,334 --> 00:19:43,396
and once you have vegetation,
concrete breaks pretty easily

362
00:19:43,397 --> 00:19:46,459
for... when there's a tree and
roots breaking through them.

363
00:19:46,501 --> 00:19:48,627
Even some of the stuff
we did on Uncharted, you

364
00:19:48,628 --> 00:19:50,667
know, exploration on how
temples were ruined,

365
00:19:50,709 --> 00:19:54,459
what if you took those ideas and
put them in Pittsburg or Boston?

366
00:19:54,501 --> 00:19:56,879
And obviously right when
that happened, you can

367
00:19:56,880 --> 00:19:59,209
imagine that being pretty
terrible to look at.

368
00:19:59,250 --> 00:20:01,317
But you think about
twenty years later, and

369
00:20:01,318 --> 00:20:03,292
with rain water filling
up thos sinkholes

370
00:20:03,334 --> 00:20:06,209
and those becoming little marshes
with lilly pads in them.

371
00:20:06,250 --> 00:20:10,125
We had this wonderful piece of concept
art we developed really early on

372
00:20:10,167 --> 00:20:13,307
and there are all of these
wild animals that have escaped

373
00:20:13,308 --> 00:20:16,125
from a zoo and over the
past twenty years have bred

374
00:20:16,167 --> 00:20:18,459
and now they have herds
roaming these cities.

375
00:20:18,501 --> 00:20:20,864
And that's something that tells you that

376
00:20:20,865 --> 00:20:23,584
life goes on and this
world is worth saving.

377
00:20:29,125 --> 00:20:30,834
Shhh, don't scare it.

378
00:20:30,876 --> 00:20:32,209
I won't, I won't.

379
00:20:33,209 --> 00:20:34,209
What are you doing?

380
00:20:34,626 --> 00:20:36,963
There's something really
pretty about nature

381
00:20:36,964 --> 00:20:39,042
reclaiming its domain once we are gone.

382
00:20:39,709 --> 00:20:41,209
So fucking cool.

383
00:20:41,751 --> 00:20:43,829
We have another level
of OCD of the logic

384
00:20:43,830 --> 00:20:45,959
that goes into some of
these environments.

385
00:20:46,542 --> 00:20:49,667
Water damage seeps in and that creates
some little moss growing on the floor,

386
00:20:49,709 --> 00:20:52,559
or a tree radiates energy
from its base and that,

387
00:20:52,560 --> 00:20:55,125
over time, starts to
melt the snow around it

388
00:20:55,167 --> 00:20:56,916
and that's the reason
why you'd see those

389
00:20:56,917 --> 00:20:58,792
rings of leaves showing
through in the snow.

390
00:20:58,834 --> 00:21:01,667
That gives it that extra,
you know, believability.

391
00:21:01,709 --> 00:21:04,187
This is pitch art. I'll
try to start with an idea

392
00:21:04,188 --> 00:21:06,667
that conveys sort of the
feel of the environment.

393
00:21:06,709 --> 00:21:09,459
Something like this... very brush
stroke-y, very painterly.

394
00:21:09,501 --> 00:21:14,542
You can see not a lot of detail,
just energy and conveying a mood.

395
00:21:14,584 --> 00:21:17,793
This is sort of just a conversation
starter, and then this

396
00:21:17,794 --> 00:21:21,167
would be more of an actual space,
so you start talking about,

397
00:21:21,209 --> 00:21:23,958
is this too tight of a space right here?
Would the player

398
00:21:23,959 --> 00:21:26,709
even fit through there? Do we
even want to include water?

399
00:21:26,751 --> 00:21:28,876
Those are conversations you start
having a little bit later.

400
00:21:29,959 --> 00:21:31,853
And then it usually needs
several more passes

401
00:21:31,854 --> 00:21:33,626
back and forth in order
to be tightened up

402
00:21:33,667 --> 00:21:36,417
to be the experience that you
would see in the final product.

403
00:21:36,459 --> 00:21:38,986
So, dude, I was actually
trying to figure out right

404
00:21:38,987 --> 00:21:41,417
here, there should probably
be some dead foliage.

405
00:21:41,626 --> 00:21:43,812
It might be kinda cool to see
some of the dead stuff around the

406
00:21:43,813 --> 00:21:46,000
edges of the green or, like, even
spilling out into the street.

407
00:21:46,042 --> 00:21:48,937
Maybe what we do is, in some
of these areas we use it

408
00:21:48,938 --> 00:21:51,834
as like a transition to form
from the actual concrete

409
00:21:51,876 --> 00:21:53,840
up to the side of the
building, so they're

410
00:21:53,841 --> 00:21:56,125
actually sitting on top
of a bed of dead foliage.

411
00:21:56,167 --> 00:21:59,383
Yeah. Like the really rich, kind of,
orange-y brown color.

412
00:21:59,417 --> 00:22:01,501
Sienna or something would be nice.

413
00:22:01,542 --> 00:22:02,542
Something really cheddary.

414
00:22:02,667 --> 00:22:03,709
That's how you know you're done.

415
00:22:03,751 --> 00:22:05,875
The end product often
ends up being stronger

416
00:22:05,876 --> 00:22:08,000
because that bouncing
back off somebody else

417
00:22:08,042 --> 00:22:09,705
gives you a result that
maybe you wouldn't

418
00:22:09,706 --> 00:22:11,292
have even thought of in the first place.

419
00:22:15,959 --> 00:22:19,000
Alright, there's the bridge... that's
our way out of here.

420
00:22:20,626 --> 00:22:23,422
As far as concept art goes,
definitely, the ultimate

421
00:22:23,423 --> 00:22:26,167
goal is just helping everybody
as much as possible.

422
00:22:26,209 --> 00:22:27,751
Me and the background
artist will work together.

423
00:22:27,792 --> 00:22:29,749
I'll often just go to
them, 'cause they've got,

424
00:22:29,750 --> 00:22:31,667
like a really, really
good visual imagination.

425
00:22:32,584 --> 00:22:36,667
At some point, he came
in, almost like flat on.

426
00:22:36,709 --> 00:22:39,224
So that's kind of good, because the bus

427
00:22:39,225 --> 00:22:42,000
station is right in
your peripheral view,

428
00:22:42,042 --> 00:22:44,584
and you're probably going
to enter the bus station,

429
00:22:44,626 --> 00:22:45,667
you're probably not going to get lost.

430
00:22:45,709 --> 00:22:48,876
But it doesn't at all utilize
this cool architecture here,

431
00:22:49,501 --> 00:22:53,417
like the bus station sign, like that's
a really distinctive silhouette

432
00:22:53,459 --> 00:22:55,626
and it's a really interesting
sort of architectural detail.

433
00:22:55,667 --> 00:22:58,751
So we changed the entrance.

434
00:23:01,250 --> 00:23:05,751
Look at that... another city, another
abandoned quarantine zone.

435
00:23:07,584 --> 00:23:10,918
I think it's a better composition,
anyway. It's not so, like, symmetrical.

436
00:23:11,792 --> 00:23:15,209
And I think that was done
so this sign read better.

437
00:23:15,250 --> 00:23:16,961
If you can't see the word
"BUS" on it, you might

438
00:23:16,962 --> 00:23:18,709
not know it's a bus station,
so I think it helps.

439
00:23:19,083 --> 00:23:24,167
Everything we're doing in the
environments is relaying back to

440
00:23:24,209 --> 00:23:27,876
what you should be feeling in the story
or what's happening to these characters.

441
00:23:30,292 --> 00:23:32,125
Well, is that everything you hoped for?

442
00:23:33,125 --> 00:23:34,417
Jury's still out.

443
00:23:35,292 --> 00:23:38,375
But, man, you can't deny that view.

444
00:23:40,501 --> 00:23:41,459
C'mon, this way.

445
00:23:43,000 --> 00:23:45,670
When we first came up
with Ellie and Joel, we

446
00:23:45,671 --> 00:23:48,459
had this idea in our heads
of who they would be

447
00:23:48,501 --> 00:23:51,876
but we didn't necessarily
know the voice.

448
00:23:51,918 --> 00:23:54,667
Took us a while to find
our Joel, but for Ellie,

449
00:23:54,709 --> 00:23:56,738
I think Ashley was the second or third

450
00:23:56,739 --> 00:23:59,250
candidate to walk in,
and right away we knew.

451
00:24:00,876 --> 00:24:02,792
Why are you so scared all of a sudden?

452
00:24:02,834 --> 00:24:04,626
Because I'm a coward, okay?

453
00:24:05,000 --> 00:24:07,459
So just get your shit and
let's get out of here.

454
00:24:08,918 --> 00:24:09,542
Damn it.

455
00:24:12,542 --> 00:24:14,209
I'm not like her, you know?

456
00:24:15,167 --> 00:24:15,667
What?

457
00:24:18,375 --> 00:24:20,250
You think I'm gonna end
up like your daughter.

458
00:24:20,292 --> 00:24:23,126
The way she delivered her lines,
the way she just embodied that

459
00:24:23,127 --> 00:24:25,918
character is like, that's Ellie,
there's no question about it.

460
00:24:25,959 --> 00:24:30,459
I saw the character artwork
and I related to her a lot.

461
00:24:30,501 --> 00:24:34,250
I mean, she's kind of a tomboy
and she's kind of tough and,

462
00:24:34,292 --> 00:24:36,835
I mean, obviously I'm not
fourteen and I think

463
00:24:36,836 --> 00:24:39,542
that's the main difference
between the two of us.

464
00:24:39,584 --> 00:24:43,000
I read the scenes and I was like,
"I need to play this part."

465
00:24:43,459 --> 00:24:44,584
You wanna be my hero?

466
00:24:45,000 --> 00:24:46,897
Forget the whole bit
about saving my life,

467
00:24:46,898 --> 00:24:48,751
buy me a stack of these
bad boys instead.

468
00:24:49,792 --> 00:24:50,709
Where'd you get that?

469
00:24:52,417 --> 00:24:53,334
Back at Bill's.

470
00:24:54,125 --> 00:24:56,042
I mean all this stuff
was just lying around.

471
00:24:56,209 --> 00:24:58,792
And then once we had her, we said,
"Okay, we're going to do another round."

472
00:24:58,834 --> 00:25:01,667
We're going to have Ashley this
time, in the casting sessions.

473
00:25:01,709 --> 00:25:04,792
The chemistry of these two characters
was imperative to get right.

474
00:25:05,167 --> 00:25:08,103
Troy was a really interesting
casting for Joel, because,

475
00:25:08,104 --> 00:25:10,834
when you see Troy, he doesn't
look like Joel at all.

476
00:25:10,876 --> 00:25:14,417
You know, he's so handsome, and he had
like, you know, the frosty hair and

477
00:25:14,459 --> 00:25:18,501
totally looked like Final
Fantasy, and so...

478
00:25:18,709 --> 00:25:24,959
I'm like, I don't know, he's
like this tall, pretty, um...

479
00:25:25,792 --> 00:25:26,792
it didn't seem right.

480
00:25:26,834 --> 00:25:28,916
I walked into the room
fully aware that I was the

481
00:25:28,917 --> 00:25:31,125
youngest person that they
were seeing for this role.

482
00:25:31,167 --> 00:25:33,542
There was a line that was on the
audition side that says that

483
00:25:33,584 --> 00:25:36,459
Joel has few moral lines left to cross.

484
00:25:37,209 --> 00:25:40,083
And so that became the anchor
point to the character.

485
00:25:40,125 --> 00:25:43,834
But then as soon as he spoke and
he had that grit in his voice...

486
00:25:43,876 --> 00:25:46,876
Warm, yet kind of dangerous.

487
00:25:46,918 --> 00:25:48,959
And his movement, you
just bought into it.

488
00:25:49,000 --> 00:25:50,501
Why are you so scared all of a sudden?

489
00:25:50,542 --> 00:25:53,792
Because I'm a big coward, okay? Now
pack up your shit and let's go!

490
00:25:53,834 --> 00:25:54,751
Goddamnit!

491
00:25:57,709 --> 00:25:58,667
I'm not her, you know?

492
00:26:00,834 --> 00:26:01,375
What?

493
00:26:04,334 --> 00:26:06,125
You think I'm gonna end
up like your daughter.

494
00:26:08,334 --> 00:26:13,876
Now, Ellie, you are treadin' on
some very thin ice right now.

495
00:26:15,417 --> 00:26:17,000
It was Ellie and Joel.

496
00:26:17,042 --> 00:26:19,709
After he read, it was just
like that was... that was it.

497
00:26:19,751 --> 00:26:22,401
I've done some videogames in
the past, but to be handed the

498
00:26:22,402 --> 00:26:24,876
mantle of a franchise like
this was a pretty big honor.

499
00:26:25,167 --> 00:26:26,125
Is she alive?

500
00:26:27,334 --> 00:26:28,167
She's alive.

501
00:26:29,459 --> 00:26:31,125
She's David's newest pet.

502
00:26:33,542 --> 00:26:34,292
Where?

503
00:26:36,125 --> 00:26:38,417
In the town! She's in the town.

504
00:26:42,501 --> 00:26:44,978
Now you mark it on the map.
And it better be

505
00:26:44,979 --> 00:26:47,292
the same exact spot
your buddy points to.

506
00:26:47,834 --> 00:26:51,250
Neil pulled me aside one day and
he said, "I have some ideas."

507
00:26:51,292 --> 00:26:56,292
And as you're well aware,
Neil is a little twisted.

508
00:26:56,334 --> 00:26:59,584
He came up with this character and,
you know, I just jumped at it.

509
00:26:59,626 --> 00:27:02,333
It was such a departure
from everything I've

510
00:27:02,334 --> 00:27:05,042
done here for Naughty
Dog, to say the least.

511
00:27:06,876 --> 00:27:07,584
Name's David.

512
00:27:08,417 --> 00:27:09,876
This here's my friend, James.

513
00:27:10,834 --> 00:27:12,459
We're from a larger group.

514
00:27:13,125 --> 00:27:16,209
Women, children. We're
all very, very hungry.

515
00:27:16,292 --> 00:27:19,200
To be able to put on a voice
that hopefully a lot of

516
00:27:19,201 --> 00:27:22,000
people won't know, won't
notice that it's even me.

517
00:27:22,042 --> 00:27:23,542
'Cause we didn't want it to be Drake.

518
00:27:24,167 --> 00:27:28,792
Drake eating people, that's... that's
a whole 'nother game.

519
00:27:30,125 --> 00:27:31,459
How did you put it?

520
00:27:34,125 --> 00:27:35,292
Tiny pieces.

521
00:27:37,959 --> 00:27:39,334
See ya tomorrow, Ellie.

522
00:27:40,834 --> 00:27:44,792
Ya know, certain voices that I can
do wouldn't fit David's artwork,

523
00:27:44,834 --> 00:27:48,007
but he showed me the art, and
I said, "Maybe it's something

524
00:27:48,008 --> 00:27:50,918
like this where everything's,
you know, is very quiet.

525
00:27:50,959 --> 00:27:54,042
And you know, he's not really sure
and the voice can break a little."

526
00:27:54,083 --> 00:27:56,292
And he just looked and he
goes, "Yeah, that's it."

527
00:27:56,918 --> 00:28:00,375
So I'd love to tell you that we
hashed it over and we talked... no.

528
00:28:00,417 --> 00:28:04,083
It was... I looked at the picture and I
tried something and he said, "Yeah."

529
00:28:05,292 --> 00:28:09,876
A few weeks back, I sent
a group of men out.

530
00:28:10,876 --> 00:28:13,334
Nearby town to look for food.

531
00:28:15,167 --> 00:28:16,667
Only a few came back.

532
00:28:19,000 --> 00:28:24,083
And turns out that... the others
had been, uh... slaughtered

533
00:28:24,125 --> 00:28:26,042
by a crazy man.

534
00:28:26,834 --> 00:28:28,584
And get this, he...

535
00:28:29,876 --> 00:28:32,959
he was with... a little girl.

536
00:28:35,375 --> 00:28:36,000
You see?

537
00:28:37,751 --> 00:28:39,459
Everything happens for a reason.

538
00:28:41,626 --> 00:28:41,667
Clear.

539
00:28:42,042 --> 00:28:44,209
Ashley, she brought humor to it.

540
00:28:44,250 --> 00:28:47,334
She just has some really
great comedic timing.

541
00:28:47,375 --> 00:28:52,125
The way she reacts to the things around
the world with a little bit of sarcasm.

542
00:28:52,167 --> 00:28:55,709
That teen, kind of like trying
to get a rise out of you.

543
00:28:55,751 --> 00:28:58,959
Now watch your step as you're going
up, 'cause it's gonna be a little...

544
00:28:59,000 --> 00:28:59,876
Pfft.

545
00:29:01,834 --> 00:29:04,959
It just brought a certain levity to
the story that the story needed.

546
00:29:05,000 --> 00:29:06,658
We didn't even realized
it needed it until

547
00:29:06,659 --> 00:29:08,125
she started doing some of that stuff.

548
00:29:08,751 --> 00:29:13,417
Oh, I'm sure your friend will
be missing this tonight.

549
00:29:13,459 --> 00:29:14,751
Mm hmm.

550
00:29:14,792 --> 00:29:17,918
It's, uh, light on the reading, but
it's got some interesting photos

551
00:29:17,959 --> 00:29:20,334
Now, now, Ellie, that ain't for kids.

552
00:29:20,375 --> 00:29:25,292
Woah! How the hell would you even
walk around with that thing?

553
00:29:25,334 --> 00:29:26,209
Get rid of that!

554
00:29:26,250 --> 00:29:29,334
Hold your horses, I want to see
what all the fuss is about.

555
00:29:29,375 --> 00:29:32,375
Oh, why're these all stuck together?

556
00:29:33,125 --> 00:29:34,000
Uhm...

557
00:29:34,709 --> 00:29:38,250
I'm just fucking with you.

558
00:29:39,459 --> 00:29:40,792
Bye bye, dude.

559
00:29:41,125 --> 00:29:44,209
Throughout the course of shooting
over these past couple years,

560
00:29:44,250 --> 00:29:46,417
Ellie and I have kind
of morphed into each

561
00:29:46,418 --> 00:29:48,334
other, which I know sounds so cheesy.

562
00:29:48,375 --> 00:29:51,667
Neil always asks, "Well, what
would you do in this situation?"

563
00:29:51,709 --> 00:29:54,728
The most important thing that
Ashley brought is a sense of

564
00:29:54,729 --> 00:29:58,209
capability to Ellie's character
that wasn't there in the beginning.

565
00:29:58,250 --> 00:30:00,561
The very first thing
we shot involved her

566
00:30:00,562 --> 00:30:02,709
being pulled out of a car and attacked

567
00:30:02,751 --> 00:30:04,459
and Joel was supposed to go save her.

568
00:30:04,501 --> 00:30:06,741
It was written that Ellie sort
of was just kinda watching

569
00:30:06,742 --> 00:30:09,951
on the side, just waiting
'till he was done, and...

570
00:30:10,501 --> 00:30:12,501
I was a little frustrated
because I was like...

571
00:30:12,542 --> 00:30:15,375
well, I... if this were real
life, I would do something.

572
00:30:15,417 --> 00:30:18,800
We did a couple takes, and at some point
she walked up to me and she said,

573
00:30:18,918 --> 00:30:20,250
"I feel like I'd hit him."

574
00:30:20,734 --> 00:30:24,067
So we added in a part, like, you
know, right there off the bat.

575
00:30:24,109 --> 00:30:26,605
She's not just this damsel
in distress, right there she

576
00:30:26,606 --> 00:30:29,192
wanted to fight back from her
very first day of shooting.

577
00:30:29,234 --> 00:30:30,567
We didn't have it right initially.

578
00:30:30,609 --> 00:30:33,318
She needs to be more capable than
initially we thought she would be,

579
00:30:33,359 --> 00:30:35,724
and actually that made
us go back and rethink

580
00:30:35,725 --> 00:30:38,400
combat, and rething a lot
of the areas in the game.

581
00:30:38,442 --> 00:30:41,609
And now, she was going to
take a much more active part.

582
00:30:47,359 --> 00:30:49,560
Anything that requires,
you know, a lot of body

583
00:30:49,561 --> 00:30:51,901
movement we do with the
actors on the mocap stage.

584
00:30:51,942 --> 00:30:55,400
And we try as much as possible to
use our actual principle actors...

585
00:30:55,442 --> 00:30:57,942
Use their body motion
as well as their voice.

586
00:30:57,984 --> 00:30:59,734
We capture it all at
once there on the stage.

587
00:30:59,775 --> 00:31:03,250
Having the actors perform as
well as being recorded at the

588
00:31:03,251 --> 00:31:06,609
same time was imperative to
get an accurate performance.

589
00:31:06,650 --> 00:31:08,855
'Cause every time you
split up the performance

590
00:31:08,856 --> 00:31:10,734
in any way, you lose some of that magic

591
00:31:10,775 --> 00:31:13,692
where they did a gesture or they
delivered a line a certain way.

592
00:31:13,734 --> 00:31:16,132
And those things have to
be in synch or there's

593
00:31:16,133 --> 00:31:18,483
just something subconscious
that's just, like,

594
00:31:18,525 --> 00:31:20,984
off-putting about the performance
when you don't do it that way.

595
00:31:21,192 --> 00:31:24,067
You are treadin' on
mighty thin ice here.

596
00:31:25,151 --> 00:31:27,442
I'm sorry about your daughter, Joel.

597
00:31:27,483 --> 00:31:29,109
But I have lost people, too.

598
00:31:29,151 --> 00:31:32,609
You have no idea what "loss" is.

599
00:31:34,276 --> 00:31:38,817
Everyone I have cared for
has either died or left me.

600
00:31:40,234 --> 00:31:42,775
Everyone... fucking except for you.

601
00:31:45,359 --> 00:31:47,828
So don't tell me that I
would be safer with someone

602
00:31:47,829 --> 00:31:50,442
else because the truth is I
would just be more scared.

603
00:31:51,318 --> 00:31:55,901
It gives you the most authentic,
most realistic performance

604
00:31:55,942 --> 00:31:59,567
because you're actually there... not
just making your own choices

605
00:31:59,609 --> 00:32:02,483
but making your own choices based on the
other people involved in that scene.

606
00:32:02,525 --> 00:32:07,442
So you get this truly natural
approach to things, and it shows up.

607
00:32:07,859 --> 00:32:11,151
It's like theatre in the round... you
can do anything from any angle

608
00:32:11,192 --> 00:32:13,817
and the smallest, most subtle
thing we'll be able to pick up.

609
00:32:13,859 --> 00:32:15,067
There's no place to hide.

610
00:32:15,109 --> 00:32:18,319
So you have to be
as prepared as possible

611
00:32:18,320 --> 00:32:21,234
because you have no idea
which moments they're going to use.

612
00:32:21,276 --> 00:32:25,482
There are these little improv moments
and, you know, little nuances

613
00:32:25,483 --> 00:32:28,277
that you get that probably
isn't scripted that just

614
00:32:28,278 --> 00:32:31,234
comes out of play, you know,
while they're performing.

615
00:32:31,276 --> 00:32:35,817
That... that mistake that just
blossomed into a really good idea.

616
00:32:36,734 --> 00:32:40,483
Did we improv on The Last of Us?

617
00:32:40,901 --> 00:32:43,192
Yes. Yes, we did.

618
00:32:43,775 --> 00:32:45,999
Doing this was a whole
lot lot being five,

619
00:32:46,000 --> 00:32:48,483
playing in the backyard
with a stick, you know,

620
00:32:48,525 --> 00:32:52,692
and this is my machine gun and, you
know, a pinecone is my hand grenade.

621
00:32:52,734 --> 00:32:54,234
It's all your imagination.

622
00:32:54,276 --> 00:32:56,744
I'm doing the exact same shit that I did

623
00:32:56,745 --> 00:32:59,400
45 years ago, I just
get paid for it now.

624
00:33:01,151 --> 00:33:01,984
We square?

625
00:33:03,192 --> 00:33:03,901
We're square.

626
00:33:05,026 --> 00:33:06,692
Then get the fuck out of my town.

627
00:33:09,151 --> 00:33:11,704
I don't do a lot fo voice-over
work, so for me, it was

628
00:33:11,705 --> 00:33:14,026
nice to be able to work
off of your other actors.

629
00:33:14,067 --> 00:33:16,151
I can't imagine it working any other way

630
00:33:16,192 --> 00:33:20,318
I'd never done mocap before,
I didn't know what to expect.

631
00:33:20,359 --> 00:33:22,567
The suits were crazy.

632
00:33:22,817 --> 00:33:24,483
Yeah, the suit gave me wedgies.

633
00:33:26,067 --> 00:33:29,734
Like, deep wedgies that I had to
pick out with my middle finger.

634
00:33:29,775 --> 00:33:31,483
Too much information.

635
00:33:32,109 --> 00:33:35,026
Just how damn sexy I look
in a motion capture suit.

636
00:33:35,067 --> 00:33:40,440
I look like ten pounds of sausage in a
five-pound casing in that thing, man.

637
00:33:40,493 --> 00:33:42,961
Once you get passed the fact
that, like, everybody else,

638
00:33:42,962 --> 00:33:45,525
and you, look like weird clown people

639
00:33:45,567 --> 00:33:48,483
with these little dots and stuff,
once you give over to that

640
00:33:48,525 --> 00:33:51,042
it really was pretty easy
to make it just feel

641
00:33:51,043 --> 00:33:53,400
like you're in the
moment and in the scene.

642
00:33:53,442 --> 00:33:55,502
Everyone that was on
this is a slam dunk.

643
00:33:55,503 --> 00:33:57,318
This isn't just another gig to them.

644
00:33:57,359 --> 00:33:59,421
And that creates a really
cool energy for people

645
00:33:59,422 --> 00:34:01,442
to really start experimenting
and playing jazz.

646
00:34:02,650 --> 00:34:03,567
Floor's yours.

647
00:34:05,192 --> 00:34:06,609
And...

648
00:34:06,859 --> 00:34:07,400
Action.

649
00:34:13,067 --> 00:34:13,901
Get the fuck off her!

650
00:34:13,984 --> 00:34:14,276
Hey, hey!

651
00:34:14,318 --> 00:34:15,234
Let her go!

652
00:34:16,692 --> 00:34:17,984
Don't worry, this is fixable.

653
00:34:19,609 --> 00:34:20,859
But I can't come with you.

654
00:34:23,026 --> 00:34:24,442
Well, then I'm staying.

655
00:34:24,483 --> 00:34:25,151
Ellie.

656
00:34:26,234 --> 00:34:27,442
I want Joel to watch over her.

657
00:34:27,483 --> 00:34:29,567
- Oh, no, no... absolutely not, this has gone too...
- Bullshit! I am not going with him!

658
00:34:29,568 --> 00:34:31,025
Ellie!

659
00:34:31,026 --> 00:34:33,942
Look. Just take her to the north
tunnel and wait for me there.

660
00:34:35,859 --> 00:34:36,817
Jesus Christ.

661
00:34:36,859 --> 00:34:38,442
Just cargo, Joel.

662
00:34:40,359 --> 00:34:41,442
How do you know them?

663
00:34:41,734 --> 00:34:45,276
We craft the scene out
until it has a good feel

664
00:34:45,318 --> 00:34:47,442
and then we pass it off to
animation to clean it up.

665
00:34:47,483 --> 00:34:50,901
Real-life motions don't necessarily
always translate into gameplay

666
00:34:50,942 --> 00:34:53,084
There's something that's
usually missing, so

667
00:34:53,085 --> 00:34:55,276
we have to, you know,
maybe enhance a gesture

668
00:34:55,318 --> 00:35:00,318
or enhance the shoulder movements or a
breath that you want to be able to feel

669
00:35:00,359 --> 00:35:02,942
but you don't really see it, so you
can't really feel it unless you see it.

670
00:35:07,817 --> 00:35:09,067
Is everything alright?

671
00:35:10,525 --> 00:35:11,901
Yeah, everything's fine.

672
00:35:12,817 --> 00:35:16,318
I could have him lean in here a
little bit more, like this...

673
00:35:16,359 --> 00:35:17,942
Take his hand down.

674
00:35:17,984 --> 00:35:20,901
When they're on stage, they don't
necessarily have windows, you know

675
00:35:20,942 --> 00:35:23,801
so that weight of, like,
really pushing and leaning

676
00:35:23,802 --> 00:35:26,442
in, it's something we
would have to accentuate.

677
00:35:26,483 --> 00:35:29,410
You know, give him a
little bit more weight on

678
00:35:29,411 --> 00:35:32,525
that turn, or put his head
down a little bit more

679
00:35:32,775 --> 00:35:35,442
There's a lot of dialogue that gets
said between the two characters.

680
00:35:35,483 --> 00:35:37,463
We have to bring that
alive through animation,

681
00:35:37,464 --> 00:35:39,234
and we have what we're
using is gestures.

682
00:35:40,109 --> 00:35:41,901
Why would they mow
down all these people?

683
00:35:42,318 --> 00:35:43,817
Can't let everyone in.

684
00:35:44,567 --> 00:35:47,318
If you turned off the sound, you'd
know they were talking to each other

685
00:35:47,359 --> 00:35:51,067
and that really helps accentuate the
relationship that the two have together.

686
00:35:51,609 --> 00:35:55,276
We have certain animations that play
in the beginning of the game on Ellie.

687
00:35:55,318 --> 00:35:57,859
She's travelling with Joel
who she doesn't really know.

688
00:35:57,901 --> 00:36:01,692
There's a lot of gestures to make her
look nervous, just her overall stance.

689
00:36:01,734 --> 00:36:04,446
Later on in the game, they
develop a relationship

690
00:36:04,447 --> 00:36:06,942
through the animation,
not just the dialogue.

691
00:36:06,984 --> 00:36:09,400
You can see that she's more
comfortable around him.

692
00:36:09,442 --> 00:36:11,191
If that reads well
with the player, then,

693
00:36:11,192 --> 00:36:12,734
you know, we're doing our job right.

694
00:36:18,942 --> 00:36:20,858
We want her to look scared...
when she gets a

695
00:36:20,859 --> 00:36:22,692
gun, we want her to
look scared of the gun.

696
00:36:22,734 --> 00:36:26,859
If she's going to aim, she wouldn't
be, like, super trained aim...

697
00:36:26,901 --> 00:36:29,276
She would be more, like, scared.

698
00:36:29,609 --> 00:36:31,464
But at the same time
it needs to look cool

699
00:36:31,465 --> 00:36:33,192
and feel cool to the player that plays.

700
00:36:33,234 --> 00:36:35,692
It's really just these little
tiny details that we're

701
00:36:35,693 --> 00:36:38,151
doing, and it's coming across,
it's working out well.

702
00:36:38,483 --> 00:36:41,208
We don't do facial capture,
we don't track eye

703
00:36:41,209 --> 00:36:44,400
movements on stage, it's just
the motion capture data.

704
00:36:44,442 --> 00:36:47,942
Everything that you see on
the faces is hand keyed.

705
00:36:47,984 --> 00:36:50,151
You can see this is all
of her mocap data.

706
00:36:50,192 --> 00:36:52,480
And so when I'm doing
something like this, I go

707
00:36:52,481 --> 00:36:54,817
back and forth to the
performance she was giving

708
00:36:54,859 --> 00:37:01,359
and I watch just this section
over, and over, and over again.

709
00:37:01,400 --> 00:37:05,400
So this is our default face. I can make
everything super extreme and

710
00:37:06,359 --> 00:37:10,567
make her all squinty and angry.

711
00:37:10,609 --> 00:37:12,692
Turn her frown down.

712
00:37:14,609 --> 00:37:16,067
I can open her mouth.

713
00:37:17,692 --> 00:37:18,942
Stick her tongue out.

714
00:37:21,318 --> 00:37:25,609
It's listen, watch, ok, where
is her mouth at this point

715
00:37:25,650 --> 00:37:28,817
like is it open, is it... is
she making like a grimace?

716
00:37:29,026 --> 00:37:32,151
About Tess... I don't even know where...

717
00:37:32,192 --> 00:37:33,775
Here's how this thing's
going to play out.

718
00:37:34,942 --> 00:37:36,942
You don't bring up Tess.

719
00:37:36,984 --> 00:37:37,901
Ever.

720
00:37:38,942 --> 00:37:41,318
Matter of fact, we can just keep
our histories to ourselves.

721
00:37:42,067 --> 00:37:44,837
We shoot all of it to
just get the body motion,

722
00:37:44,838 --> 00:37:47,609
then we will do a second
pass with the cameras.

723
00:37:47,650 --> 00:37:49,942
The scene is playing back
on an overhead projector,

724
00:37:49,984 --> 00:37:53,026
but it's also playing back on a
monitor that's attached to my rig.

725
00:37:53,067 --> 00:37:56,206
Shaun and I would go to
the stage and motion

726
00:37:56,207 --> 00:37:58,859
capture the camera filming the scene.

727
00:37:58,901 --> 00:38:02,234
So he would get a whole wide shot,
a whole close-up for the scene.

728
00:38:02,276 --> 00:38:06,400
You can change your lenses, you can use
your standard 35, 85, 50s... whatever.

729
00:38:06,442 --> 00:38:09,007
All that sort of, live action camera

730
00:38:09,008 --> 00:38:12,359
cinematography... you can apply it.
On stage.

731
00:38:12,400 --> 00:38:15,234
We make sure to go
back in and add flaws.

732
00:38:15,276 --> 00:38:19,567
We keep the confinements of the room so
the camera can't go past a certain wall.

733
00:38:19,609 --> 00:38:22,026
'Cause then we have this
cheated perspective.

734
00:38:22,067 --> 00:38:24,359
If the cameraman bumps
into the wall, we keep it.

735
00:38:24,400 --> 00:38:26,663
Missing focus hits when
you're pulling focus,

736
00:38:26,664 --> 00:38:29,026
going too close to the
character and reframing.

737
00:38:29,067 --> 00:38:32,192
Those little moments in there
kind of keeps it cinema verite.

738
00:38:32,234 --> 00:38:33,759
If everything was too perfect, you

739
00:38:33,760 --> 00:38:35,734
wouldn't be able to put
your finger on it,

740
00:38:35,775 --> 00:38:37,775
but you would be able to feel
it, it would just feel off.

741
00:38:37,817 --> 00:38:40,725
It's very much about
grounding it, despite

742
00:38:40,726 --> 00:38:43,567
having the option to
do whatever we want.

743
00:38:43,859 --> 00:38:47,067
Being able to place the cameras anywhere
we want after the motion capture

744
00:38:47,109 --> 00:38:49,318
gives us both advantages
and disadvantages.

745
00:38:49,359 --> 00:38:51,800
The biggest advantage is
it means that we just

746
00:38:51,801 --> 00:38:54,192
have to nail the best
performances we can get

747
00:38:54,234 --> 00:38:56,859
and the luxury that we
can always swap it.

748
00:38:56,901 --> 00:38:59,983
The 3D world gives you
limitless opportunities with

749
00:38:59,984 --> 00:39:03,067
cameras and movements, exposures...
all that stuff.

750
00:39:03,109 --> 00:39:06,859
Most of these cameras are sort of
set up like real-world cameras

751
00:39:06,901 --> 00:39:11,109
So we have lens, we have f-stop that
will create the depth of field.

752
00:39:11,151 --> 00:39:15,442
We have aperture to, you know, set
our film back and all that stuff.

753
00:39:15,483 --> 00:39:18,073
A master, I have my close-ups,
my over-the-shoulders...

754
00:39:18,074 --> 00:39:20,109
sort of just like a
live-action production.

755
00:39:20,151 --> 00:39:24,109
Let's go to Camera 30, at the 23.458,

756
00:39:24,151 --> 00:39:28,359
then I get that kind of weird,
you know, bend across his back.

757
00:39:28,400 --> 00:39:32,817
The closer I bring the camera, the
more bend I get, which is, you know,

758
00:39:32,859 --> 00:39:36,151
doesn't look right, it doesn't
look as... it looks less cinematic,

759
00:39:37,192 --> 00:39:40,109
than if I I do that, which
flattens the whole thing.

760
00:39:40,151 --> 00:39:43,026
And I'm trying to also catch Ellie,

761
00:39:43,692 --> 00:39:46,464
like if you scrub a little more,
you know, catch her in the

762
00:39:46,465 --> 00:39:49,192
back here, so I want a longer
lens for that kind of stuff.

763
00:39:49,234 --> 00:39:51,462
Since I only had experience working with

764
00:39:51,463 --> 00:39:53,859
live-action before I
got into videogames,

765
00:39:53,901 --> 00:39:56,802
it was kind of a cool
adjustment to be able

766
00:39:56,803 --> 00:39:59,442
to have this extra flexibility in post.

767
00:39:59,483 --> 00:40:02,181
To swap a line of dialogue for
something different, even

768
00:40:02,182 --> 00:40:04,692
though that's not what the
actors said at that time,

769
00:40:04,734 --> 00:40:07,901
and to be able to still have a
close-up on them while they said it.

770
00:40:07,942 --> 00:40:10,059
You get to make it probably more perfect

771
00:40:10,060 --> 00:40:12,442
than you could ever
make it in live-action.

772
00:40:12,692 --> 00:40:14,067
How far are we gonna take this?

773
00:40:14,109 --> 00:40:15,775
As far as it needs to go!

774
00:40:17,775 --> 00:40:18,901
Where was this lab of theirs?

775
00:40:19,483 --> 00:40:21,858
Because our actors are
both the voice and their

776
00:40:21,859 --> 00:40:24,234
body, they get to play,
they get to try things,

777
00:40:24,276 --> 00:40:27,984
they get to work with our director
to kind of come up with new ideas.

778
00:40:28,026 --> 00:40:30,115
Or even our director
will have a new idea on

779
00:40:30,116 --> 00:40:32,067
the spot that wasn't
there in the script,

780
00:40:32,109 --> 00:40:34,342
but realizing when he sees
it, "Oh, well this would

781
00:40:34,343 --> 00:40:36,276
actually be better, this
might feel better."

782
00:40:36,318 --> 00:40:39,901
And those changes all just happen
organically there on the set.

783
00:40:40,359 --> 00:40:42,734
He could even lead
straight into his thing

784
00:40:42,775 --> 00:40:44,879
He's like, no shit, yup.
Didn't wanna do that, so

785
00:40:44,880 --> 00:40:46,984
we rented two Harleys and
we drove cross-country.

786
00:40:47,026 --> 00:40:50,151
Keep it pretty succinct, like, "We got
the bikes, rode them cross-country."

787
00:40:50,192 --> 00:40:50,650
Cool.

788
00:40:52,234 --> 00:40:55,234
It's shocking to me that this
is Neil's first time directing.

789
00:40:55,276 --> 00:40:57,770
There was a specific tone
and a specific approach

790
00:40:57,771 --> 00:41:00,067
that Niel and Bruce
wanted to take with this.

791
00:41:00,109 --> 00:41:02,628
It came down to nobody knows
the story better than you and

792
00:41:02,629 --> 00:41:05,192
there's nobody that knows these
characters better than you,

793
00:41:05,234 --> 00:41:06,400
why don't you just do this?

794
00:41:06,442 --> 00:41:08,318
He and I actually had a
conversation about it.

795
00:41:08,359 --> 00:41:11,817
He said, "I think I'm going to try
this myself and I'm not sure."

796
00:41:12,984 --> 00:41:14,151
Neil was fantastic.

797
00:41:14,567 --> 00:41:15,567
The floor is yours.

798
00:41:16,525 --> 00:41:19,442
Okay, so remember you've been running
away from this turret-mounted truck.

799
00:41:19,483 --> 00:41:22,817
You come to this dead end, you're gonna
look up and see a potential way out.

800
00:41:23,442 --> 00:41:24,567
And... action.

801
00:41:26,984 --> 00:41:27,692
Hey, check it out.

802
00:41:29,817 --> 00:41:30,483
Here.

803
00:41:35,400 --> 00:41:39,609
I mean his writing is honest, and
it's dangerous, and it's natural.

804
00:41:39,650 --> 00:41:41,525
And I love his economy of words.

805
00:41:41,567 --> 00:41:42,942
He doesn't hit everything on the nose

806
00:41:42,984 --> 00:41:44,944
so he leaves it open for
you to interpret and

807
00:41:44,945 --> 00:41:46,692
bring some nuances and things like that.

808
00:41:46,734 --> 00:41:49,977
The entire process is
collaborative, but really

809
00:41:49,978 --> 00:41:52,817
it's led by Neil's
willingness to change,

810
00:41:52,859 --> 00:41:55,440
and flow, and decide
something doesn't work...

811
00:41:55,441 --> 00:41:57,859
you know, fix it right
there in the moment.

812
00:41:58,525 --> 00:42:03,483
And it is something that's very foreign
to the way that TV and film is done now,

813
00:42:03,525 --> 00:42:05,469
where everything has
been micromanaged by

814
00:42:05,470 --> 00:42:07,276
the time you get it to the table read.

815
00:42:07,318 --> 00:42:10,650
And no one wants you to change anything,
and everything's very precious

816
00:42:10,692 --> 00:42:13,525
and has been rewritten with
notes from 20 people in suits.

817
00:42:13,567 --> 00:42:17,734
And you can't do that just anywhere
in entertainment these days.

818
00:42:18,650 --> 00:42:22,734
Yeah, I just want to make sure, I think
I swung too far over to this way

819
00:42:22,775 --> 00:42:25,901
and now it's a little bit of...
making jokes about it.

820
00:42:25,942 --> 00:42:27,984
And if I bring it back to...

821
00:42:28,026 --> 00:42:28,734
Yup.

822
00:42:28,775 --> 00:42:30,067
...to center a little bit.

823
00:42:30,859 --> 00:42:31,400
Okay.

824
00:42:32,276 --> 00:42:36,067
There's one scene in the
game where we see Joel, um,

825
00:42:36,109 --> 00:42:38,067
not as a ruthless survivor,
but as a father.

826
00:42:38,109 --> 00:42:41,442
I knew from the very beginning that
he was going to lose his daughter,

827
00:42:41,483 --> 00:42:45,650
and I just told Neil, it's like when
that day comes for us to shoot that,

828
00:42:45,692 --> 00:42:46,692
I need a heads up.

829
00:42:46,734 --> 00:42:49,942
About a week before, he said, "It's
time. We're gonna do that scene."

830
00:42:50,984 --> 00:42:54,400
I was like, okay, because I knew that I
was going to have to go to this place

831
00:42:54,442 --> 00:42:56,442
that, that you don't really
want to go to as an actor.

832
00:42:56,483 --> 00:42:59,643
You want to find some
aspect of reality that

833
00:42:59,644 --> 00:43:02,734
you can empathetically
draw from, you know?

834
00:43:02,775 --> 00:43:05,239
Troy and I were both kinda
just walking around for

835
00:43:05,240 --> 00:43:07,609
a while and, just, kind
of getting into the zone

836
00:43:07,650 --> 00:43:12,734
and he... and... well, my grandpa died
when I was eight. He was like my dad

837
00:43:12,775 --> 00:43:17,400
and so that's always what I use
to get into that, that place.

838
00:43:17,442 --> 00:43:19,176
You know, I started
recalling all of those

839
00:43:19,177 --> 00:43:21,234
memories and started pulling
up all those feelings

840
00:43:21,276 --> 00:43:23,067
and they're just right, right
underneath the surface.

841
00:43:23,109 --> 00:43:25,046
When I walk back in, everyone
realized something was

842
00:43:25,047 --> 00:43:26,984
different and they kinda
like calmed down, you know?

843
00:43:27,026 --> 00:43:29,567
You could feel the energy just,
like, drop a little bit more.

844
00:43:29,942 --> 00:43:32,026
It... was brutal.

845
00:43:33,650 --> 00:43:37,454
And I just... I lose my shit, I mean,
just completely break down.

846
00:43:36,455 --> 00:43:41,276
Don't do this. Don't do this.
Don't do this! PLEASE God no!

847
00:43:44,234 --> 00:43:45,400
God no!

848
00:43:46,984 --> 00:43:47,775
Cut.

849
00:43:51,650 --> 00:43:54,525
And the soundstage was deathly still.

850
00:43:54,942 --> 00:43:56,942
It was the first take and I
felt really good about it

851
00:43:56,984 --> 00:43:58,567
and Neil said, "Okay,
let's do it again."

852
00:43:59,817 --> 00:44:02,817
And so you do it again and automatically
you feel like you're manufacturing

853
00:44:02,859 --> 00:44:04,977
'cause you're trying to
go back to that place

854
00:44:04,978 --> 00:44:06,775
and you're in that actor nightmare of,

855
00:44:06,817 --> 00:44:09,192
you know, trying to get
back to that reality.

856
00:44:09,234 --> 00:44:12,650
And we go through it again, and
fifth, and sixth, and seventh take

857
00:44:12,692 --> 00:44:15,359
and I'm just exhausted,
I'm crying between takes.

858
00:44:15,400 --> 00:44:18,359
And I'm looking at Neil going,
"This is really, really hard."

859
00:44:19,483 --> 00:44:22,984
And, um, finally after, like,
the eighth or ninth take he said,

860
00:44:23,026 --> 00:44:24,151
"Alright, I think we got it."

861
00:44:24,192 --> 00:44:25,483
I was like, "Oh, thank God!"

862
00:44:25,775 --> 00:44:28,901
And I went outside and I was just
jacked up for the rest of the day.

863
00:44:28,942 --> 00:44:31,525
Just, just, I mean, a wreck emotionally.

864
00:44:32,984 --> 00:44:34,775
But we got it.

865
00:44:35,359 --> 00:44:36,942
Then two weeks later, he calls me.

866
00:44:38,901 --> 00:44:41,234
And he says, "So we need
to reshoot a scene."

867
00:44:41,276 --> 00:44:42,775
I'm like, "Cool, what
scene are we doing?"

868
00:44:42,942 --> 00:44:46,318
And he just looks at me and I said,
"Dude, don't do this to me."

869
00:44:46,442 --> 00:44:50,300
And you can either, at that moment,
throw your hands

870
00:44:50,301 --> 00:44:53,942
up in the air and say,
"Fuck this" and walk away.

871
00:44:53,984 --> 00:44:57,525
Or you can say, "Okay, this is
an opportunity to get it more right."

872
00:44:57,567 --> 00:45:00,254
I'm like, "Okay, alright, yeah.
You think you got it? I'm

873
00:45:00,255 --> 00:45:02,942
gonna show you that you got it.
We've got it in the can."

874
00:45:03,442 --> 00:45:07,692
And so we go through it again, and
it just feels fake, feels artificial.

875
00:45:08,318 --> 00:45:10,734
And Neil goes, "Go through it again."
So I start doing it again.

876
00:45:10,775 --> 00:45:12,544
And I'm getting madder
and madder with each

877
00:45:12,545 --> 00:45:14,234
take, and finally,
about the fourth take...

878
00:45:15,400 --> 00:45:18,650
Neil comes over to me...
I love him so much... he goes...

879
00:45:18,692 --> 00:45:20,650
"So I'm picking up on some resistance."

880
00:45:20,692 --> 00:45:22,879
I was like, "You're damn right
you're picking up on

881
00:45:22,880 --> 00:45:25,067
some resistance.
We've got this in the can already.

882
00:45:25,109 --> 00:45:26,902
And we're just wasting
our time and we're

883
00:45:26,903 --> 00:45:28,483
wasting all this effort and energy."

884
00:45:28,525 --> 00:45:30,901
And then he started talking me
through this scene, and he's like,

885
00:45:30,942 --> 00:45:35,525
"What I need you to do is I need you to
just strip yourself of all these ideas

886
00:45:35,567 --> 00:45:37,560
and I need you to hit
this beat, and this

887
00:45:37,561 --> 00:45:39,318
beat, and this beat, and this beat."

888
00:45:39,359 --> 00:45:42,525
Which just makes it sound so
mechanical in such an emotional scene.

889
00:45:43,318 --> 00:45:46,478
So we start going through
it and literally I am

890
00:45:46,479 --> 00:45:49,442
mindlessly doing these
things at this point.

891
00:45:49,609 --> 00:45:51,901
I know it hurts, baby.

892
00:45:53,067 --> 00:45:54,653
I know, I'm gonna lift you up,

893
00:45:54,654 --> 00:45:56,359
I'm gonna lift you up,
I'm gonna get you over here.

894
00:45:56,650 --> 00:45:58,483
C'mon, baby, c'mon work with me, please!

895
00:45:58,734 --> 00:46:01,151
God... Baby...

896
00:46:02,192 --> 00:46:03,067
Sarah.

897
00:46:05,567 --> 00:46:06,567
SARAH!

898
00:46:09,817 --> 00:46:12,942
Don't do this to me, baby.
Don't do this to me, baby, c'mon.

899
00:46:13,318 --> 00:46:15,067
Don't...

900
00:46:16,234 --> 00:46:18,318
And he stops and goes, "Now we got it."

901
00:46:19,734 --> 00:46:23,400
And I realized that the reason why
I wanted that first take to work

902
00:46:23,775 --> 00:46:25,817
was 'cause I wanted everyone
to look at me and go,

903
00:46:26,359 --> 00:46:28,567
"Wow, what an actor."

904
00:46:30,151 --> 00:46:31,692
And that's not what the scene needed.

905
00:46:31,734 --> 00:46:34,715
Those moments where you
just have to, sort of, calm

906
00:46:34,716 --> 00:46:37,525
your ego down and just go
back and do your work.

907
00:46:37,942 --> 00:46:40,901
That scene actually works... not
because of me, but in spite of me

908
00:46:40,942 --> 00:46:45,507
and that really is the marker and

909
00:46:45,508 --> 00:46:50,276
definition of working with a true...
Truly good director.

910
00:46:50,683 --> 00:46:51,600
There are many like it.

911
00:46:53,142 --> 00:46:54,434
But this one is yours.

912
00:46:55,226 --> 00:46:56,184
Why don't you have a seat.

913
00:47:00,017 --> 00:47:02,809
Alright. Everybody calm down, calm down.

914
00:47:04,892 --> 00:47:05,559
Thanks, guys.

915
00:47:08,975 --> 00:47:10,016
This is the director's chair.

916
00:47:10,017 --> 00:47:10,683
Alright.

917
00:47:11,059 --> 00:47:12,701
Working on the project,
we knew we wanted

918
00:47:12,702 --> 00:47:14,267
to have a pretty minimalist soundtrack.

919
00:47:14,309 --> 00:47:16,600
And we had a folder where we
just threw music in there.

920
00:47:16,642 --> 00:47:18,574
Looked at the folder one
day and we saw, "We have

921
00:47:18,575 --> 00:47:20,392
a lot of stuff here from
Gustavo Santaolalla."

922
00:47:20,434 --> 00:47:22,809
We're looking for a composer,
what if we reached out to him?

923
00:47:23,101 --> 00:47:24,017
Oh no...

924
00:47:25,892 --> 00:47:26,642
Sarah...

925
00:47:29,267 --> 00:47:30,267
Move your hands, baby.

926
00:47:30,850 --> 00:47:32,059
I know, baby, I know.

927
00:47:35,434 --> 00:47:37,059
Listen to me, I know this hurts...

928
00:47:37,518 --> 00:47:39,351
You're gonna be okay, baby.
Stay with me!

929
00:47:40,101 --> 00:47:41,476
Okay I'm gonna pick you up,

930
00:47:42,017 --> 00:47:43,559
I know, baby. I know it hurts.

931
00:47:44,892 --> 00:47:47,892
C'mon baby, please. I know baby, I know!

932
00:47:51,184 --> 00:47:52,017
Sarah...

933
00:47:54,309 --> 00:47:55,476
Baby...

934
00:47:55,892 --> 00:47:56,725
Fucker...

935
00:48:18,683 --> 00:48:22,184
My life has been, and still
is kind of like a road movie.

936
00:48:22,226 --> 00:48:23,850
I grew up in Argentina.

937
00:48:23,892 --> 00:48:27,543
I came to the United States in 1978,

938
00:48:27,544 --> 00:48:31,351
because we had a horrible
political situation in Argentina.

939
00:48:31,392 --> 00:48:33,868
We had a military
dictatorship where 30,000

940
00:48:33,869 --> 00:48:36,683
people disappeared at the
hands of the government

941
00:48:36,725 --> 00:48:40,518
and many other more were
tortured, and I was blacklisted.

942
00:48:40,559 --> 00:48:43,518
It was just impossible for
me to keep on living there.

943
00:48:43,559 --> 00:48:47,271
I've been in jail many times since
I was probably 15 years old

944
00:48:47,272 --> 00:48:50,809
just because I had long hair
and I play an electric guitar.

945
00:48:50,850 --> 00:48:53,309
So I had to embark on this trip.

946
00:48:54,767 --> 00:48:57,914
I can relate to that, kind of,

947
00:48:57,915 --> 00:49:01,642
need of movement and going
to the next, next place,

948
00:49:01,683 --> 00:49:03,434
and the next place, and the next step.

949
00:49:05,576 --> 00:49:08,932
I'm always attracted
to the possibility of

950
00:49:09,233 --> 00:49:12,459
getting involved with a project
from the very beginning.

951
00:49:12,501 --> 00:49:15,709
I like to work from the script
and talking to the director.

952
00:49:15,751 --> 00:49:17,629
It's never been, "Oh,
give me a piece like

953
00:49:17,630 --> 00:49:19,334
this, or give me a music that's this."

954
00:49:19,375 --> 00:49:21,209
It's just been very high level.

955
00:49:21,667 --> 00:49:22,959
Here's what the story's about.

956
00:49:23,000 --> 00:49:23,876
Here are the themes.

957
00:49:25,167 --> 00:49:26,501
Go write some stuff.

958
00:49:26,542 --> 00:49:28,959
Since I don't know how to
really read or write music,

959
00:49:29,000 --> 00:49:32,542
but the way I produce music
is actually recording it.

960
00:49:32,584 --> 00:49:38,083
So I like to come early in the
projects and I did in The Last of Us.

961
00:49:46,167 --> 00:49:49,292
One thing that was fantastic
from the very, very beginning,

962
00:49:49,334 --> 00:49:55,459
was the freedom that I had to try and to
do whatever I felt could work, you know?

963
00:49:55,751 --> 00:49:57,834
As the story was still being written.

964
00:49:57,876 --> 00:50:00,469
You could listen to this
piece of music and just

965
00:50:00,470 --> 00:50:02,959
get a sense of where this
needs to go tonally.

966
00:50:03,000 --> 00:50:05,792
Because, the music was
still inspiring the story.

967
00:50:06,083 --> 00:50:09,250
So that was the great thing of having
the music written so far in advance.

968
00:50:09,334 --> 00:50:12,709
At the beginning, mean I was going
really out with some things.

969
00:50:12,751 --> 00:50:15,144
And sometimes some of
those things were the

970
00:50:15,145 --> 00:50:17,375
ones that they liked the most, you know?

971
00:50:17,417 --> 00:50:20,918
So I really felt very motivated to work.

972
00:50:20,959 --> 00:50:23,000
And I enjoyed immensely working.

973
00:50:23,042 --> 00:50:25,958
There was this very organic
back and forth experience where

974
00:50:25,959 --> 00:50:28,584
one element was inspiring
the other and vice a versa.

975
00:50:28,667 --> 00:50:31,375
I needed to go into
some more dark places.

976
00:50:31,417 --> 00:50:34,000
And more textural and not
necessarily melodic.

977
00:50:42,000 --> 00:50:44,153
I'm always trying to
sort of push myself into

978
00:50:44,154 --> 00:50:46,542
playing instruments that I
don't know how to play.

979
00:50:46,584 --> 00:50:49,334
There's an element of a
danger and innocence.

980
00:50:49,375 --> 00:50:53,490
Lenin once said, "You know give
me a tuba and I will be able to

981
00:50:53,491 --> 00:50:57,542
do something, I'm an artist. I
should be able to do something.

982
00:50:57,584 --> 00:51:00,417
I like to put myself in that situation.

983
00:51:07,876 --> 00:51:13,000
So, these are just PVC pipes,
the ones used in construction.

984
00:51:22,792 --> 00:51:25,709
Or instruments that I
know, kind of twist them.

985
00:51:25,751 --> 00:51:28,042
From the concept of the
prepared piano, you know.

986
00:51:28,083 --> 00:51:30,959
I mean, I've worked
with prepared guitar.

987
00:51:31,000 --> 00:51:34,459
To stick things into a
guitar and things like that.

988
00:51:34,501 --> 00:51:36,740
And also in The Last
of Us in particular,

989
00:51:36,741 --> 00:51:38,501
I worked with a de-tuned guitar.

990
00:51:38,542 --> 00:51:42,076
So I really tuned the guitar
extremely low and the

991
00:51:42,077 --> 00:51:45,542
result is, you know, strings
that are very loose.

992
00:51:45,584 --> 00:51:49,375
And will produce not only
sound, but produce noise.

993
00:51:53,459 --> 00:51:58,125
Because I believe, you know, every
environment has its own sound,

994
00:51:58,167 --> 00:52:01,886
we have in our, you know, small
studio, we have actually the

995
00:52:01,887 --> 00:52:05,667
possibility to record almost
anywhere including the bathroom.

996
00:52:05,709 --> 00:52:09,083
And we have done some fabulous
recording especially in the kitchen.

997
00:52:11,250 --> 00:52:13,687
When you score to picture,
which is something that I

998
00:52:13,688 --> 00:52:16,125
don't do, then you know what
you're going to expect.

999
00:52:16,167 --> 00:52:18,425
But when you provide
people with music, like

1000
00:52:18,426 --> 00:52:20,584
I've done in all the
films that I've done.

1001
00:52:20,626 --> 00:52:24,209
And then you see, how the director
decided to use that, you know.

1002
00:52:24,250 --> 00:52:27,834
In what particular way he used
it, or where they edit it.

1003
00:52:27,876 --> 00:52:29,209
It's always fascinating to me.

1004
00:52:29,250 --> 00:52:33,334
I watch a scene and I'm going, you know,
it's fantastic how they used this piece.

1005
00:52:33,375 --> 00:52:35,646
I would have never of all
the music that I've done,

1006
00:52:35,647 --> 00:52:37,918
probably, I would have never
used this piece there.

1007
00:52:37,959 --> 00:52:40,416
But, it works, you know, great.

1008
00:52:40,417 --> 00:52:44,209
So, I like that feeling
of collaboration.

1009
00:53:17,876 --> 00:53:20,323
I think, you know, the guys,
also that work in

1010
00:53:20,324 --> 00:53:22,876
programming and adapting
that music to the game.

1011
00:53:22,918 --> 00:53:27,000
They should share a lot of
the credit for the end result.

1012
00:53:27,042 --> 00:53:29,500
In the beginning, their was silence.

1013
00:53:29,501 --> 00:53:30,250
Yes.

1014
00:53:31,042 --> 00:53:33,183
- Then they hired sound designers, then they regret,
- Then the dinosaurs came.

1015
00:53:33,184 --> 00:53:35,200
regretted that decision.

1016
00:53:43,542 --> 00:53:45,125
Hold it steady.

1017
00:53:47,667 --> 00:53:48,918
Ha, got you!

1018
00:53:51,417 --> 00:53:53,250
In a much quieter environment like that,

1019
00:53:53,292 --> 00:53:57,042
We all had to fill out the soundscape
with much more natural sounds,

1020
00:53:57,083 --> 00:53:59,792
much more detailed, delicate sounds.

1021
00:53:59,834 --> 00:54:03,792
The tension comes from the
lack of sound, in a way.

1022
00:54:03,834 --> 00:54:08,834
Your brain is thrown off, because we
expect to hear busses and crowds.

1023
00:54:08,876 --> 00:54:11,375
All a sudden I hear wind
and leaves rustling.

1024
00:54:11,417 --> 00:54:14,042
Again, its creepy and
beautiful at the same time.

1025
00:54:14,083 --> 00:54:17,000
'Cause, it's almost like I'm going on
a hike, but I'm in a downtown area.

1026
00:54:30,751 --> 00:54:32,957
To kneel on Neil, when we were
going the iterations so that

1027
00:54:32,958 --> 00:54:37,042
he'd just did not want like yells,
and screeches,

1028
00:54:37,083 --> 00:54:39,959
and what you call like, you know,
kinda witchy qualities.

1029
00:54:40,000 --> 00:54:41,000
- Right.
- The cackling witch.

1030
00:54:41,083 --> 00:54:42,250
He didn't want anything like that.

1031
00:54:42,292 --> 00:54:43,667
It was a little bit of a head
scratcher to figure out,

1032
00:54:43,709 --> 00:54:46,708
Okay, How do we make it
sound human but not human.

1033
00:54:46,709 --> 00:54:47,083
Yeah.

1034
00:54:47,125 --> 00:54:49,584
We really did not want
to use any animals.

1035
00:54:49,626 --> 00:54:51,584
We wanted these all to be human.

1036
00:54:51,626 --> 00:54:55,667
Derrick and I basically decided
to hire a couple of voice actors,

1037
00:54:55,709 --> 00:54:58,257
who did some interesting
work, uh, vocally,

1038
00:54:58,258 --> 00:55:00,750
to see if they can come
up with something.

1039
00:55:00,751 --> 00:55:03,042
And we worked with this girl, Misty Lee.

1040
00:55:03,083 --> 00:55:05,167
She started giving us these
really great screeches.

1041
00:55:09,834 --> 00:55:11,042
That's no process.

1042
00:55:11,083 --> 00:55:12,709
Yeah, that's just her voice.

1043
00:55:15,959 --> 00:55:19,083
And it started going
into this little click.

1044
00:55:19,334 --> 00:55:21,542
We also used a little
bit of Phil's voice.

1045
00:55:27,250 --> 00:55:30,751
We combined that also
with an occasional, um...

1046
00:55:30,792 --> 00:55:32,250
Derrick.

1047
00:55:33,250 --> 00:55:36,542
That's just me, you know,
moving my tongue, just...

1048
00:55:36,584 --> 00:55:39,417
And what that kinda did was it
sort of grounded it all, like...

1049
00:55:39,459 --> 00:55:43,000
Like, maybe in the mouth area,
the wetness, all that kind of stuff.

1050
00:55:43,042 --> 00:55:44,501
And it adds a nice texturing, actually.

1051
00:55:44,542 --> 00:55:47,042
This is a composite of all
the bits I just told you about.

1052
00:55:56,000 --> 00:55:57,209
It sounds like a Snapple bottle.

1053
00:55:58,083 --> 00:55:58,667
Oh, the lid.

1054
00:55:58,709 --> 00:55:59,459
Like the lid, yeah.

1055
00:55:59,501 --> 00:56:00,876
Hey, that's a good idea!

1056
00:56:01,083 --> 00:56:03,083
Fuck, where were you guys
like months ago?

1057
00:56:03,292 --> 00:56:04,667
Why didn't we think of that.

1058
00:56:05,542 --> 00:56:06,918
Why didn't we think of that.

1059
00:56:07,125 --> 00:56:10,000
Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid.

1060
00:56:17,667 --> 00:56:18,626
Viewers at home.

1061
00:56:19,292 --> 00:56:21,125
You're probably wondering what this is.

1062
00:56:22,083 --> 00:56:22,876
Let me tell ya.

1063
00:56:23,083 --> 00:56:28,834
About ten years ago, I saw
this Synthi A suitcase synth.

1064
00:56:29,209 --> 00:56:30,209
I wanted to get one.

1065
00:56:30,459 --> 00:56:34,167
This finally arrived in January
just in time to start using.

1066
00:56:34,209 --> 00:56:35,876
I thought,
"Well, what can I do with this?"

1067
00:56:43,417 --> 00:56:46,959
Uh, in Lakeside, there's
a white out that happens.

1068
00:56:47,000 --> 00:56:49,369
And this thing has a noise generator,

1069
00:56:49,370 --> 00:56:52,125
which gives really
convincing wind sound.

1070
00:57:01,375 --> 00:57:03,125
Uh, the military still has technology.

1071
00:57:03,167 --> 00:57:09,292
There's sirens, and alarms, so I
wanted to try some new concepts.

1072
00:57:24,459 --> 00:57:25,501
Man...

1073
00:57:25,834 --> 00:57:26,459
What?

1074
00:57:27,417 --> 00:57:31,834
Nothing, it's just... I've never
seen anything like this, that's all.

1075
00:57:32,250 --> 00:57:33,209
You mean the woods?

1076
00:57:33,250 --> 00:57:36,834
Yeah. Never walked through the woods.
It's kinda cool.

1077
00:57:37,000 --> 00:57:37,709
Huh.

1078
00:57:43,542 --> 00:57:48,083
We consciously take in consideration
lighting in the beginning.

1079
00:57:48,125 --> 00:57:51,501
Most of the game, we don't really have
any real man made light sources.

1080
00:57:51,542 --> 00:57:53,209
So everything is naturally lit.

1081
00:57:53,250 --> 00:57:56,125
In the past, you know,
we could use a lot of artificial light.

1082
00:57:56,167 --> 00:57:58,209
But the world has no electricity.

1083
00:57:58,250 --> 00:58:00,982
We have to hide
most of the time and that

1084
00:58:00,983 --> 00:58:04,042
requires getting very close
to certain assets.

1085
00:58:05,083 --> 00:58:06,000
Just stay back.

1086
00:58:12,292 --> 00:58:13,167
Another way.

1087
00:58:13,667 --> 00:58:14,375
Damnit.

1088
00:58:14,834 --> 00:58:15,751
Detail's expensive.

1089
00:58:15,792 --> 00:58:17,708
And if you build up to much of it,
you end

1090
00:58:17,709 --> 00:58:19,626
up running into
technical problems, right.

1091
00:58:19,667 --> 00:58:20,792
Your engines slows down.

1092
00:58:20,834 --> 00:58:24,375
When the framerate goes down, everyone
can bring up the profiling tools

1093
00:58:24,417 --> 00:58:26,393
and see which parts
of the frame actually

1094
00:58:26,394 --> 00:58:28,042
caused the drop of the frame rate.

1095
00:58:28,083 --> 00:58:30,988
This is the profiling tool,
these are all the

1096
00:58:30,989 --> 00:58:33,959
SPUs, here's the GPU,
and then here's the PPU.

1097
00:58:34,000 --> 00:58:35,916
You can see like,
here's the main process and

1098
00:58:35,917 --> 00:58:37,918
here's all the subprocesses,
and you can see...

1099
00:58:37,959 --> 00:58:41,083
It tells you like how many
milliseconds and cycles it's taking.

1100
00:58:41,125 --> 00:58:43,959
The programmers are a whiz at
modifying this stuff and realizing,

1101
00:58:44,000 --> 00:58:45,964
"Oh my God, why is
this thing so big? We're

1102
00:58:45,965 --> 00:58:47,751
taking ten milliseconds on this thing."

1103
00:58:47,792 --> 00:58:48,840
And then that's when
they come over and find

1104
00:58:48,841 --> 00:58:49,959
somebody and hit them
over the head with a club

1105
00:58:50,000 --> 00:58:51,792
and be like, "Why are you doing this?"

1106
00:58:51,834 --> 00:58:53,648
I love... we put the
30 frames-per-second

1107
00:58:53,649 --> 00:58:55,334
goal, 'cause that's what we shoot for.

1108
00:58:55,375 --> 00:58:56,789
Someone nicely put
the 60 frames-per-second

1109
00:58:56,790 --> 00:58:58,334
goal. It's like, yeah,
we're not gonna hit that.

1110
00:58:59,042 --> 00:59:01,448
Lighters usually can
come up with different

1111
00:59:01,449 --> 00:59:03,583
lighting setup that still looks great,

1112
00:59:03,584 --> 00:59:05,804
but is less costly
in terms of performance.

1113
00:59:05,876 --> 00:59:09,709
Um, did you talk to the character
artist about her hand?

1114
00:59:09,751 --> 00:59:12,133
'Cause her face is
getting a lot of spec,

1115
00:59:12,134 --> 00:59:14,120
but then her arm is just bone dry.

1116
00:59:14,167 --> 00:59:17,702
You think something we can
tweak in shader or have to

1117
00:59:17,703 --> 00:59:21,501
send back to character team...
Michael... to take a look?

1118
00:59:21,542 --> 00:59:25,792
I can play with the lights and see
if that creates more light spec.

1119
00:59:25,834 --> 00:59:26,250
Yeah

1120
00:59:26,292 --> 00:59:28,530
I've never ever focused
so much on lighting and

1121
00:59:28,531 --> 00:59:30,584
how much sensitivity
their is to that here.

1122
00:59:30,876 --> 00:59:35,000
One of the first lighting scenarios
I had to do was like 7am overcast.

1123
00:59:35,042 --> 00:59:37,542
I'd like wake up early and like
take photos with my phone.

1124
00:59:37,584 --> 00:59:39,292
What color the shadows,
what color's the light?

1125
00:59:39,959 --> 00:59:44,334
It is a masters course onto itself of
how to deal with ambient lighting.

1126
00:59:44,375 --> 00:59:45,918
Because I've never had
to use it so much.

1127
00:59:46,626 --> 00:59:48,209
Man, this is kinda sad.

1128
00:59:49,042 --> 00:59:49,751
What is?

1129
00:59:50,417 --> 00:59:52,417
All this music that's just sitting here.

1130
00:59:53,083 --> 00:59:54,501
No one's around to listen to it.

1131
00:59:56,250 --> 00:59:57,792
I don't know, doesn't seem right.

1132
00:59:57,834 --> 01:00:00,959
All the characters cast soft
shadows onto the environment.

1133
01:00:01,000 --> 01:00:04,834
Even when there's no direct sunlight
or no direct light sources.

1134
01:00:04,876 --> 01:00:07,167
We still have nice, fuzzy shadows.

1135
01:00:07,667 --> 01:00:11,876
When you're walking down a hallway
and you see your soft shadow

1136
01:00:11,918 --> 01:00:14,733
goes along with you,
projecting it on a wall on

1137
01:00:14,734 --> 01:00:17,667
the environment, that makes
everything look real.

1138
01:00:26,209 --> 01:00:27,167
Follow me, through here.

1139
01:00:27,375 --> 01:00:27,959
Okay.

1140
01:00:30,292 --> 01:00:32,250
The flashlight brought a
whole new spin on it.

1141
01:00:32,292 --> 01:00:34,959
So some of the environments end
up being really, really dark.

1142
01:00:35,000 --> 01:00:37,167
And you need the
flashlight to get around.

1143
01:00:37,209 --> 01:00:38,083
Give me your hand.

1144
01:00:40,959 --> 01:00:42,501
We want to have the
environment be really dark.

1145
01:00:42,542 --> 01:00:45,751
But also at the same time have colorful
surfaces that are sort of hidden

1146
01:00:45,792 --> 01:00:48,584
So when the flashlight hits one of
those it bounces off onto the ceiling.

1147
01:00:48,626 --> 01:00:52,052
If you shine a light on a
red wall it will bounce

1148
01:00:52,053 --> 01:00:55,000
the red lighting on the
whole environment.

1149
01:00:55,042 --> 01:00:58,626
And it's very difficult to do,
very expensive, but we did it.

1150
01:00:58,667 --> 01:01:00,751
Everything should have bounce lighting.

1151
01:01:00,792 --> 01:01:04,542
Otherwise the world is going
to feel dry and unrealistic.

1152
01:01:13,125 --> 01:01:15,167
I guess this is where
the assholes sleep.

1153
01:01:15,959 --> 01:01:17,083
I mean, slept.

1154
01:01:18,709 --> 01:01:22,064
This engine is really driven
in a way towards a very

1155
01:01:22,065 --> 01:01:25,167
high level of cinematic
control over each frame.

1156
01:01:25,209 --> 01:01:28,083
And hopefully, if we achieve our
goal, you'll see it is beautiful.

1157
01:01:28,125 --> 01:01:32,125
There are these truly beautiful moments
amid all this chaos and destruction.

1158
01:01:33,417 --> 01:01:34,959
Yeah, once we're done
with this whole thing

1159
01:01:35,000 --> 01:01:36,667
I'm gonna gonna you
how to play a guitar.

1160
01:01:41,209 --> 01:01:42,209
What do you say, huh?

1161
01:01:45,959 --> 01:01:46,667
Ellie, come on.

1162
01:01:52,584 --> 01:01:53,167
I got you.

1163
01:01:53,209 --> 01:01:54,459
Damn it, Bill.

1164
01:01:56,083 --> 01:01:57,125
What just happened?

1165
01:01:59,667 --> 01:02:01,626
Another one of Bill's stupid traps!

1166
01:02:06,042 --> 01:02:08,626
There, that fridge, it looks
like that's the counter-weight.

1167
01:02:08,959 --> 01:02:09,626
Okay.

1168
01:02:11,584 --> 01:02:16,292
This story really dictates sort
of the arc of the overall pacing.

1169
01:02:16,334 --> 01:02:18,918
The storytelling would
always want to be subtle.

1170
01:02:18,959 --> 01:02:22,250
They would always want to keep
the world grounded in reality.

1171
01:02:22,292 --> 01:02:24,042
But gameplay has requirements.

1172
01:02:24,083 --> 01:02:25,918
Where the player needs
to see this thing.

1173
01:02:25,959 --> 01:02:30,834
The player needs to immediately
know that the enemy is attacking,

1174
01:02:30,876 --> 01:02:32,771
that this room is dangerous, that this

1175
01:02:32,772 --> 01:02:34,918
room is a puzzle, that
you have to solve.

1176
01:02:34,959 --> 01:02:36,989
What are the things
that we can do on the

1177
01:02:36,990 --> 01:02:38,876
joystick to make you feel the same way

1178
01:02:38,918 --> 01:02:40,920
that these characters gonna feel when we

1179
01:02:40,921 --> 01:02:43,125
get to this next pinch
point in the story.

1180
01:02:43,167 --> 01:02:45,834
There's a turn in a scene that we
need these characters to take.

1181
01:02:45,876 --> 01:02:49,667
And we need you to feel it or understand
that and that means you have to play it.

1182
01:02:54,083 --> 01:02:54,918
SAM!

1183
01:02:54,959 --> 01:02:55,792
Oh, thank God.

1184
01:02:56,792 --> 01:02:57,834
We gotta keep running!

1185
01:02:58,209 --> 01:02:59,334
Doorway, over there!

1186
01:03:01,459 --> 01:03:02,250
Run!

1187
01:03:08,000 --> 01:03:11,338
We really want to make sure
that there's that contrast between

1188
01:03:11,339 --> 01:03:15,042
the negative space and
then the high tension spikes.

1189
01:03:23,751 --> 01:03:25,209
A lot of times we won't play music.

1190
01:03:25,250 --> 01:03:28,149
Or we'll play very minimal music
just to let you know kind of the

1191
01:03:28,150 --> 01:03:30,918
state where you're still in
stealth, or combat has broken out.

1192
01:03:30,959 --> 01:03:33,958
Hearing someones footsteps or
hearing a person breathing

1193
01:03:33,959 --> 01:03:36,959
on the other side of the door
has so much tension to it.

1194
01:03:39,250 --> 01:03:39,918
Hear that?

1195
01:03:43,042 --> 01:03:44,417
Sh, sh. Quiet.

1196
01:03:46,375 --> 01:03:47,709
You feel the tension of the world.

1197
01:03:47,751 --> 01:03:49,437
Make you question whether
you want to engage with

1198
01:03:49,438 --> 01:03:51,125
these guys or kind of try
to stealth around them.

1199
01:03:51,459 --> 01:03:54,542
That's another reason why we don't
have traditional cover in the game.

1200
01:03:54,584 --> 01:03:57,291
You smoothly move around
everything contextualizing

1201
01:03:57,292 --> 01:04:00,000
with the environment, but
you're never locked down.

1202
01:04:00,042 --> 01:04:02,470
We want the player to...
with that crafting

1203
01:04:02,471 --> 01:04:04,459
system, with the scavenging system,

1204
01:04:04,501 --> 01:04:08,498
with all of the abilities
available to them to constantly

1205
01:04:08,499 --> 01:04:12,083
be moving around and changing
as the moment arises.

1206
01:04:12,125 --> 01:04:14,965
Gameplay is all about, I
have a limited set of tools,

1207
01:04:14,966 --> 01:04:17,626
and how am I going to use those tools

1208
01:04:17,667 --> 01:04:22,209
and those limitations to overcome
this obstacle in front of me.

1209
01:04:22,250 --> 01:04:25,419
That obstacle might be infected,
might be another

1210
01:04:25,420 --> 01:04:28,083
class of humans that
wants to kill me for

1211
01:04:28,125 --> 01:04:30,167
a bottle of alcohol and my shoes.

1212
01:04:36,000 --> 01:04:38,459
It was important for us that we
don't underplay the violence.

1213
01:04:38,501 --> 01:04:41,375
Because then the threat
doesn't seem as real.

1214
01:04:49,459 --> 01:04:54,876
We see video games as this
incredible medium to tell stories.

1215
01:04:54,918 --> 01:05:02,042
We want to treat it as equals to
books or comics or tv or movies.

1216
01:05:02,083 --> 01:05:05,876
This is subject matter that would not
be considered out of the ordinary

1217
01:05:05,918 --> 01:05:08,250
to tell in one of those other
forms of entertainment.

1218
01:05:09,125 --> 01:05:10,250
Fuckin' hunters.

1219
01:05:11,542 --> 01:05:12,918
See, this coulda been us.

1220
01:05:14,626 --> 01:05:17,408
We wanted you to buy just the
desperation of these people

1221
01:05:17,409 --> 01:05:20,000
and why they're behaving
this way, because it's so...

1222
01:05:20,042 --> 01:05:20,876
brutal.

1223
01:05:20,918 --> 01:05:23,497
And at the same time we didn't
want to make it so over

1224
01:05:23,498 --> 01:05:26,125
the top stylizing it so then
it doesn't become as real.

1225
01:05:26,167 --> 01:05:28,000
It was important for us
to actually hit that

1226
01:05:28,001 --> 01:05:29,834
middle ground where it's
kind of disturbing.

1227
01:05:30,417 --> 01:05:32,709
That glint that's happening
on that curvature,

1228
01:05:32,751 --> 01:05:34,701
It'd be good if there
was a way that we can

1229
01:05:34,702 --> 01:05:36,918
guarantee that, from this
angle, we're seeing it.

1230
01:05:37,125 --> 01:05:40,501
But it's, overall, too
bright and opaque.

1231
01:05:40,709 --> 01:05:41,792
Yeah, it looks like paint.

1232
01:05:42,334 --> 01:05:44,709
Yeah, see that blood on the
ground works really well.

1233
01:05:44,751 --> 01:05:47,599
It's something about the
other shader is messed up in

1234
01:05:47,600 --> 01:05:50,501
this environment. We gotta
fix that to unify the look.

1235
01:05:50,542 --> 01:05:53,209
It shouldn't make you giggle
or laugh or any of that.

1236
01:05:53,250 --> 01:05:55,565
You should be kind of
appalled by what you have

1237
01:05:55,566 --> 01:05:57,834
to do, but you understand
why you're doing it.

1238
01:06:03,459 --> 01:06:04,751
You want to feel each hit.

1239
01:06:04,792 --> 01:06:07,250
You want to feel each concussive strike.

1240
01:06:07,542 --> 01:06:08,542
Lives are at stake.

1241
01:06:08,876 --> 01:06:11,375
You want a death animation
to have impactful

1242
01:06:11,376 --> 01:06:14,542
performance, not just have a
guy keel over in a ragdoll.

1243
01:06:14,918 --> 01:06:17,829
In real life a guy hitting a guy
takes a half a second, but in

1244
01:06:17,830 --> 01:06:20,834
the game world you want that to
be as instantaneous as possible.

1245
01:06:21,125 --> 01:06:25,792
I live my whole life in
this very ugly test level.

1246
01:06:25,834 --> 01:06:28,751
Basically, I just fight
dudes in here all the time.

1247
01:06:28,792 --> 01:06:33,167
Almost every move is divided
between an intro and a swing,

1248
01:06:33,209 --> 01:06:35,542
and one of the many things I
have to end up doing is, like,

1249
01:06:35,584 --> 01:06:39,459
counting frames and be
like, "Okay on frame 18,

1250
01:06:39,501 --> 01:06:42,042
I want you to get out of here, I
want you to be able to start moving.

1251
01:06:42,083 --> 01:06:45,239
Every hit reaction that
an NPC plays, they

1252
01:06:45,240 --> 01:06:48,250
are not necessarily in the correct pose.

1253
01:06:48,292 --> 01:06:50,935
When you strike them
the next time, we just

1254
01:06:50,936 --> 01:06:53,459
pop them with a 0 frame
animation change.

1255
01:06:53,501 --> 01:06:55,542
Which is usually kind of a
no-no, you know what I mean.

1256
01:06:55,584 --> 01:06:57,537
You normally want a characters to blend

1257
01:06:57,538 --> 01:06:59,792
smoothly and realistically
into animations.

1258
01:06:59,834 --> 01:07:05,459
But what we found is that you can cover
that pop up with a heavy impact.

1259
01:07:05,501 --> 01:07:10,042
They can go from almost any pose into
the pose that the impact starts from

1260
01:07:10,083 --> 01:07:12,584
and your eye just covers
up the transition for you.

1261
01:07:12,876 --> 01:07:15,832
So if you throw a brick
at a guy, it puts him

1262
01:07:15,833 --> 01:07:18,918
in this like kind of
staggering, stunned state.

1263
01:07:18,959 --> 01:07:24,042
And that changes the moves that you
do when you come up and punch him.

1264
01:07:24,083 --> 01:07:25,918
So now I'm going to
come up and punch him.

1265
01:07:25,959 --> 01:07:28,625
And now when you're punching
him, because you've

1266
01:07:28,626 --> 01:07:31,292
hit him down, you get this
like auto aim moment.

1267
01:07:31,334 --> 01:07:33,375
Where you get like a free head shot.

1268
01:07:33,417 --> 01:07:36,375
I try to make it so that, you know,
if you kind of know what you're doing

1269
01:07:36,417 --> 01:07:39,709
that you can set yourself up
for one plus two equals three.

1270
01:07:44,042 --> 01:07:45,000
Right here!

1271
01:07:46,667 --> 01:07:50,209
Memory on a console is a
very precious resource.

1272
01:07:50,250 --> 01:07:52,991
All of Joel's animations
with every weapon, all

1273
01:07:52,992 --> 01:07:55,792
the NPC animations,
the stealth kills, you know,

1274
01:07:55,834 --> 01:08:01,250
all of that stuff happening needs to fit
within a 4meg to 5meg memory footprint.

1275
01:08:01,292 --> 01:08:02,975
This is a list of
everything that's loaded

1276
01:08:02,976 --> 01:08:04,542
in game and how much memory it's taking

1277
01:08:04,584 --> 01:08:08,292
because memory is our most
precious resource right now.

1278
01:08:09,042 --> 01:08:11,751
So we have a level. We call it
the bookstore. It's in Hunter City.

1279
01:08:11,792 --> 01:08:14,365
And this is a zone for example,
so when I set an AI

1280
01:08:14,366 --> 01:08:16,792
to this zone he will never
leave its boundaries.

1281
01:08:16,834 --> 01:08:19,417
I want guys to guard this exit,
where you have to go through, so,

1282
01:08:19,459 --> 01:08:21,547
I'll zone a couple guys around
there to make sure that

1283
01:08:21,548 --> 01:08:23,751
they, you know, they can fight
you and use all this cover

1284
01:08:23,792 --> 01:08:25,542
but they want to stay around this door.

1285
01:08:29,959 --> 01:08:32,876
This is another key component of the AI.
It's what we call the nav mesh.

1286
01:08:32,918 --> 01:08:37,375
This defines the overall play space of
where an AI knows he can or cannot go.

1287
01:08:37,417 --> 01:08:39,394
Hey look, that's where
a cover used to be and

1288
01:08:39,395 --> 01:08:41,501
there's a hole cut out for it,
I gotta fix that.

1289
01:08:41,542 --> 01:08:42,459
Here's some other wonderful things.

1290
01:08:42,501 --> 01:08:43,667
See these little red polygons?

1291
01:08:43,709 --> 01:08:45,895
Yeah, that means they're not
linking right for some reason,

1292
01:08:45,896 --> 01:08:48,083
so that means they can't really
walk through here properly.

1293
01:08:48,125 --> 01:08:50,375
It's a bug and I need to fix it.

1294
01:08:50,417 --> 01:08:51,501
Welcome to my life.

1295
01:08:58,417 --> 01:08:58,751
Surrounded!

1296
01:08:58,792 --> 01:08:59,292
Surrounded! Hey!

1297
01:09:04,876 --> 01:09:09,876
If you look at a lot of games,
NPC's are usually only alive for...

1298
01:09:09,918 --> 01:09:11,586
you know, a few seconds
before the player

1299
01:09:11,587 --> 01:09:13,375
ends up shooting them
and then they're dead.

1300
01:09:13,417 --> 01:09:17,751
Uh, we want our guys to be much more
dangerous and much more threatening.

1301
01:09:17,792 --> 01:09:19,626
Which means they have
to be alive for longer.

1302
01:09:19,667 --> 01:09:22,298
They need to uh,
exist in the world for longer,

1303
01:09:22,299 --> 01:09:24,876
which means you as the
player can witness them

1304
01:09:24,918 --> 01:09:27,542
acting out their behaviors longer.

1305
01:09:33,834 --> 01:09:36,792
So we've been working really
hard on our AI systems.

1306
01:09:36,834 --> 01:09:39,501
Back of the box, biggest
bullet is going to be like AI.

1307
01:09:44,209 --> 01:09:46,584
So we tried a number of different
prototypes with the buddies, uh

1308
01:09:46,626 --> 01:09:50,000
including having Ellie be
super independent of you.

1309
01:09:50,042 --> 01:09:51,646
She would try to flank the enemies, get

1310
01:09:51,647 --> 01:09:53,417
behind them, or get
between you and them.

1311
01:09:53,459 --> 01:09:55,853
And a lot of times those decisions
should surprise you just

1312
01:09:55,854 --> 01:09:58,209
like a real person or a real
character would surprise you.

1313
01:09:58,250 --> 01:10:00,707
And we discovered after many
different prototypes the best

1314
01:10:00,708 --> 01:10:03,125
thing for her to do, generally,
is to stay very near you.

1315
01:10:06,459 --> 01:10:09,209
You need the exploration and
you need the scavenging,

1316
01:10:09,250 --> 01:10:11,860
you need something to say like, okay, if

1317
01:10:11,861 --> 01:10:14,667
we just crank it to
eleven the whole time

1318
01:10:14,709 --> 01:10:17,959
then it's pinned up there and
there's no time to breath,

1319
01:10:18,000 --> 01:10:21,959
no time to assess, or analyze,
no time to really contrast.

1320
01:10:22,000 --> 01:10:24,709
There's no way of shifting the pacing.

1321
01:10:33,459 --> 01:10:36,459
Puzles are really werid.
Especially Naughty Dog puzzles, I think.

1322
01:10:36,501 --> 01:10:38,584
Like, they're very
simple and satisfying.

1323
01:10:38,626 --> 01:10:42,221
Most of this puzzle is strict
exploration... you can

1324
01:10:42,222 --> 01:10:45,751
see the ladder here,
you can see the pallett there.

1325
01:10:45,792 --> 01:10:49,918
You can see a clear
route up to the ladder.

1326
01:10:49,959 --> 01:10:53,292
So you're like, "Okay, maybe I
have to get Ellie to the pallett,

1327
01:10:53,334 --> 01:10:55,185
push the pallett over
to this side and, like,

1328
01:10:55,186 --> 01:10:56,918
Ellie will climb up and
lower the ladder."

1329
01:10:56,959 --> 01:11:00,036
So that whole part is,
like, not a puzzle,

1330
01:11:00,037 --> 01:11:02,542
it's not regarded as a puzzle, but

1331
01:11:02,584 --> 01:11:04,475
when you feel like you've
got to the solution,

1332
01:11:04,476 --> 01:11:06,167
like, okay I've got
to climb this ladder.

1333
01:11:06,209 --> 01:11:09,501
And you climb it and it breaks off...

1334
01:11:09,542 --> 01:11:12,426
Hopefully then the player will
feel a little bit stumped and

1335
01:11:12,427 --> 01:11:15,501
they'll be like, "I'm not really
sure what I'm meant to do now."

1336
01:11:15,542 --> 01:11:17,250
This is where the puzzle starts.

1337
01:11:17,292 --> 01:11:19,439
Hopefully at this point,
like, all of the elements

1338
01:11:19,440 --> 01:11:21,209
that the player needs
to solve the puzzle

1339
01:11:21,250 --> 01:11:23,325
are very familiar to them,
'cause they've

1340
01:11:23,326 --> 01:11:25,501
been through the previous
exporation beats,

1341
01:11:25,542 --> 01:11:29,375
they're improvising with elements
that are at their disposal.

1342
01:11:29,417 --> 01:11:33,501
That's a really sort of, like, strong
theme throughout "The Last of Us,"

1343
01:11:33,542 --> 01:11:35,968
you're a survivor,
you'll take whatever tools you're

1344
01:11:35,969 --> 01:11:38,167
given and use them in
creative ways to survive.

1345
01:11:53,250 --> 01:11:55,842
We set out to create
something kind of new

1346
01:11:55,843 --> 01:11:58,375
to Naughty Dog, uh,
this crafting system.

1347
01:11:58,417 --> 01:12:00,600
Our lead designer, uh,
Jacob Minkoff, he got

1348
01:12:00,601 --> 01:12:02,834
this book of like
The Survivalist's Handbook,

1349
01:12:02,876 --> 01:12:05,501
and "Homemade Munitions," and
all sorts of funny stuff,

1350
01:12:05,542 --> 01:12:07,910
just to start reading about,
okay if I was just

1351
01:12:07,911 --> 01:12:10,626
wandering around in a collapsed
society in this world,

1352
01:12:10,667 --> 01:12:12,792
what's the stuff that
seems like I could find.

1353
01:12:12,834 --> 01:12:15,959
Alcohol, and sugar, you know,
if you want to make a smoke bomb.

1354
01:12:16,000 --> 01:12:19,389
It's difficult to balance the
right amount of resources

1355
01:12:19,390 --> 01:12:22,417
against what you think the
player's going to need

1356
01:12:22,459 --> 01:12:25,631
and making sure that
the player feels like

1357
01:12:25,632 --> 01:12:28,584
they're getting just enough to survive,

1358
01:12:28,626 --> 01:12:32,209
but not too much that they feel
like they're a powerhouse.

1359
01:12:32,250 --> 01:12:36,011
We wanted you to be forced
to make some choices in the

1360
01:12:36,012 --> 01:12:39,500
world that showed how
depleted the resources were.

1361
01:12:39,501 --> 01:12:39,542
He will stay inside of here.

1362
01:12:39,543 --> 01:12:43,169
So if there's a particular
point in the story where the

1363
01:12:43,170 --> 01:12:47,250
characters are having a particularly
difficult time surviving,

1364
01:12:47,292 --> 01:12:50,532
then we want you as the
player to be finding

1365
01:12:50,533 --> 01:12:53,918
fewer items, farther apart,
harder to survive.

1366
01:12:53,959 --> 01:12:57,525
We will item starve you at
the same time that those,

1367
01:12:57,526 --> 01:13:00,959
those characters are feeling
starved and worn out.

1368
01:13:01,083 --> 01:13:03,542
Then you expose something to them.

1369
01:13:03,584 --> 01:13:06,125
Oh, here's a cache and if
I can just get into that

1370
01:13:06,126 --> 01:13:08,667
cache, oh look there's a
wealth of things in here.

1371
01:13:08,709 --> 01:13:12,555
God, I was so worried,
my health was low, if I...

1372
01:13:12,556 --> 01:13:16,083
If I had run into a combat, because
it's always that thing in your head.

1373
01:13:16,125 --> 01:13:19,630
It's that Hitchcockian thing
about the danger that you see

1374
01:13:19,631 --> 01:13:22,959
is less meaningful than the
danger that's in your head.

1375
01:13:31,751 --> 01:13:33,900
When we're designing the levels,
you know, it's nice to

1376
01:13:33,901 --> 01:13:36,167
have the stuff that we know
people are going to encounter,

1377
01:13:36,209 --> 01:13:38,459
you know, we kind of call this
some of the critical path stuff.

1378
01:13:38,501 --> 01:13:40,619
These are things that nine out
of ten players are going to

1379
01:13:40,620 --> 01:13:42,667
find, their right in the way,
it's where you have to go.

1380
01:13:42,709 --> 01:13:44,664
And then whenever we design a level,
you want to

1381
01:13:44,665 --> 01:13:46,501
have that, that little
nook and cranny right,

1382
01:13:46,542 --> 01:13:48,918
you want to reward the player,
being like, oh you went over here.

1383
01:13:48,959 --> 01:13:53,167
And then you also want to have
that other, second nook and cranny.

1384
01:13:56,918 --> 01:13:59,199
The player's supposed to
go place a ladder here

1385
01:13:59,200 --> 01:14:01,292
and climb up through
the rest of the hotel.

1386
01:14:01,334 --> 01:14:06,333
But, what they can also
do is shimmy across this

1387
01:14:06,334 --> 01:14:11,334
area and I placed a really
cool like upgrade um,

1388
01:14:11,375 --> 01:14:15,125
kind of off the beaten path to
reward players for exploring.

1389
01:14:15,667 --> 01:14:17,916
So if they come all the
way over here, they're

1390
01:14:17,917 --> 01:14:20,167
going to get this really
cool training manual.

1391
01:14:20,209 --> 01:14:22,782
It's a funny little bit of trivia,
the actual... the HUD system,

1392
01:14:22,783 --> 01:14:25,000
not the menus, not like when
you hit 'start' and stuff,

1393
01:14:25,042 --> 01:14:27,000
but the actual HUD system where
you see the reticles and stuff,

1394
01:14:27,042 --> 01:14:31,083
it was literally created for an
E3 demo early in Uncharted 1

1395
01:14:31,125 --> 01:14:32,722
and that's been our HUD system...
the foundation

1396
01:14:32,723 --> 01:14:34,125
of our HUD system for
the last four games.

1397
01:14:34,167 --> 01:14:37,417
First time in Naughty Dog's history,
we hired Alex... she's awesome.

1398
01:14:37,459 --> 01:14:40,463
Uh, and she's got a
really good understanding

1399
01:14:40,464 --> 01:14:42,751
of UI and how it applies to games.

1400
01:14:42,792 --> 01:14:45,150
The thing that I hate
about any game's UI is

1401
01:14:45,151 --> 01:14:47,667
when it pulls you out of
the game for too long.

1402
01:14:47,709 --> 01:14:49,751
No one wants to spend time in menus.

1403
01:14:49,792 --> 01:14:52,375
Nobody loves UI, if we're being honest.

1404
01:14:52,792 --> 01:14:55,016
Weapon slotting has
probably gone through

1405
01:14:55,017 --> 01:14:57,083
more iterations than any other system.

1406
01:14:57,125 --> 01:14:59,334
This stuff that we finally
ended up implementing.

1407
01:14:59,375 --> 01:15:01,848
You press 'select,
' you get into this menu,

1408
01:15:01,849 --> 01:15:04,542
then you D-pad left and
right through the slots,

1409
01:15:04,584 --> 01:15:08,709
and then D-pad up and down
will change the weapon

1410
01:15:08,751 --> 01:15:11,959
and then you don't have to press 'X' or
anything, you just select out of it.

1411
01:15:12,000 --> 01:15:14,684
When you're still, like Joel
is here, that's fine, but

1412
01:15:14,685 --> 01:15:17,125
then as soon as you get
into an actual situation,

1413
01:15:17,167 --> 01:15:19,542
so I'm gonna go over here
and cause some trouble...

1414
01:15:19,584 --> 01:15:21,292
Okay, so here they come... oh God!

1415
01:15:21,334 --> 01:15:23,935
Alright so now I'm out of ammo,
now I need to, like, get

1416
01:15:23,936 --> 01:15:26,584
back in that menu... I have to,
like, run away from them.

1417
01:15:26,626 --> 01:15:30,042
Get into the menu, get out of it, and
it ends up feeling like super clunky.

1418
01:15:30,083 --> 01:15:32,761
Like again, okay, I'm out
of ammo again... get out of

1419
01:15:32,762 --> 01:15:35,292
here, I need to take out
one of my other long guns

1420
01:15:35,334 --> 01:15:38,042
and now Bill's in trouble,
Bill's in trouble over here,

1421
01:15:38,043 --> 01:15:40,751
and I've got to, like,
I'm in a menu now and it's like,

1422
01:15:40,792 --> 01:15:43,898
Aw, shit, whoever designed
this UI is so bad.

1423
01:15:43,899 --> 01:15:47,209
Like, what were they thinking?
Bill's gonna die.

1424
01:15:47,250 --> 01:15:52,584
In theory, it worked, but then in
practice it felt a little clunky.

1425
01:15:52,626 --> 01:15:56,709
We wanted it to be the absolute
minimum amount of button presses.

1426
01:15:56,751 --> 01:15:59,392
You don't say to yourself,
"Oh, I'm never going to be

1427
01:15:59,393 --> 01:16:02,083
able to do this in time,
so I'm just going to give up.

1428
01:16:02,125 --> 01:16:04,792
I'll die, I'll restart,
let me try again."

1429
01:16:04,834 --> 01:16:07,423
You want to always make the
player feel that there is a

1430
01:16:07,424 --> 01:16:09,876
way to survive if they can
just do this fast enough.

1431
01:16:09,918 --> 01:16:12,334
And like, what's going to go in now

1432
01:16:12,375 --> 01:16:16,626
if you just left-right-D-pad through
this stuff you swap out your guns.

1433
01:16:16,667 --> 01:16:18,250
Like, between long gun and short gun.

1434
01:16:18,292 --> 01:16:22,751
If you're now on this gun and you
were to hold 'X' to pick your gun.

1435
01:16:22,792 --> 01:16:27,375
So it all happens within the same system
that you're using to slot the weapons.

1436
01:16:27,417 --> 01:16:29,542
The first iteration I did
on that was awful.

1437
01:16:29,584 --> 01:16:33,834
I just took way too long to get in,
it was just a mess.

1438
01:16:33,876 --> 01:16:36,626
QA was so upset at me,
like, all the time.

1439
01:16:36,667 --> 01:16:39,459
I'm sure they hate me now
because of that system.

1440
01:17:05,209 --> 01:17:08,584
I think the way the industry is kind
of maturing and changing in general,

1441
01:17:08,626 --> 01:17:14,501
you're seeing a lot more focus and
importance on refinement and polish.

1442
01:17:14,542 --> 01:17:17,167
So having internal QA really helps.

1443
01:17:17,209 --> 01:17:20,596
The industry is kind of changing
from QA being this, like,

1444
01:17:20,597 --> 01:17:24,042
"Tighten up the graphics on
level three, bro," kind of vibe

1445
01:17:24,083 --> 01:17:28,667
to like, really being a more technical,
mental, investigative job.

1446
01:17:28,709 --> 01:17:31,743
On the publisher's side,
it's more reactive towards the

1447
01:17:31,744 --> 01:17:34,834
code being delivered in a stable,
controlled environment

1448
01:17:34,876 --> 01:17:38,459
Whereas, on the developer's side,
especially at Naughty Dog,

1449
01:17:38,501 --> 01:17:44,167
we are going beneath the art and the
design. We're given enough weight where

1450
01:17:44,209 --> 01:17:46,730
we can go up to somebody
and be like, "Look, you

1451
01:17:46,731 --> 01:17:49,459
have to fix this." "Why?"
"Come over I'll show you."

1452
01:17:49,501 --> 01:17:52,626
That kind of feedback I would
love to be able to say, like,

1453
01:17:53,667 --> 01:17:56,330
"That was us," but it gets
so diffused throughout the

1454
01:17:56,331 --> 01:17:59,292
iteration process, that you really,
you're just kinda like,

1455
01:17:59,334 --> 01:18:02,567
adding your, uh, I guess like

1456
01:18:02,568 --> 01:18:04,521
genes into the gene pool and just

1457
01:18:04,522 --> 01:18:07,126
seeing what happens,
you know what I mean?

1458
01:18:14,083 --> 01:18:16,709
Everyone's working all the time now. Um,

1459
01:18:16,751 --> 01:18:21,834
like, I tell people, seven weeks and
then you can have tons of time off.

1460
01:18:21,876 --> 01:18:23,250
Enjoy the sun, you know?

1461
01:18:23,292 --> 01:18:27,459
But, for now, it's like...
this... for everybody.

1462
01:18:29,083 --> 01:18:31,334
THE LAST FIVE WEEKS

1463
01:18:52,334 --> 01:18:55,834
Crunching has been... is
part of making games.

1464
01:18:55,876 --> 01:18:57,584
I feel it's human nature, right?

1465
01:18:57,626 --> 01:18:59,005
If I'm going to have a guest at

1466
01:18:59,006 --> 01:19:00,397
home, that's going to come
for a couple of weeks.

1467
01:19:00,409 --> 01:19:03,367
I'm probably going to clean their room
just the day before they arrive, right?

1468
01:19:03,409 --> 01:19:05,182
And they think it's the
same thing, and it's

1469
01:19:05,183 --> 01:19:07,076
just like everything comes
together at the end.

1470
01:19:07,118 --> 01:19:08,659
I personally enjoy crunch.

1471
01:19:08,701 --> 01:19:10,798
I think you get this,
like, absolute laser focus

1472
01:19:10,799 --> 01:19:12,701
because it has to come together.

1473
01:19:13,118 --> 01:19:14,409
There's a comraderie, also...

1474
01:19:14,450 --> 01:19:16,450
There's a comraderie, totally. Yeah.

1475
01:19:16,492 --> 01:19:18,200
The vibe is everywhere,
you know what I mean?

1476
01:19:18,242 --> 01:19:21,283
Everyone's kind of, like,
giving it 150% at this point.

1477
01:19:21,325 --> 01:19:24,118
We're getting there, right?
You start to get these glimmers.

1478
01:19:24,159 --> 01:19:27,201
And, I don't think anyone
who doesn't make games

1479
01:19:27,202 --> 01:19:30,742
realizes how late in the process
you get those glimmers.

1480
01:19:30,784 --> 01:19:32,826
One week before we
shipped that press demo,

1481
01:19:32,867 --> 01:19:35,580
we're all like, "This kinda sucks.

1482
01:19:35,581 --> 01:19:38,409
What's going on here? We need
to dig down here and find this."

1483
01:19:38,450 --> 01:19:40,867
And in one week... like, one week...
The fun came together.

1484
01:19:40,909 --> 01:19:43,325
You're shooting at a guy and
then somebody flanks you

1485
01:19:43,367 --> 01:19:46,076
and you hit him, and you avoid
the other guy who's shooting you

1486
01:19:46,118 --> 01:19:48,367
and then you flank and go
behind cover and you're like,

1487
01:19:48,409 --> 01:19:53,534
"Oh, that five seconds in that 15-hour
game was really, really fun."

1488
01:19:53,575 --> 01:19:57,200
How do we make that five seconds
happen thousands more times?

1489
01:19:57,242 --> 01:20:00,367
My favorite videogame
is making videogames.

1490
01:20:00,409 --> 01:20:04,159
It is as challenging and as
complex and as interesting.

1491
01:20:04,200 --> 01:20:06,325
We had to try all the
things that didn't work.

1492
01:20:06,367 --> 01:20:09,167
What's hard about crunch, it's like

1493
01:20:09,168 --> 01:20:11,534
marching through that swamp
of it not working.

1494
01:20:11,909 --> 01:20:14,031
I mean nothing's ever
really final because

1495
01:20:14,032 --> 01:20:15,909
you can always make something better.

1496
01:20:16,409 --> 01:20:21,283
Always. So we're constantly changing
and constantly reiterating

1497
01:20:21,325 --> 01:20:25,242
and trying to make it better and better
and better pretty much until we ship.

1498
01:20:25,617 --> 01:20:28,159
As an artist, you're never
really happy with your work.

1499
01:20:28,200 --> 01:20:31,268
You can be given, like,
a hundred years to work on something,

1500
01:20:31,269 --> 01:20:33,992
you'll still find things to
nitpick and things to fix.

1501
01:20:34,034 --> 01:20:36,120
Yeah you can work on
the game for 10 years

1502
01:20:36,121 --> 01:20:38,159
and you'll still be
crunching at the end.

1503
01:20:38,200 --> 01:20:42,242
So, it's like... okay.

1504
01:20:42,742 --> 01:20:44,080
All of a sudden, as
I'm getting ready one

1505
01:20:44,081 --> 01:20:45,325
morning in the shower, and I was like,

1506
01:20:45,367 --> 01:20:47,500
"Oh yeah! I'm about to ship

1507
01:20:47,501 --> 01:20:49,450
another title and this is going
to be a really good title."

1508
01:20:49,492 --> 01:20:51,242
And it gets you excited and
you're like, "Alright!"

1509
01:20:51,450 --> 01:20:52,534
Do I think the game's gonna be good?

1510
01:20:52,575 --> 01:20:53,701
Yeah, it's gonna be awesome.

1511
01:20:53,742 --> 01:20:57,159
I think it was good a little while ago,
and now we're gonna make it...

1512
01:20:57,283 --> 01:20:58,617
- ...kind of amazing.
- Extra good.

1513
01:20:58,909 --> 01:21:02,325
What'll it take to get there
in these next five weeks?

1514
01:21:03,118 --> 01:21:03,909
It's going to be a lot.

1515
01:21:03,951 --> 01:21:05,826
I'm excited, I have faith.

1516
01:21:05,909 --> 01:21:08,826
Every time we're shipping
a game, it's terrifying.

1517
01:21:08,867 --> 01:21:10,409
You just hope for the best.

1518
01:21:10,450 --> 01:21:12,866
You don't know, right?
I mean, like, people have

1519
01:21:12,867 --> 01:21:15,283
different opinions, we
have to go with our guts.

1520
01:21:15,325 --> 01:21:17,076
But, I trust the team
just to pull it off.

1521
01:21:20,450 --> 01:21:24,409
This, hands down, is the hardest,
most challenging thing I've ever done.

1522
01:21:24,450 --> 01:21:28,575
We sweat a lot, and we worked a lot,
and we all went home tired, you know?

1523
01:21:28,617 --> 01:21:30,573
But I think that's what's...
you're gonna see

1524
01:21:30,574 --> 01:21:32,701
that on the screen.
I think that's gonna pay off.

1525
01:21:35,283 --> 01:21:36,076
Ellie?

1526
01:21:40,450 --> 01:21:41,200
Ellie?

1527
01:21:41,242 --> 01:21:42,317
What?

1528
01:21:42,784 --> 01:21:44,450
The ladder, c'mon.

1529
01:21:44,701 --> 01:21:45,826
Right.

1530
01:21:49,701 --> 01:21:52,701
After David, Ellie's visibly distant.

1531
01:21:52,742 --> 01:21:55,104
You could've done a cutscene
to show, "Hey, you're

1532
01:21:55,105 --> 01:21:57,283
being very distant," and
she's not responding.

1533
01:21:57,325 --> 01:22:00,180
But to also do that in gameplay
to where something that you've

1534
01:22:00,181 --> 01:22:02,992
done just countless times
throughout the game with, you know,

1535
01:22:03,034 --> 01:22:04,947
let me boost you up here,
get the ladder, bring

1536
01:22:04,948 --> 01:22:06,742
it down, so we can do
this systemic thing...

1537
01:22:08,367 --> 01:22:10,330
and the character responds with that and you

1538
01:22:10,331 --> 01:22:12,076
have to actually go over to her and go,

1539
01:22:12,617 --> 01:22:15,992
"Hey, come on, the ladder?
We've done this, let's do this."

1540
01:22:16,034 --> 01:22:17,450
It's a subtle choice.

1541
01:22:17,492 --> 01:22:18,951
Bruce and I talked in the beginning, it was like,

1542
01:22:18,992 --> 01:22:22,367
we have these mechanics, how can we exploit them in a narrative sense.

1543
01:22:22,409 --> 01:22:24,951
And that's one of those opportunities.

1544
01:22:25,450 --> 01:22:28,367
I just think it's incredible that happens in game, it's not a cinematic.

1545
01:22:28,409 --> 01:22:31,370
You know, it's something that adds weight

1546
01:22:31,371 --> 01:22:33,909
to that controller they're playing.

1547
01:22:35,118 --> 01:22:37,034
Waah! So good!

1548
01:22:37,867 --> 01:22:38,492
Let's go eat.

1549
01:22:38,701 --> 01:22:39,367
Let's go eat.