All language subtitles for Grounded.II.Making.The.Last.of.Us.Part.II.WEB-DL-DLHA_www.Downloadha.com_

>Neil: Okay.

>Thank you all, for what is about to be a very long presentation.

>So Anthony and I ran some numbers, and to our best guess,

>The Last of Us Part II is 10 to 30% longer than The Last of Us Part I.

>However, this is the most detailed story presentation we've ever done.

>If you think about the precision for T1,

>where we talk about the quarantine zone in somewhat detail, and most of it changed.

>Then it's like, here are some things that might happen with Joel and Ellie.

>They might go into a spore-filled subway tunnel,

>they might fight some cannibals.

>At some point, Joel gets incapacitated-

>This has everything figured out. Even though it might change.

>Every character is accounted for, every cinematic is accounted for in this presentation,

>which means this is gonna feel twice as long as the first game.

>So when you freak out, that's normal. That's part of this.

>This is about an hour and a half to 2 hours. So hopefully you got your pee break.

>Okay, so we open on 15 year old Ellie.

>This is a few weeks after the events of the first game.

>There's a doorway leading down to this basement,

>and Ellie sees Tommy, he just finished climbing out of this basement,

>and he's hurt bad and he's rambling about something - needing to go after these people.

>Ellie's trying to ask him, "What happened? Where's Joel?"

>And he doesn't make any sense to her, she starts to go downstairs…

>Tommy grabs her hand and tries to stop her, but he's too weak. She rips her arm away.

>And she heads down.

>And with each step, her heart races faster and faster as she sees this trail of blood.

>She opens the door, revealing…

>Joel's mutilated body.

>And then shock sets in and screams, and tries to grab his body,

>and Dina comes and rips her away, and in that cacophony of sounds…

>silence.

>Oh, we're just getting started.

>I've been working on this game since we finished…

>well, really been thinking about it since we finished The Last of Us.

>Kurt: So many people were like, "Last of Us I is so perfect…

>it should never have a sequel.

>They shouldn't make a sequel."

>Anthony: They're like, "Oh, it wrapped up super great."

>But I think, actually, if you look at the ending…

>Ellie: Swear to me that everything you said about the Fireflies is true.

>Anthony: …Ellie is accepting a lie.

>Joel: I swear.

>Ellie: Okay.

>Ashley: She has a very good bullshit detector. She knows something doesn't feel right,

>but I think is too scared at that point to ask.

>Anthony: How long can you really live with accepting a lie like that?

>Neil: The Last of Us feels like an origin story for a survivor in this post-apocalyptic world.

>Seeing how Ellie has become such a strong, unique character,

>it really felt like, if we were to do a sequel, it'd be a shame for it not to focus on her.

>Ellie: Move the fuck out of the way.

>Joel: Once we're done with this whole thing, I'm gonna teach you how to play guitar.

>Yeah, I reckon you'd really like that.

>Whaddya say, huh?

>Neil: Joel is gonna teach Ellie to play a guitar.

>That always felt like this unanswered promise that was lingering at the end of the first game.

>We did this thing called One Night Live,

>where we had the actors come on stage and reenact certain scenes.

>Annie: Say we get you to the Fireflies, what happens next?

>Ashley: Marlene, she said that they have their own little quarantine zone.

>And that doctors are still trying to find a cure.

>Neil: I wrote this new scene that takes place after the ending of The Last of Us,

>but it was only shown to people in the audience.

>We cut off the stream right before we showed them this scene.

>Troy: If I ever were to lose you

>I'd surely lose myself

>Try and sometimes you'll succeed

>To make this man of me

>… Our future days

>Days of you and me

>She’s yours.

>Ashley: No no no, I don’t know the first thing about this.

>Troy: Hey, I promised that I’d teach you how to play.

>Neil: That scene ends with Ellie holding the guitar and playing one note.

>That image was so strong, in my mind, that it trickled into this idea of this trailer.

>So we started working on some concept art, kept fleshing out the story.

>As it felt like it was gaining momentum, Uncharted 4 needed all hands on deck.

>Emilia: Naughty Dog had always made one game.

>And as soon as it finishes one game, works on another.

>When I started on Uncharted 3,

>we were starting to experiment, then, with trying to do 2 teams.

>After we finished Uncharted 3, I jumped on to Uncharted 4.

>At some point in time, Uncharted 4 was coming down to the wire,

>and we had to shift resources, and pretty much everyone ended up on Uncharted

>trying to finish it up.

>Neil: So I said, "Okay, before I come on in full force on Uncharted 4,

>I just wanna capture this trailer."

>Ashley: I walk through the valley

>of the shadow of death.

>And I'll fear no evil

>because I'm blind to it all.

>Still, I walk beside the still waters and they

>restore my soul.

>But I can't walk on the path of the right

>because I'm wrong.

>Neil: During the entire production of Uncharted 4, that's all I could think about.

>I had a lot of investment in Uncharted 4, but the day we were done with it,

>went right back to that trailer to wrap it up.

>Anything for this shot that's still happening?

>Man: Not animation.

>Ellie: ...of the shadow of death.

>Neil: This one feels kinda strong to me. Drawing a lot of attention.

>Can we tone that down?

>Woman: Yep.

>Neil: Actually, my biggest fear with this announcement is that it leaks early.

>More than anything, I have nightmares about this trailer leaking early

>before we get to PSX.

>If we're gonna surprise people, PSX - the PlayStation Experience -

>hasn't set itself up yet as a place where big titles get revealed. That's E3.

>We're revealing the Uncharted single player content at the opening of the show.

>No one's gonna expect a second Naughty Dog title to be revealed in the same press conference.

>Man: Please welcome to the stage: Shawn Layden.

>Shawn: There's one more special unveil we have for you tonight.

>Please enjoy.

>Neil: When we first revealed The Last of Us, the Naughty Dog logo came up

>and the crowd erupted, and it was such a high…

>that that's been like chasing the dragon, wanting to recapture that feeling.

>[people exclaim and cheer]

>Neil: Playing it at this surprising moment…

>I'm hoping it will have a similar feel.

>Joel: What're you doin', kiddo?

>Neil: People outside of the studio have such an attachment to the first game,

>and I've definitely seen fears about not wanting to make a sequel,

>because somehow if it's bad, it will tarnish your feeling about the first game.

>Ellie: I'm gonna find…

>and I'm gonna kill…

>every last one of them.

>Neil: We're doubling down on those fears and not calling it, "The Last of Us: some subtitle"…

>it's "The Last of Us Part II" to say it's all one story.

>The concept for the sequel had to feel compelling enough,

>have enough weight that it felt like this is an experience worth creating,

>worth spending the next 3 years on.

>I became really intrigued with the idea of the cycle of violence, and how…

>certain events would trigger acts of violence, that then would beget more violence.

>It's almost never satisfying. It never brings the person you love back.

>And despite you thinking it's gonna bring some closure, it doesn't.

>We just need more empathy.

>Wouldn't it be awesome if we could create an experience that lets you safely explore those feelings?

>With that theme, all of a sudden everything fell into place,

>and this outline emerged.

>The whole catalyst for what starts the second game is Joel killing the doctor.

>Nurse: No!

>Neil: And that feeds right back into that idea of the cycle of violence.

>That sets up this whole sequence of events.

>We're gonna start the game where you're playing a new character,

>and that sequence ends with this character killing Joel.

>We really have to paint her as this monster.

>Then when you play the next chunk of the game and you're Ellie,

>and you're gonna "pursue justice," quote-unquote,

>you're gonna go kill this entire crew.

>We're gonna go back in time and show you that same sequence of events.

>This character you show as a monster, to now get you to see things from her perspective.

>And how this crew is a bunch of people trying to survive in this world,

>and their reasons for pursuing and finding Joel, and killing him.

>The story was becoming very epic, ambitious…

>and I had a few parts that I was kinda stuck on.

>And I felt like, to shake things up, I wanted to bring in another writer.

>Halley: I thought it was a very thoughtful story about violence and obsession.

>He had Abby, this girl who was the daughter of the doctor…

>and that Ellie would go on this vengeance quest.

>And when he was like, "Then Ellie actually kills Abby,"

>I was like, "What?! You're gonna…"

>"Yeah, let's fucking do it!"

>Neil: Not only is she contributing in a lot of ways, she's challenging what the story can be.

>She's wanted to add more romantic intimacy between the characters.

>Those are areas I've been… more uncomfortable writing that stuff.

>After the first day, she was telling me she went home and told her husband that…

>"I think I just got Ellie's girlfriend pregnant."

>'Cause that was her big idea the first day,

>and that had this trickle-down effect that actually added a lot to the story.

>Halley: Ellie is this very relatable character.

>I thought she was a perfect vehicle to challenge this notion…

>that violence doesn't have a cost, because it does in reality.

>It's going to ruin this girl.

>Y'know, people love Joel and Ellie, and we're about to kill one

>and make the other one a villain.

>Neil: I was very nervous telling Troy we're going to kill off Joel.

>In the first game, he was advocating that Joel should die.

>Troy: When I read the ending to Part I, I was like…

>"You're gonna piss a lot of people off."

>Marlene: Let me go.

>Ashley: Marlene is the closest thing to a parent Ellie has had, outside of Joel.

>Joel: You’d just come after her.

>Ashley: A lot of people got hurt, and Marlene would be one of those people.

>Neil: Joel has crossed these moral lines, and therefore he deserved to die.

>He thought it might be a more dramatic ending, and I was like,

>"Nah, you're crazy."

>But then in the second game, that's why I thought he would take it pretty easily.

>Troy: He goes, "So… Joel dies."

>He's like, "So this happens, then…" and I had to stop him like,

>"Can you give me just a second?"

>Because it literally was as if someone was telling me about how my friend had just died.

>Neil: I think he took it hard. It was like… the character meant so much to him.

>We're gonna kill off this character, his role is gonna be much smaller on this one.

>Troy: All of a sudden it was… "Please don't take this from me yet."

>Ashley: Ellie is scared to be alone.

>Everybody she's loved up until that point… she's lost them.

>Joe: It's hard to imagine the story without Joel dying.

>You feel that hate, Ellie feels that hate.

>You're 1-to-1. You're on the stick.

>And that informs the rest of the story.

>Tommy: This way, c'mon!

>Joel: You okay?

>Abby: Yeah.

>Neil: We get you - through interactivity - to really connect and empathize with this character.

>Joel: Y’all act like you’ve heard of us or something.

>Neil: And then make you feel like, "I've led Joel to a trap."

>Anthony: When we started out making The Last of Us Part II,

>Neil actually wanted to be very ambitious about changing the game almost entirely.

>In the first 4 or 5 months, it was actually an open world inspired by Bloodborne.

>And it was purely melee focused, it was all hand-to-hand combat.

>Emilia: It wasn't just the melee combat, we were also looking at layout structure.

>Bloodborne had a very open space that kept getting bigger and bigger as you explored.

>I really like that feeling you get of mastery over the world.

>It starts to become almost a character in the game itself.

>And so, that was also something we were looking at.

>Anthony: We started out making it as different as humanly possible from the first game as we could.

>And then dialing it back.

>The open world thing didn't work with the story we were trying to tell.

>Emilia: In pre-production. we spent a lot of time just doing setups.

>Self-contained units that tried to expound on a single idea.

>Trying to start out with simple shapes and building up to more complex shapes.

>Starting out with 1 or 2 mechanics, and building up to those mechanics.

>Izzy: Even in our experiments, we try to add as much context as we can.

>We establish a goal we're gonna be going for, we establish beats,

>so there's an emotional journey, stakes are raised.

>Figuring out some traversal stuff, a lot of climbing, and balance beams, and…

>seeing how far we can push that direction without it getting over-the-top, like Uncharted.

>Emilia: More verticality.

>More use of that grass, and stealth.

>Arnaldo: My name is Arnaldo Licea.

>Man: What do you do here?

>Arnaldo: I do design.

>Man: How long have you been doing it?

>Arnaldo: A day!

>I got an opportunity to work in QA, and that was a great learning experience.

>I shipped The Last of Us and Uncharted 4.

>Patrick: The thing I'm proudest of is the people who came into a quality assurance job…

>as a contractor, which is entry level work,

>and used that job to get to where they ultimately wanted to be.

>Arnaldo: When I interviewed for the QA position, I specifically said that my goal was to be a designer.

>Patrick: He had formed this relationship with design where they knew they could rely on him.

>Spending his free time designing a demo, and at the same time,

>him going to them, and not being like, "Here's 50 bugs you need to fix."

>He went to them and was like, "What do you need?"

>"How do I help you? What kind of bugs do you need?"

>For their part, they embraced him and were like,

>"Why don't we show you how to lay out navmesh?"

>Arnaldo: I am anxious to prove myself.

>There's no "babying" when you start, it's just hit the ground running.

>If I don't cut it I go back to QA or find something else.

>We're trying to figure out at the moment how we handle big spaces.

>Bigger than the first game.

>Izzy: The enemies are too spread out to be considered one single, small encounter.

>And seeing what behaviors we need to start developing for them to make it look good.

>Neil: The opening of Seattle, that whole section was pretty slow.

>And quite linear in the level design.

>Let's assume that there's guys in this building.

>Someone's starting to shoot at me from the second floor.

>So okay, if I'm on the horse...

>If I'm getting shot at, I can't take cover on the horse.

>Probably first thing I'm gonna do is jump off.

>And that's slow and clumsy. Maybe we could make that faster.

>But once I jump off, I wanna take cover behind something.

>I'm thinking, "I'm taking cover, now what the fuck do I do with this horse?"

>I assume the enemies are gonna shoot at it. If they don't, that's kinda weird.

>Does Dina ride off with the horse to help it stay safe?

>Well, that sucks 'cause I'm trying to build a relationship with Dina.

>If my partner leaves me, that makes me like her less.

>Okay, Dina HAS to get off the horse and take cover with me

>and help me engage with enemies.

>Okay, but the horse is still there. What happens with this horse?

>Does it ride off on its own in order to protect itself?

>And it comes back after… or that feels too intelligent for a horse?

>That seems a little funny.

>As soon as there's ranged combat, the horse makes it fall apart.

>What if we make this whole sequence on foot?

>How do I approach this building? Imagine this is more dense, with cars…

>and ferns, and interesting ways for me to close this distance.

>Maybe when I get close enough, 2 militia guys come out.

>I have this little fire-fight with this front,

>before I can rush forward and go into this building, climb up, and take out the sharpshooter

>that was harassing me.

>Really simple, small fight.

>Now there's tension. Guys could come from anywhere!

>From this rooftop, from these windows.

>And that really inspired us to take some pretty drastic changes as far as the flow,

>inserting more combat, opening up the layout to give the player more options

>for how they explore the city.

>You can imagine this as being the hub, with it poking into streets,

>and I could go into those streets and explore, and find those locations,

>what we're calling "dungeons."

>So that's the plan. Some of these changes are big, but it got us excited.

>This feels like a true evolution of T1 as far as going more systemic and giving you options.

>Kurt: If there's concern, it's about scale, scope, can we actually build this thing?

>Rob: The scope is always bigger than the last game.

>It always has been. It always will be, probably.

>But this scope on this game is something pretty extraordinary.

>Kurt: Everyone seems to agree the thing we're building is gonna be cool once it's done,

>it's just that it's such a big game.

>Anthony: Our games have become more and more ambitious, and the studio has gotten a lot bigger.

>Neil: When I started, we were 40 people. Now we're over 300.

>You can't handle that many people with a flat hierarchy.

>As we grew, we've had to introduce new titles just to control management,

>control communication, make sure things don't fall through the cracks.

>Anthony: We have no producers at Naughty Dog.

>Neil: There's so many talented people here that you can rely on and lean on.

>It makes the game better.

>And that's really the secret sauce of Naughty Dog, is how collaborative it is.

>Rob: You find the right people who really wanna do the best they can possibly do,

>and you give them the resources to try.

>You're getting what you asked for - is a creative person, right?

>You're getting the freedom to go as far as you can go.

>But sometimes, I think, we need to be saved from ourselves a little bit.

>Joe: With The Last of Us II, there's a real sense of opportunity.

>This is going to be a much cleaner production than we’ve done in the past.

>We're gonna get it right this time.

>Neil: This is the first project that's had the proper pre-production period,

>where we have locked down - for the most part - the story,

>beginning, middle, and end, before we started production.

>That hasn't happened… I don't know if that has ever happened.

>Now that I think about it.

>Emilia: It's a very, very messy process.

>Which is, a lot of times, why it's really difficult to schedule.

>I think right now, we are planning on springtime of 2018.

>So when springtime of 2018 comes around, and The Last of Us II isn't in stores,

>you can look back at this and say, "Well, I guess their plan wasn't exactly set in stone."

>Anthony: Historically, we've done very poorly at being efficient

>without the pressure of an external deadline.

>Neil: Every time we have some showing of our games, it's gonna be seen publicly,

>it's gotta be one of the best-looking, -playing things in the industry.

>For example, the first trailer was coming online,

>and that forced us to define the look of our game, define the location of where the game takes place,

>define Ellie's look, and her age, and her hair, and her outfit.

>We were forced to make those choices.

>We can't just keep iterating, because there's a deadline.

>Joe: We want to try and schedule the game using these milestones as soon as possible…

>Emilia: …which means we gotta keep the marketing rolling.

>Which means, next E3 6 months away, we need to look at a gameplay demo.

>Anthony: E3. It's always been the biggest and most extravagant showing of the game industry.

>There's something special about the energy of E3.

>Emilia: We need to figure out the gameplay, 'cause right now

>we've just got a bunch of cool prototypes and stuff, so it's scary.

>But we work well under pressure.

>Anthony: We were hoping to be really aggressive and show at E3 2017,

>just to really kick the project into gear as fast as humanly possible.

>Neil: We wanna break it up into a roughly 2-minute cinematic.

>A flashback sequence that will set the emotional context for…

>what will then go into a 5-minute gameplay sequence.

>We wanna do this festival within Jackson.

>There'll be a live band, and we're seeing people lively, having fun.

>Man: For the crowd, are you thinking 30+ people?

>Neil: Frank says we could do with 30 variations.

>I think we could make that work with 30.

>Dina pulls Ellie onto the dance floor.

>Ellie's dancing with her, making all these guys jealous,

>and then Dina says, "You wanna make them REALLY jealous?"

>And she leans over and kisses her,

>and on that we do a hard cut to Ellie in the middle of the woods.

>So we shouldn't see any buildings, just woods, ankle-deep water rushing underneath her.

>Man: What about rain? Are we still going rain?

>Neil: I haven't discussed it with the other guys, but…

>Christian: That demo that we show externally for the very first time is setting the bar for…

>the rest of development.

>But the problem is, we're also working on Uncharted 4: The Lost Legacy.

>Waylon: So, E3 is June 13th. Which means we wanna be done 2 weeks before that.

>Which is 4 and a half months from now.

>Anthony: With Lost Legacy shipping at around the same time of E3,

>there are shared resources between the 2 projects…

>Emilia: ...especially sound and particle effects, so they were all on Uncharted.

>Sandeep: When it comes to polish phase, we're polishing this and SP DLC at the same time.

>I don't know if there's any specific item that needs to be worked on,

>but there's gonna be programmer time doing both those things…

>Travis: There's gonna be times when we're…

>"This needs polishing in E3 and this needs polishing in SP DLC," and…

>we're gonna have to compromise at times, maybe.

>Anthony: We didn't have it at the forefront of our mind, that yeah, they're freaking shipping a video game.

>It's literally the hardest part of making the game, is shipping it.

>And we were trying to ship a demo - the second hardest thing you can do - at the same time,

>and sharing a lot of their resources.

>Neil: One thing that would be helpful is to find out what are the items you're most worried about.

>Let's say, rain. We can do this thing without rain.

>So if that helps you a ton, we can make the decision now to remove rain.

>Eben: It'd definitely help.

>Frank: How about wet hair?

>Man: Well, if she's gonna be swimming, can't get around that part.

>Frank: How about no swimming?

>Man: Puts on a cap.

>Joe: I got a real clear energy of the meeting, which was, "How do we shrink it?"

>It was such an impossible task.

>You can't help but start feeling some doubt, some anxiety about the leadership

>not understanding the logic of it.

>I think like anybody else here, I was ready to roll up my sleeves and figure it out.

>Evan: Alright guys, we're gonna try to keep this pretty short.

>So after yesterday's meeting, there were a lot of side conversations

>and there was a sentiment about how much work there was

>to get not only this done, but then to ship The Lost Legacy.

>It matched up with feelings we were having, so we started discussing the…

>responsibility of actually attempting this,

>and started feeling it was a little bit irresponsible.

>That if we were to try to meet both deadlines, we could probably do it,

>but we would end up doing a lesser job on both projects, both deadlines,

>than we would if we were doing them individually.

>Feels like they're both important enough to give them the due attention…

>so, the conclusion that definitely is there is…

>that the demo that was discussed yesterday will not be presented at E3.

>Um, yeah.

>Frank: Does it mean that our main point should be focusing on shipping U4?

>Evan: The Lost Legacy?

>Yeah? Definitely. We should still try to...

>we essentially don't want to completely halt work on this,

>and, you know, all hands on deck on Lost Legacy.

>Neil: It is still to finish the demo, just to give us a buffer so these 2 deadlines aren't overlapping.

>Now we have more time to work on this demo properly, without the pressure of…

>Joe: Once that meeting happened, it was just like, "Right, of course."

>I'm not in the Twilight Zone.

>It makes sense not to do this.

>It felt really nice seeing the leadership having the team's back,

>and seeing the logic of the situation in front of them.

>Evan: That's it.

>Man: Thanks.

>Okay, so… are you pissed off?

>Neil: Am I pissed off?

>No, uh… What am I?

>I guess on one sense, it's relieved.

>'Cause there was concern of whether we could hit the quality we know we need to hit

>for both Lost Legacy and for… what was going to be our E3 demo.

>Then again, it's kinda disappointing, because…

>I was excited to get this demo done and get it out there,

>and get the reaction, and now it's gonna have to happen at some other point.

>Anthony: What we've decided to do is deliver the demo at around the same time.

>But that's gonna be purely internal, and the demo won't be 100% shippable.

>Gameplay and design and animation are gonna be locked in June.

>Then we back off, we finish Lost Legacy,

>and then resources free up to finish the particle effects, the lighting, and the sound.

>And then we ship just the glossiest, best-looking demo you've ever seen.

>We burn that to a disk at the beginning of January,

>and then we don't touch it again, and nobody sees it until E3.

>It's going to be really interesting to see if we can really, really commit

>to being done 5 months, 6 months in advance of E3,

>and not be tempted to say, "Eh, could be a little better. Let's go back."

>We really need to have the discipline not to do that.

>Neil: But that then left us like, "Okay, what's our next marketing beat?"

>"What are we gonna show next from this game?"

>Emilia: So now we have a new plan, where we're going to release a cinematic around PSX time -

>I think we're going to do it at the Paris Games Show.

>Neil: This seemed like a pretty intriguing scene to introduce Abby.

>That whole scene is gonna be our next marketing beat,

>and we're not gonna say much about it - how it fits into the game or where it fits in.

>Abby evolved over time.

>If you look at the concept art, the character looked very different

>than where we've ended up.

>I don't remember at what point we decided to go with someone really muscular and broad,

>but I remember once the idea came up, it felt very fresh.

>Ashley: Once we nailed down the body of Abby,

>we played around with different ideas of how we wanted to…

>accentuate her arms or not.

>Neil: There's something interesting in Abby feeling a lot like Joel.

>Laura: When I got cast, Neil was joking around and he was like,

>"You should probably beef up in order to play her,"

>and I'm like, "Haha, yeah it's mocap, whatever."

>And he goes, "No, really, you should probably beef up to play her."

>And I'm like, "Oh, yeah, you're right, I should totally start deadlifting as much as possible."

>So I did, and I was training like crazy,

>and then I got pregnant.

>Eh, what're you gonna do.

>Neil: We need to separate her from Ellie.

>It shouldn't feel like I'm playing a reskinned Ellie.

>Abby should - in many ways, - look, behave, fight differently.

>So in gameplay, we've discussed she needs to have different upgrade trees.

>It means we have to make the investment of capturing a whole different moveset for Abby,

>we can't just remap Ellie's animation onto Abby.

>Abby has a fear of height,

>and there's stuff we're doing with the camera to make you feel vertigo.

>That helps build empathy, it makes this character real.

>Abby: We let you both live…

>and you wasted it!

>Ashley: She's, aesthetically, a very intriguing and iconic and powerful character.

>Mel: Abby, who are these kids?

>Abby: They saved my life.

>Can you take a look at her?

>Neil: Once she killed Joel, what is Abby's motivation?

>What is she trying to achieve?

>Her redemption is really taking care of Yara and Lev -

>these 2 kids who are from a warring faction.

>Halley: She has been taught to hate them, an inherent xenophobic reaction to them.

>It's about saying, "Can you come to love your enemy?"

>Abby: Scars built all this?

>Lev: Seraphites.

>Abby: Yeah, I was gonna say that…

>Ashley: These are kids that grew up in a very different context as Ellie,

>and how they live their lives and experience the world is totally different.

>Halley: I'm getting really attached to Lev.

>He's been able to keep his head up, despite losing so much himself…

>in a world that is so harsh.

>Lev: We’re taking too long.

>Abby: Can’t move any faster.

>It won’t do your sister any good if we’re both dead.

>Halley: I really like his dynamic with Abby.

>Her having this… fuckin' brassy little sidekick who calls her on her shit

>in a way that nobody else can.

>Lev: What’s going on between you and your friend Owen?

>Abby: Oh my god, Lev! Now?

>Lev: It seemed really awkward!

>Abby: Just go!

>Halley: …Who understands the sense of being orphaned, in the way that a lot of people can't.

>Abby: How long have you two been on the run for?

>Lev: Two days.

>Abby: What the hell did you do?

>Lev: I shaved my head.

>Abby: They want to kill a little boy because he shaved his head?

>Halley: I am not trans, so it's a very delicate thing to tell…

>a story of an experience that I have not had.

>And that's something we wanna take seriously.

>Lev: Did you hear what they called me?

>Abby: Yeah.

>Lev: Do you want to ask me about it?

>Abby: Do you want me to ask you about it?

>Lev: No.

>Abby: Okay.

>Halley: It's really about trying to create a multifaceted character…

>who is trans, and that absolutely is an important part of who he is,

>but also a PART of who he is, not the whole of who he is.

>Neil: As far as the Paris cutscene, pretty stressed out.

>We have 13 days, less than 2 weeks, to finish this thing,

>and there are still some big ticket items.

>Lost Legacy turned out to be a much bigger project than we originally envisioned.

>But now that it's done, everyone is now on board.

>Anthony: We've got the greenlight demo done.

>Jesse: She’s uh… putting on quite the show.

>Neil: It's very real. We're in full production now, I guess that's…

>the short of it, we're in full production now.

>Man: Hey everybody, PlayStation's live at Paris Games Week 2017.

>We've got a huge show for you, starting now.

>Jim: Well, what a great way to open Paris Games Week.

>Let's have the first in-depth look at a much anticipated and exclusive title.

>Marlon: Last of Us II! Last of Us II, please!

>Please be Last of Us II.

>Anthony: Our fans, they wanna know every last thing about what's gonna be in this game.

>O.C. Deidre: Is this The Last of Us?

>Anthony: Neil has taken the way he creates an arc - this sense of drama, this sense of mystery,

>or this dramatic tension - and, crazily, has brought it to marketing.

>Neil: I view marketing as part of the game.

>It's very calculated what we put out there, and how we want you to connect different marketing assets.

>When we first released the teaser trailer,

>too many people right off the bat said Joel is dead.

>Halley: The blown-out light really… fucked us in a way I don't think any of us saw coming.

>Neil: We actually underestimated our audience a little bit.

>They're so sophisticated now, so you have to get MORE sophisticated, like,

>"How am I still gonna surprise players and viewers?"

>Anthony: You start on characters you've never seen before,

>in a world that could be The Last of Us, could be anything.

>That creates a really cool sense of tension.

>Neil: At no point are we gonna market that you play as this other character…

>Marlon: What is this?

>Yo, that looks good though.

>Laura: I was so excited about working on it, and I couldn't say anything!

>It was so rough!

>O.C. Deidre: Oh, is she gonna cut a baby out of her belly?!

>Neil: In Uncharted 4, you find a comic book that shows Ellie's mom, pregnant.

>So people already had theories that The Last of Us Part II was gonna have Ellie's mom.

>Oh, if we just black out the letters, she has the same number of letters as "Anna,"

>Ellie's mom's name…

>We'll get people to think this is Ellie's mom.

>O.C. Deidre: Oh my god, girl's got a good…

>That hammer's from the outbreak poster.

>Anthony: So we had a poster with the forearm of a character you've never seen before

>with this wolf's head in the background, what does that mean?

>Prompting this mystery…

>Neil: You want people to feel like they've figured everything out, and then…

>have the story surprise them.

>Marlon: Man, if this is The Last of Us II, bro…

>I'm'a go crazy.

>Oh my god, oh my god…!

>Last of Us II?!

>Yeah!

>O.C. Deidre: Yes, bitch! I fucking knew it!

>Neil: Everything we put out there is shaping expectations.

>And then the final game, hopefully if we did the job right,

>should subvert those expectations in an interesting way.

>We knew we were pushing boundaries with that cinematic.

>We are making a violent game, we're not gonna shy away from how violent it is.

>It is part of what we're trying to say.

>And I thought it was a great discussion, initially, about what is the appropriate level of violence.

>When is something so violent that it turns you off…

>where you just don't wanna experience it at all?

>I liked that they were wrestling with those things,

>I didn't like some of the insinuations about the trailer being misogynistic…

>towards the female characters.

>Laura: I don't think this story ever glorifies violence against women.

>There's no bias towards women or men,

>it just so happens that the 2 protagonists of this story are female.

>And therefore that's what you're going to see the most of.

>Halley: There has to be failstates in video games, which means a character has to be capable of being hurt.

>So does that mean there can be no female protagonists in video games?

>Because that feels super sexist to me.

>And frankly, women ARE the victims of violence,

>and don't we want to see women fucking fight back once in a while?

>Emilia: That character, her hand getting hurt has consequences for hours of gameplay to come.

>Neil: One article even asked the question, "Were any women involved in the making of this?"

>And it's like… yeah.

>The co-writer, the lead character designer, the lead character artist…

>All the actresses that worked on that scene…

>Halley: I… I am so fucking…!

>Here's what I hate about that article.

>I'm sorry.

>Do a modicum of fucking research! Just a modicum of research, just a little bit,

>before you put something out there to suggest that no woman could have worked on this

>because of the level of violence, because there was violence against women,

>because it is a video game.

>It's so fucking sexist!

>I like watching graphic violence. Does that make me less female?

>I like having a conversation about what power is.

>Does that make me less fucking female?

>I like working on a video game, I like playing video games.

>Does that make me less fucking female?

>Suck a dick!

>…Don't put that in.

>I can't… I can't…

>Neil's gonna say, "Put it in," but don't.

>I also don't represent all women, but I can represent this and say, "I fucking wrote this."

>I wrote this. I literally wrote the sentence, "And then Yara eviscerates his esophagus from his throat."

>I wrote that sentence. That is in the script.

>And I fucking stand by it.

>I'm afraid of being turned into a token rather than the truth,

>which is we are being thoughtful about the female narrative.

>These characters are more than just their vaginas.

>If you wanna have a serious debate about feminism and feminism in video games,

>and female depiction of violence, then you need to…

>not see it as a binary conversation.

>It is an incredibly nuanced conversation, you cannot make blanket statements.

>And you cannot make presumptions!

>Fucking do your homework!

>I'm right here! I'm tweeting!

>John: The tone of the violence in the game has always been…

>important to portray as realistically as possible.

>Ashley: Our job, outside of just drawing up concepts, is really pushing our reference pipeline

>to make sure the character artists are getting the most realistic examples of

>whatever they're working on.

>We can't find certain things, so we make the reference ourselves.

>John: Simulating brain on wall.

>How does that drip fall down?

>Ashley: What does canvas looked like when it's soaked in blood?

>Splashing blood on them, dripping blood on them.

>John: We put down some wet mud, and pooled blood onto it

>to see how blood would react to a wet dirt surface.

>So there's little pieces of grass and twigs and things that're carried through,

>like there's actually movement following the edge.

>Ashley: One of the animators got a piece of lamb and we stuck it in Yara's shirt sleeve

>and hit it with a hammer…

>Eric: Here we go.

>Yeah, we have a break.

>She's gonna need to hold this as straight, 'cause if she does this it's gonna…

>just the weight of it's gonna wanna make it fold.

>So, I'm trying to keep it as straight as possible.

>John: This past week's shoot was specific for the infected eating people's jugulars,

>and there was a concept that was done with blood running down the mouth,

>but would that happen? Let's find out.

>I got on the ground and pretended to eat away at a bloody, soaked rag that we made.

>It produced some pretty surprising results.

>Most of my face got covered in blood.

>Ashley: Look up a little, John.

>Teeth.

>People here will go to that length of trying to make sure things feel as real as possible.

>Yeah, we do a lot of crazy stuff here.

>Nobody gets hurt, but…

>It's really hard to see these characters that you spend so much time with,

>and, for lack of a better word, birthing into existence…

>tortured and abused…

>Neil: We're shooting the Joel death scene,

>which is like the catalyst of the opening of the game.

>This scene has all of Abby's crew.

>It's a complicated scene, because it's the most actors we've ever had in a single shot.

>Man: Y’all act like you’ve heard of us or something.

>Woman: It's 'cause they have.

>Fuck, he's out.

>Troy: Or… or, Joel doesn't die.

>Woman: Minor line change.

>Troy: So then what happens is all of us become friends…

>Knowing what was going to happen and knowing how it was going to happen…

>I got very fearful.

>Neil: There's so much weight to this scene.

>This scene has to be right, it's really difficult to re-shoot if we need to.

>In the first game, having to call Troy and Hana back to re-shoot Sarah's death

>was very, very, very difficult for me.

>Troy: The last time I tried to do a big, emotional scene…

>Don't do this! Please, don't do this! Don't do this! Please, god, no!

>…That didn't go too well.

>And we had to re-shoot it.

>Don't do this to me, baby. C'mon...

>How the hell am I gonna play this? Like, how are we gonna do this?

>I don't know if I can do this.

>I don't know if I have the… the chops.

>Am I gonna put Laura through this?

>Because I know how hard it's gonna be on her.

>Woman: Take 1. Marks.

>Neil: Action.

>Laura: Joel Miller…

>Troy: Who are you?

>Laura: Guess.

>Troy: Why don't you get out whatever speech you rehearsed and get this over with?

>Laura: You don’t get to rush this.

>Neil: At the end, I really loved what he brought to it.

>Ashley: I couldn't wait to get back into Ellie's shoes again, because it's where…

>weirdly, I feel most comfortable in a lot of ways.

>Because it feels like a character that feels the most like me that I've ever played.

>Which is a little disturbing.

>I mean, minus the murder and the killing.

>Neil: So it's a bit of a step forward, like you're about to lunge and shoot.

>Ashley: Okay. Sweet.

>Neil: The biggest change that has happened since initial pitch is

>Ellie is there when Joel is killed.

>It used to be she came across the body,

>and then she had to rely on Tommy's testimony of what happened.

>And we shifted it, which made it much more dramatic and intense for her.

>It puts more of it on-screen, and allows you to better understand why she needs to pursue these people.

>Troy: The hardest part for me… was looking over at Ashley.

>Ashley: No!

>Knowing that Troy was not gonna be a part of it as much was really hard.

>Knowing that Joel was not gonna be in Ellie's life anymore, it was just…

>it was hard.

>So much of that day feels like a blur 'cause there were so many feelings involved in it.

>Troy: What I had to do, I felt was very, very little.

>There's one reaction, then beyond that we're on Ashley.

>There was no acting, there was pure, raw emotion.

>I'm staring in the face of it.

>Ashley: Joel!

>Why are you doing this?!

>Get the fuck off me!

>I'd lost a little bit of my voice.

>I couldn't scream as loud as I wanted to to get that frustration and sadness out.

>Laura: Ashley was behind, crying and…

>knowing Abby was taking this away from her was very difficult.

>And so, I was crying while we were filming that scene.

>Yeah, it was very emotional.

>You want what I want, right?

>Patrick: End it. Now.

>Ashley: Wait, please stop!

>No! Joel, Joel!

>No…

>Neil: We want him to die in this really unforgiving sort of way -

>it needs to feel senseless for you to say,

>"Fuck these people, I'm gonna pursue them to the end of the earth and make them pay."

>Ashley: I'll fucking kill you…

>Neil: If the scene doesn't work with what we captured on the stage,

>almost nothing we do in post is gonna make it work.

>Joe will take a pass at the scene, and I'll give high level notes.

>Joe: But he's doing it without animated cameras, without character models, without environment.

>So it's a bit of a guessing game to see if this will work.

>Neil: I like the concept. I…

>felt like there was a lot of repetition, and it felt long.

>Once Joel's head gets smashed, I don't want a closeup look of him.

>Matt: Okay.

>Neil: What if we could do the smash from the back of his head?

>Matt: Yeah…

>Neil: So it'd be a black shape and you see a silhouette change,

>and blood starts pouring out, but I don't focus on it, I don't see the details.

>When the club comes down and she's screaming, I feel like we could take all their audio out.

>And music can take over.

>We're trying to build more rage than sadness to really set up our journey.

>Matt: Okay.

>Neil: I'll come back, and there'll be another version of the scene.

>Okay, play.

>Ellie: Joel, fucking get up.

>Please stop!

>Please don’t do this…

>Joel, please get up!

>Nooo!

>Neil: Overall, it's fucking awesome.

>I got emotional at the part where he gets killed, it feels so fucking tense.

>Joe: There certainly is still a ton to do.

>We still have like… 45 scenes that haven't even been looked at yet.

>It's terrifying given our deadline.

>The process right now is just getting Neil.

>We need to get Neil into the room.

>Sam: Which one are we showing first? We've got essentially 3 versions.

>The one that I did - and this would work with what we're talking about doing with this scene.

>And then…

>Joe: Ah! Close one.

>Matt: I would probably say…

>Joe: There are people standing here!

>Matt: This, yours, Mel, or Mel's, yours, this.

>Man: I got bad news.

>Joe: He's cancelling?!

>Man: He's cancelled.

>Joe: But we have the cameras set!

>He's supposed to come in, he's the highlight…

>Man: Actually, it's good we're getting this on camera.

>Matt: This is what it's not about!

>Joe: This is what it's about.

>Man: Yeah, he has some melee stuff to review today, and he said let's pick up tomorrow.

>Joe: So yeah, that's what happens.

>So it's like, "Okay… Alright. That's fine, I don't care."

>Yeah.

>Arnaldo: I get called up to Neil's office one day…

>and there's an empty seat.

>And Neil goes, "Sit down." I'm like, "Oh my god, I did something wrong."

>He's like, "Do you know why you're here?"

>And I'm like… "No, are we gonna talk about one of my levels?"

>And he laughs and goes, "No, you're gonna work on the E3 demo."

>It's always been a dream of mine, working on an E3 demo,

>seeing it on stage…

>Is this a joke? Am I getting pranked right now?

>Man: So speaking of E3 demos, remember way back when when you guys said

>you were going to lock that content and not touch it?

>How'd that go?

>Anthony: Well…

>And then we ship just the glossiest, best-looking demo you've ever seen.

>We burn that to a disk at the beginning of January,

>and then we don't touch it again, and nobody sees it until E3.

>Well, I think we knew at the time…

>that we weren't going to NOT touch it.

>It's going to be really interesting to see if we can really, really commit to being done…

>and not be tempted to say, "Eh, could be a little better. Let's go back."

>The game's been making progress for 10 months since we locked that demo down.

>A lot of advancements have been made, a lot of new ideas, new mechanics.

>We really need to have the discipline not to do that.

>Honestly, it feels like we are addicted to being late.

>Neil: Okay, we're starting.

>I don't know exactly what we're gonna do today, other than...

>come up with a really long list.

>We're gonna try to limit it to an hour, so…

>we'll be done at 4, no matter where we're at.

>Looking at the cinematics first.

>Because we did it so early and had a rough version of it a year in advance,

>we got a bit complacent.

>Jesse: She’s uh… putting on quite the show.

>[laughter]

>Neil: Sure is.

>Where are we on getting physics on these strands?

>Man: We're working on it.

>Neil: So for next time?

>Man: Yes.

>Neil: We didn't scramble to figure out what it is we're going to show,

>and we had the structure of the festival, going into this fight in the woods in Seattle.

>But it was harder to build the momentum we usually have,

>and I think that panic wakes everybody up…

>and felt like it took a bit longer to get there this time.

>Daniel: So then you're going as if to kill this guy, see somebody over there.

>Breaks… 30% of the time.

>But use your imagination.

>Man: Go in a bit slower to give some time.

>The animation is breaking the melee system.

>Daniel: Okay.

>Anthony: I'm confident in the demo if we finish it.

>I'll be frank, it’s not looking great.

>Neil: Okay, this is totally broken.

>For next week, let's make sure it's all there so we could actually review it.

>Okay, thanks everyone.

>Anthony: I feel like this demo is cursed.

>Arnaldo: The E3 demo was a version of our original greenlight demo.

>But I had to make it fully playable and shippable.

>The first thing I did was basically take that space, made by another level designer,

>and put enemies in it and start fighting.

>But when I started playing it, I remember it just wasn't there.

>That parking structure was way smaller, so it felt more cramped.

>I remember going to Neil's office and being like…

>"How much can I change this?"

>And he's like, "Well, what are you thinking?"

>I'm like, "I'm thinking this big thing…" and just brand new design,

>I'm just throwing it out, everything - I wanna do this, I wanna do that,

>I wanna make sure that it feels like a sandbox, that it feels like this big space,

>multiple paths, like something we haven't really done before in The Last of Us.

>And he just goes, "Go for it. Let's do it."

>John: We picked a location in Seattle that is probably the hardest lighting scenario…

>we would have to pull off in the game.

>I wanted to get the overcast look nailed, 'cause so much of the game's dependent on that.

>How do we pull off this look? Can we pull off this look?

>Neil: Everything felt a little muted, we were losing that next gen quality of our engine.

>For a second, we actually turned the sun on in the demo.

>But we lost the mood of that overcast, blue look.

>John: That moment was really rough for me.

>Just felt like years of my life that potentially would've just been wasted on this..

>this pipe dream of a look.

>Man: Well we were struggling with…

>like, last summer, it was a fine balancing act.

>John: Is this whole thing just gonna crumble?

>Is the whole direction now gonna have to change for the game? Not just this demo.

>Have I steered this company wrong?

>Neil: Took some really big iterations and tried some crazy ideas 'til we came up with a hack.

>John: Talked with the programmers and found a few settings that actually gave us exactly what we wanted.

>It was really one thing.

>Neil: We faked the sunlight within this ambient look.

>We could get some directionality on the lighting.

>John: But it was like, if we do this one thing, it got us the look we wanted.

>So I'm glad that happened.

>Artem: For this game, there was a major push to make a new volumetric fog system.

>It's not just an overlay on top of the screen, that's why it's called "volumetric."

>You feel the volume of it.

>Fog's gonna be a little bit thicker near the ground, right,

>because you'll see grass getting through it.

>Fog also allows you to see the light.

>Fog adds atmosphere, atmosphere brings everything together.

>Now with this game, we did add recently some new tech that…

>allows us to make some of the water drips more dynamic,

>meaning if you have a car, you will see water follow the glass, follow the hood,

>and then from the bumper you're gonna start seeing dynamic droplets.

>So that was really cool, and then we can now also use this technology to drive blood.

>Now we can have blood dripping, and we have water dripping.

>The water trail can pick up where it is bloody, and it can change its own color,

>and start dripping more red.

>And on top of it, we also clear out blood.

>So you will see bloody area, you will see water trails going down,

>and you will see the water trails washing out the blood, picking up the redness and going down.

>Really, really cool.

>Kurt: In the E3 demo, we do wanna show our next gen animation system.

>Jeremy: One of the biggest animation upgrades we wanted to add to this project was motion matching.

>The way that it works is it takes a pool of animation data,

>and it picks the most appropriate clip to blend together and create very fluid and organic movement.

>We want these characters to feel grounded and believable in the world,

>properly shifting their weight and moving the way a real human would.

>In order to capture all of those on the stage, we use something called a dance card.

>A choreographed set of patterns that the actor can move on the floor.

>Anthony: Basically, that's creating this bank of little pieces of animation.

>The motion matching system pulls from that bank all the animations necessary to have them move perfectly,

>in any arbitrary way.

>When it works, it's so far-and-away better than any other animation technique.

>It's like a quantum leap of the highest order, in terms of quality.

>Neil: Any one mechanic is not maybe anything you haven't seen before,

>it's the combination of how it all comes together, the way it works with the animations system…

>Anthony: The new stuff we're talking about is like, you can be in grass…

>One of the biggest things we do in the demo is jump a gap.

>It's tough to be like, "Oh crap, you can jump?!" It's like…

>But it's new to OUR game.

>Kurt: We have to have the best prone mechanic of all time.

>No one's ever seen when I aim in prone, and she rolls up on her back and aims like this.

>It can never clip through geometry.

>Being able to rotate 360, in all directions.

>It can never do a janky thing when she's reloading while doing it, or aiming.

>In water, there's an IK thing that will lift her chest and head up,

>and then if it gets too deep, now we're in a special prone underwater moveset thing.

>Her chest and arms and everything are matching ground plane.

>Things that a player will never notice.

>And it's because we purposely did it.

>There's no such thing as, "Oh you know, it's not as good as this other game's one, but it's fine."

>No, it's fuckin' Naughty Dog, we have to have the best version of the thing,

>whatever that is.

>Anthony: E3 overall was amazing.

>The press conference was in a very different venue -

>usually they have them in these big auditoriums,

>and this was almost like a pop-up.

>Kurt: It was more like a theme park idea,

>but in a parking lot in a tent in Los Angeles in downtown.

>They built a whole, crazy church thing…

>which was pretty rad.

>Neil: It was super cool, it was better than we expected.

>You could feel the tension of people trying to figure out, "What is this press conference?"

>"What's going on? What game are they gonna show here?"

>On the Naughty Dog logo, you get this big cheer.

>On the Ellie reveal, you get this big cheer.

>Every moment that we've constructed and planned meticulously for…

>really a year now, hit.

>And hit the way we wanted it to hit.

>Dina: Maybe they’re jealous of you.

>Ellie: I’m... just a girl. Not a threat.

>Dina: I think they should be terrified of you.

>Ellie: Fucker…

>Anthony: One of the biggest reactions was when the HUD came on.

>They looked at that forest and thought,

>"There's no way it can look this good, that's impossible."

>But when we flashed the HUD, it's like,

>"Yeah, that's it. This is the real game."

>People are not ready for this. This is gonna fuck you up.

>Dina: See? I told you.

>They should be terrified.

>Anthony: It was electric.

>My skin was tingling the whole time.

>Kurt: As soon as it's done playing, I'm on my phone.

>Arnaldo: It was wild to see it just everywhere -

>see it on YouTube, see people commenting on it.

>It was a really special moment.

>I shipped something as a level designer.

>Kurt: There was such a reaction to the animation fidelity.

>"Holy crap, this is the best-looking animation I've ever seen,

>are you kidding me?"

>Joe: We're on the forums, going through the messages,

>seeing how much people think it's amazing.

>Someone's like, sort of cynically, that our stuff was fake.

>Neil: I guess it's a compliment to the animation team,

>for someone to say it's fake when they're working so hard.

>Right away I responded like, "Don't respond, don't do anything."

>It's just not professional.

>Joe: I was a little anxious about it 'cause…

>it's a LITTLE fake. You know?

>Kurt: "Fake" is an interesting word.

>There's an argument that he's right.

>Neil: It's not the final, polished game.

>You can't play this demo in any way, you have to play it in this very specific way.

>But before we even showed the demo, it was like,

>"Let's not put anything in there we feel like we can't do."

>Kurt: There was no thing of like, "We don't know how we're gonna do that."

>It was just we don't have it systemic yet.

>Like systemically, a guy pulling you out from underneath a car…

>We didn't have that hooked up yet.

>Ellie: Motherfucker!

>Kurt: Now we have it hooked up in the game…

>Scar Male D: It's her!

>Neil: Ultimately, as we're building the rest of the game,

>if anything feels like it's not the right call for the game,

>we don't mind changing it.

>We had certain things in the demo for the first Last of Us,

>where Joel picks up a pistol and takes out the individual bullets from it

>and then pockets it.

>And we could've done that, it just took too long.

>So for gameplay purposes, we cut that out.

>Joe: I was talking to other animators, and they were like,

>"Yeah man, they think it's fake. They have no idea. It's awesome."

>Anthony: The same animators who made this demo are gonna make the final game,

>so I dunno what you're talking about.

>Joe: They were confident, which I'm glad.

>Jeremy: We knew what we were doing and how special it was.

>It was a little bit of a microphone drop to the industry.

>For many it was inspirational, and they were excited to…

>be able to add some of those details to their future games.

>And for some of them, it absolutely freaked them out.

>To see that this might be the new bar that's expected for other games that follow.

>Kurt: Part of me is like, "Oh shit, they're fuckin' calling us out."

>It's like, we have to deliver this.

>We always were gonna, but people have called us out…

>so we HAVE to do a full-body throw animation

>when you pick up a bottle and you're running,

>and not just a partial animation.

>Because that guy fuckin' called us out.

>Anthony: The real challenge is making the whole game look as good as this one controlled situation.

>Neil: We come out of E3, and hopefully we've set the standard

>for this is what the rest of the game needs to feel like.

>Kurt: When you already know exactly what you're supposed to do in a game,

>you memorized everything…

>it's hard to have a true experience with it.

>We have to bring in people from the outside to play it fresh.

>Emilia: We try to start playtesting as early as possible.

>We've got testers in bright and early, they're gonna start playing the game.

>They're actually just right across the hall over here.

>Patrick: It is a fire drill.

>Because things have to work.

>Pete Ellis: I'm currently watching 10 people that we have in at the moment focus testing.

>I've got all of their screens up so I can watch…

>all of them at the same time,

>generally to keep track of any kind of recurring patterns

>or how long people generally take in certain areas.

>Patrick: They do things we haven't thought of.

>And it really shows us where our holes are,

>like, "Hm, maybe I should change this, maybe I should try that."

>Michael: This player's pretty lost, trying to figure out this puzzle here

>and they're trying to jump on a truck.

>He's got a really awesome solution here where he's putting…

>this plank on a dumpster and moving the dumpster around.

>We'll probably have to go in there and try to fix some of that stuff up,

>but we'd rather figure that out now than in 6 months.

>Pete Ellis: So things like puzzles like this one -

>although they're figuring out the puzzle,

>they're actually not doing it in the order that I'd like.

>What would be better is if they came into the space and realized,

>"Okay, that's the thing I need to be climbing up to or getting to."

>Then they can kind of work backwards from there and go,

>"Well if I need to get there, how do I get up? Oh, I can get up from this thing."

>It's quite heartbreaking when you see people who are really confused or don't get it,

>and it's something you think should be obvious, but it's not at all.

>But it's good data.

>Neil: We've had a few people on the team that have been really passionate about…

>making our games even more accessible for people with different kinds of disabilities

>and making sure as many people as possible can experience our game.

>Emilia: Accessibility's something that really touches a lot of people.

>As we get older, pretty much all of us are going to have some sort of accessibility need.

>Matthew: It's important to welcome people with disabilities into all of our public spaces,

>into our shared culture, and video games are a rich part of that.

>Paul: I love this, that you don't have to have a 2 button feature to keep her crouched down.

>This is awesome, I love that.

>Emilia: Brandon Cole, he said, "I heard you announced this game…

>What's the possibility of someone like myself being able to play it?"

>And Brandon is blind.

>I hadn't really thought about that before.

>I don't even know if it's even possible, but I wanna try 'cause that sounds interesting.

>If you click on the L3 button, it turns the screen and character towards your…

>the next objective.

>You're able to instantly flip.

>Matthew: It was very much inspired by the talk you gave last time you were here.

>Brandon: I figured. That's a beautiful thing.

>Matthew: We had this feature that let you navigate along the golden path,

>and we also had this other feature, you could put out this sonar pulse

>and you'd hear where all the items and enemies are located.

>But Brandon was playing that, and was like,

>"This navigation feature is great, but I don't wanna just follow the golden path…

>I wanna navigate to other things."

>It occurred to us, "We can combine these 2 features."

>We can let you scan for items, and then navigate to that item.

>Brandon: This gives you more room if you do it this way,

>for different types of sounds for different types of items.

>You know what I'm saying? Different sounds for parts, explosives, keys...

>Matthew: Craftables and collectibles…

>Brandon: Yes. Exactly.

>But since we wanna hunt for secrets just like anyone else,

>we're also gonna wanna know, "Hey there's SOMETHING way over there."

>Matthew: Players with disabilities still want to have challenge.

>Emilia: It's not about just making an easy mode.

>Matthew: What happened there was an auto-vault.

>So you pressed into a wall and it automatically vaulted.

>Brandon: I feel happy about this.

>Matthew: This is an example of the good part of the studio culture which is self-empowered,

>that I think allowed us to do this crazy thing,

>this thing that I couldn't tell you if it makes business sense to some degree,

>but it was something we were passionate about and interested in.

>There was a way we saw we could make the game better,

>it was something we saw we could push the frontiers of and we went with it.

>Studio leadership was supportive of us,

>but it really was a bottom-up kind of initiative.

>Emilia: Yeah, absolutely.

>And I think that early success really helped to build momentum

>for the rest of the project.

>Neil: Shielding everybody from the costs and the budget of these decisions

>helps them focus on their discipline.

>Don't worry about money, worry about making the best game possible.

>Trust that there are people at the top that are looking at the budget,

>and considering that.

>Anthony: At a certain point in the project, we start offering dinners to the team.

>And it's an acknowledgement of, "Okay there's a lot of hard work to get done" …

>when we know people are probably gonna want to be staying late.

>Now we are crunching.

>This is crunch.

>Neil: I must've felt it for months, that this release date is not realistic with how big the game is.

>People were asking us, "Is this a real date?"

>because it's not feeling like a real date anymore.

>So we felt like we had to react pretty soon.

>Then at some point it just felt like because people were starting to put in longer hours…

>it wouldn't have been fair to not figure this stuff out sooner than later.

>Kurt: (sighs) Are we ever gonna finish this game?

>Neil: If you work hard for longer, that could have a toll on you.

>We told everybody, pace yourselves.

>It's a marathon, it's not a sprint.

>We settled on a February release date.

>We'll leave some gas in the tank.

>Anthony: Right now, we are dancing a very intricate and dangerous dance.

>We have something like 6 months left to finish the game.

>And we are also showing a demo to the press.

>The longest playable demo we've ever done -

>2 separate levels of the game.

>A level towards the beginning of the game where you play…

>with Dina on patrol outside of Jackson.

>And then the second part of the demo is in a level that's super duper challenging -

>Ellie by herself, murder mode.

>So what we're doing for the press in 9 weeks is…

>really those 2 levels of the game.

>It's unlikely we'll need to touch them again 'til the game ships.

>That was really the only kind of demo we could do at this point

>that would still help further our production goals

>as well as give us this marketing boost that we need.

>Neil: The more we talked about it the more we convinced ourselves,

>"This would actually be a good time to put out a trailer."

>Kurt: Building these 2 major demos and a trailer next to…

>the rest of the fucking game…? Phew.

>Neil: That felt impossible early on.

>The thing that's always hard for us is the polish.

>You review these things and we're looking at all these tiny details.

>Even that shot of Jackson, it's like, where should the trees be?

>How much fog should there be? How much sun? How should the sun hit the clouds?

>How do we get all these civilians?

>The kids, do they have the proper gear? Are they wearing the right clothes?

>Is the tractor leaving tracks on the ground?

>That kind of crazy detail can only come through all these departments

>coming together and rising to this occasion to achieve that level of quality.

>We wanted to show the team the final trailer.

>Before we show you the trailer, just to say thank you to everyone…

>where we jumped from doing a 3-hour demo

>to this trailer where we had almost nothing.

>It's pretty amazing what we can do when we all come together.

>In fact, it's so amazing you can forget.

>I've been here for a long time and I can forget.

>So to remind you, maybe reignite some of that panic, we're gonna show you 2 trailers.

>One from exactly a month ago,

>and one from about an hour ago when we wrapped up the trailer.

>So, enjoy.

>Jesse: Look who decided to join us.

>Alright.

>You all know the drill.

>Ellie: Dina! Where are you!

>Joel: You think I'd let you do this on your own?

>Jeremy: That only gets one clap.

>Neil: Keep in mind, this is what the whole game's gonna look like.

>We're gonna make it this awesome.

>Ellie: You can't stop this.

>Neil: This was a good reminder, look,

>when we come together, when we rise to the occasion,

>when we do this thing that people outside the studio talk about,

>like, this Naughty Dog magic,

>this is what it looks like.

>So when you look at parts of the game that aren't there yet,

>know that we can get there in a pretty short period of time when we're so focused.

>Ryan: The date was the scariest part about that.

>[laughter]

>Evan: We got the trailer done.

>Just wanted to take this moment to run through the events of Outbreak Week,

>which is when the trailer's going to debut.

>We are going to be having the big press event in Koreatown,

>at this giant warehouse.

>We're actually having 80 journalists from all over the world come.

>We gotta make sure we have very comfortable chairs for 3 hours.

>Halley: Outbreak Day is the day the outbreak happened in the United States in 2013.

>Anthony: In real life, we celebrate September 26 as Last of Us Day.

>Neil: Every September 26th, we've done something for Last of Us fans.

>Kurt: When people play these 2 sections which are very different,

>I hope and I feel that both of them are equally impressive.

>When you play that first demo, you're like, "That was incredible."

>Ellie: Oh my god.

>Kurt: This could've been the whole demo, this could've been the whole thing.

>It says enough about what the game is.

>Then you play the other half and it's way more mechanics-heavy, way more combat-heavy.

>Militia Female C: Keep going, boy.

>Ellie: There.

>Kurt: In the highest level of how Naughty Dog is perceived as a company,

>it's that we're story first and mechanics second.

>A lot of it is, I think, proving to the press and the people that yes, we can do both.

>Neil: I want people to walk right in and say, "This is the best-controlling…

>this is the best-feeling 3rd person shooter."

>Kurt: It's on the level of the best action-stealth games you've ever played.

>Ellie: Just shut up.

>Anthony: One of the things that I've always found really exciting about The Last of Us

>is the fidelity at which we represent human intelligence.

>Jeremy: One of the ways that really helped make them feel more human and more alive

>was the way that they used their body language to communicate to each other.

>Militia Male D: Everybody spread out! We may have multiples!

>Jeremy: We had a number of sessions where the animation team, design team, and programmers

>all got together and we acted out a number of scenarios.

>And what that does is it gives us really great reference,

>and touchpoints that we can always look back to about the way we naturally behave,

>the way we naturally respond to each other.

>Those are the types of details we want to weave back into the game.

>WLF Soldier: Someone took out Zoe!

>Who the fuck's out there?!

>Sweep the whole goddamn street.

>Halley: Our NPCs are named so that you understand these people have relationships.

>Kurt: They wanna get revenge on you. It's this little…

>little mini-loop of the whole premise of the game.

>WLF Soldier: Omar! Flank her!

>Kurt: I just killed their friend and they wanna kill me now.

>WLF Soldier: Omar!

>Halley: There's a cost. You kill that person, his friend now feels a loss.

>His dog is now alone.

>[dog whines]

>Anthony: Dogs are really difficult, to start off with, because they're quadrupeds.

>They don't turn around, they kind of wheel around a little bit.

>WLF Soldier: Smell something, girl?

>Jeremy: The main concern we had is…

>how is it that we can actually get a dog to perform a dance card on the motion capture set?

>When we finally brought them on set, it was just incredible what these dogs are capable of doing

>and what the trainers were able to accomplish in a short time.

>Woman: Jump, jump!

>Good boy! There you go.

>Anthony: They move extremely quickly, so they're super hard to shoot.

>They are very low to the ground.

>You have these attacks that are designed to go up here,

>and then you have to do them down there.

>Neil: Killing a dog has gotten people more upset than anything else in the game -

>than hanging people, than eviscerating people.

>Kurt: We're gonna break new ground in dog murder.

>Halley: We had a new scripter start 2 months ago.

>First question when she walks into the middle of the room,

>"I have one question - does the dog survive?"

>And everyone's like, "Oh, no. First day…"

>Kurt: We killed it, and then you have to love it knowing it's already dead.

>There's probably gonna be people upset about that.

>Mel: Hey, Al. You wanna go to the trucks?

>Let’s go to the trucks.

>Anthony: With the notable exception of Alice,

>we took great pains to ensure that every combat encounter that you fight against a dog

>you do not have to kill any of them.

>It's more palatable to kill people because they're all there…

>because they choose to be there,

>but all of these dogs were trained to do this exact thing.

>So you're killing an innocent creature.

>WLF Soldier: The fuck's that?

>Fuck, fuck!

>Ellie: Got you.

>Anthony: That feeling of discomfort is exactly what we're trying to explore with The Last of Us.

>Ironically, making them more realistic…

>makes people feel more okay about killing them.

>We had kind of a goofy art prototype,

>we had just a very rough dog.

>We found that goofy dog that had no fur, people felt really bad about killing it.

>When you would shoot them, they would fall over dead

>and give one last whine as their dying breath, so…

>We tried to really tone down the pitiability of all the dogs.

>Rob: The best sound in most games are the stuff you don't notice.

>The foley in the game is extremely detailed.

>[sheep bleating]

>Rob: Things like foley are very easy to get wrong

>and noticed for the wrong reason.

>Very difficult to get right,

>but when you get it right, no one's gonna pat you on the back for it.

>Audio guys are a different breed - we listen to everything all the time.

>It's kind of a curse.

>Our ability to use pre-recorded assets from a library that's commercially available…

>has been diminished almost entirely.

>Because we have very specific needs.

>Man: [screeching]

>Rob: We're trying to take what we did in the first game and bring it to another level of detail.

>Beau: Yeah, play with that a little bit.

>Mixing that tonality is cool.

>Yeah.

>Man: Okay.

>Rob: The enemies themselves, especially the infected,

>have had to go through a review process.

>In the first game, they're pretty coarse.

>They're basically on or off.

>They're either walking around mumbling…

>or they're freaking out, trying to get you.

>So now we've developed this murmuration/breath system that…

>allows them to have a much more natural flow between being agitated and not.

>A big part of those recording sessions is…

>working with the voice actors, it's much more collaborative.

>Man: [vocalizing]

>Beau: Yeah, that's cool.

>I kinda wanna see what your more natural voice sounds like.

>Rob: You're basically trying to coach people that they're not zombies.

>Beau: Now imagine sprinting.

>Man: I'm already out of breath.

>Beau: Yeah, take your time, man.

>That's really great.

>Rob: One of the folks that we worked with…

>the sounds he was able to generate from himself…

>was unlike anything I've ever heard before.

>Gnarly-sounding roars and breaths and wheezes and…

>really interesting stuff that I've never heard come out of a person ever.

>Sound is inherently post-production on a lot of this stuff.

>We just have to be jamming.

>We have to be as prepared as possible, and that's what we try to do.

>A lot of stuff is yet to come for us.

>Which means there's not a lot of time left.

>Which means it's gonna get really intense.

>It gets intense for everybody, but for audio in particular…

>we'll be here late.

>Emilia: I think that…

>I don't know if it's the whole studio, but I know I'm definitely feeling…

>very tired right now.

>I'm feeling a little burned out.

>I'm realizing that I can't crunch like I used to.

>I can't put everything I have into…

>these games as much as I was able to when I first got here.

>It's pretty unanimous that this game is really big.

>Or, it's bigger than we'd like it to be.

>Joe: The Last of Us Part I is small compared to this game.

>My argument: make the game small again.

>I don't even call them small.

>Halley: There were times when I was writing 40 pages of in-game dialogue a night.

>Neil kept saying, "Stop, you have to give it to somebody else,

>we'll hire somebody, we will make this work."

>And I was foolishly like, "I can handle it, I'm tough."

>I would like somebody to teach me how to have work-life balance.

>Rob: There are some times where I wish I had…

>somebody in production or a big brother that could be like, "No, go home."

>"This is already great, you don't need to do the next thing."

>Joe: I feel like at any given point, you go into the kitchen and you'll find people…

>what I would say, "salon-ing" about the game.

>Like, going deep philosophy into what's working, what isn't.

>People criticizing this or that -

>"This doesn't look good. I don't like this scene."

>"This doesn't work for me. I hate this."

>Neil: They're going to lunch and expressing doubt to each other, like,

>"Is this gonna come together? Is this the one that screws Naughty Dog up?"

>Let me just exude whatever confidence I have left to try to bestow this person with it,

>so they can feel inspired and go off and do their work.

>But then sometimes you're alone in the office, and you're like…

>"What if this DOESN'T come together? What if this is the one that sucks?"

>"What if this is the one that sinks Naughty Dog?"

>So then you have to bury it, compartmentalize it.

>Who knows what damage it does to your body while you're doing that.

>Because ultimately…

>you can't let that fear dictate how you work.

>And just… keep the faith.

>Emilia: The game was just about done, was content-complete…

>We were fixing bugs when…

>Neil: There's these rumblings of this pandemic happening.

>Kurt: I remember when COVID hit, and we were like…

>"Bro, really? For real pandemic?"

>Neil: At first it feels like, "Oh, this is nothing we need to worry about."

>And then all of a sudden you DO have to worry about it.

>Kurt: Are people gonna want to play a game that takes place in a pandemic

>when there's a real pandemic?

>Anthony: We had never worked from home. Ever.

>Naughty Dog was strictly against working from home.

>Arnaldo: We did not have the infrastructure set up at this studio to work from home.

>Anthony: Because we were so intense about security and leaks…

>that all of our data, including our emails and chats and IMs,

>it all had to be on a server inside the building.

>We were airgapped from the outside world.

>Neil: The operations team, the IT team, our engineering team,

>they all had to coordinate in a very short period of time to get us working from home.

>We don't even know when the game can come out.

>Kurt: Sony was like, "We don't know if we can physically ship this product…

>with the supply chain and stuff."

>Neil: We had to come out and say, "The game can't come out in this state,

>and we don't even know when it will come out."

>It's delayed indefinitely.

>So a lot of our most hardcore fans are angry with us.

>Around the same exact time, we started having these leaks.

>We're like, "We didn't put out this video."

>Where is this coming from?

>It's a video from one of our reviews, so you could hear the notes…

>and people that can't attend the meeting can watch it after the fact.

>We store all these videos on our server.

>Did it come from the inside? Someone within Naughty Dog?

>Matthew: My first thought was,

>"This isn't a developer leaking this, is it? This isn't someone on the team."

>Neil: It's this person in this Netherlands, downloaded terabytes of videos

>through a backdoor in the server.

>And then this is where we made a fatal error.

>Let's close this backdoor.

>Then this person put out everything.

>A video goes up on YouTube - and I don't remember what the first video was -

>but it was something relatively benign.

>Anthony: They weren't super important scenes, they were little clips.

>It was like, "Okay, that's a little weird. What is that?"

>Kurt: All out of order and stuff. And I was like,

>"Oh… oh, that's bad."

>Halley: And you just wanted to say, "Stop, wait! Don't watch it!"

>You're going to ruin things for yourself.

>Kurt: There's Youtubers I've watched for years and they're making entire videos

>and the title is like, "Fuck Naughty Dog" and "Fuck The Last of Us Part II."

>Neil: There's just all this negativity and no positivity,

>because no one has played the game.

>They just have these videos out of context and all these rumors mixed with them.

>Abby is playable…

>Kurt: They thought Abby was trans 'cause she has muscles.

>Neil: Here's the ending if they kill Ellie.

>Kurt: Then it turned into a whole political thing -

>"Oh, Naughty Dog's doing all this political shit."

>Neil: And then I get this text from Evan: "They just posted Joel's death."

>And my heart sinks.

>I can't even describe this feeling, it's just dread.

>It's almost like you just heard someone you care about died.

>That's the closest I could come to.

>I thought Troy would be looking at that and be like,

>"You see? You were wrong."

>Troy: He said, "Do you think we did the right thing?"

>And I said, "I don't know, Neil. I haven't played the game yet."

>I was livid. I was real angry.

>Neil: I'm bombarded with hundreds of negative comments.

>Death threats, antisemitic comments… It's putting me in a deep depression.

>Halley: There's some stupid stuff like, "You're a feminazi, you're…" whatever shit like that,

>but some stuff was really… disturbing.

>Ashley: The hatred I think that was behind it…

>I was sad.

>There were a lot of days where I would just cry.

>Laura: Every time I went online, that's all I saw.

>Just death threats and threats of violence, and…

>The worst of it, the really hardcore death threats, got passed along,

>and they made sure that they weren't anyone that lived close by.

>Um…

>Yeah, they were threatening my son. You know, who was born during all of it.

>Yeah, it was rough.

>It was rough.

>But, you know…

>More than anything, it just kind of...

>it taught me to keep a distance. You know?

>Halley: This thing that I spent 4 and a half years on…

>it's getting violated.

>Kurt: And then for 2 months before release, there's nothing you can do.

>You can't release the game sooner, 'cause it's not done yet.

>Neil: …And that was the lowest point in my life.

>I'm working on the game…

>towards the end, at home, by myself, feeling very alone…

>and I said, "Who am I doing this for?"

>Like, why am I… This is too much.

>And I barely squeaked by.

>Then we were able to finish it.

>We sent it to reviewers, and…

>reviews are through the roof.

>I called Troy and I said, "Dude, I'm sorry. I feel like I failed you."

>He's like, "What are you talking about?"

>And I'm like, "You know how some people are talking about…"

>He's like, "Oh dude, I don't care. I played the game…

>and I love it!"

>And I got really emotional.

>I realized how much I care about Troy caring about the game.

>That was a huge sense of relief.

>Troy: There's not a single aspect of the game, Part II, that I would change.

>Any time someone comes up to me and says,

>"You know, I didn't really like what they did to Joel,"

>I was like, "Great. Awesome. Tell me a better version of the story."

>And to this day, they still can't.

>Neil: It was a traumatic experience for myself and many people on the team, and…

>the kind of hate we got because of those leaks will stay with me forever.

>I can't even describe how angry I was.

>Of what the damage this person did to us.

>I want them punished in every sort of way.

>I wanted this to be the… this villain.

>This person is in their 20's or whatever, they live with their parents.

>And it's a fan.

>Then when we delayed the game indefinitely,

>this is what they said, like,

>"I wanted to force Naughty Dog's hand. I wanted to force them to release the game.

>So I thought if I put out all the videos, eventually they'll put out the game."

>Which, again, was never an option for us.

>I remember sitting there, sitting in my anger,

>and then slowing down and going,

>"Okay, if anybody should take the lesson from The Last of Us Part II, it should probably be us."

>Just let it go.

>Eddie: Back when I was feeling broken

>I focused on a prayer

>I believe

>And I believe 'cause I can see

>Our future days

>Days of you and me

>Neil: We got Eddie Vedder to play "Future Days" for the Game Awards.

>I'm a huge Pearl Jam fan.

>Yeah, I know. Shocking to many people.

>Eddie: What a fascinating way to tell a story.

>It's just getting better and better all the time, and…

>I really appreciate the way that "Future Days" was used.

>Especially bringing Joel and Ellie together…

>connecting through music.

>It was cool to be part of it, so thanks for having me and enjoy the rest of the show.

>Neil: How lucky am I?

>How cool is this, this person that I've admired since I was a kid,

>is now mentioning this game that we all made?

>And then we start winning award after award after award.

>I wanted that validation for the team.

>Everyone at Naughty Dog,

>I can't wait to hug and high five and get drunk with each one of you.

>That's gonna have to wait 'til next year.

>More than anything, I speak for the whole team when I say this,

>we'd like to thank our friends and family that stood by us

>and supported us throughout us making this game.

>You inspire us not only to make better, more meaningful games,

>but to improve how we make games.

>Emilia: The pandemic brought up the question of health and mental health -

>are we developers that are gonna stay at the studio and…

>have full careers?

>How do we make this sustainable?

>Anthony: I chuckle, in retrospect, just how…

>absurd the failure of trying to alleviate crunch was.

>If you have great processes, and you're super organized,

>that doesn't fix crunch.

>What that does is it allows you to make a bigger game.

>Patrick: We read the post mortem feedback for The Last of Us II,

>and it was really, really…

>upsetting to see what coworkers had gone through.

>We were highly motivated to try to figure out how to fix it.

>Kurt: Everything about our workflows were already being upended with remote work and everything,

>so it was like, yeah, we gotta do this now.

>Jeremy: We knew that to make the real changes we did,

>it would take the entire studio working together.

>Neil: We now have the goal for Naughty Dog to eliminate crunch.

>Anthony: The only thing that fixes crunch is deciding you're not going to crunch.

>Patrick: When we onboard people, we tell them…

>we have a reputation as a studio for crunching, and it's something we don't want.

>And it's something we're not going to do anymore.

>Neil: First we had to do, "What is crunch?"

>Let's define it.

>Because when you just look at hours, they turn out to be too simplistic.

>Kurt: It's a multitude of factors, it's not just one thing.

>It's not just, "Oh, because of this, this is what's causing crunch."

>It's so many of these little things.

>Neil: How do we make sure no one at Naughty Dog burns out?

>Patrick: Every couple of months, we send out a 90-second questionnaire that goes,

>"Are you worried about your workload?"

>"Are you worried about having to work overtime?"

>If you feel like, "I'm overburdened with work," you have to tell somebody.

>We used to, as a studio, when we were getting close to shipping a game,

>bring in dinners for the whole studio.

>We don't do crunch dinners anymore.

>Emilia: Being able to work from home is hugely helpful for me, for my mental health.

>You know, my daughter's there, my wife is there.

>Anthony: Hybrid is really the sweet spot, because I think the benefits have been…

>enormous.

>Neil: In the past, our leads, our managers, were the people that were best at their craft.

>But not necessarily the best managers.

>So we created the role of "principal."

>We gave people the choice of, "Do you wanna make stuff, or do you wanna lead and manage?"

>Patrick: Arnaldo is now a lead designer here.

>Arnaldo: Now I'm responsible for a team, and I really enjoy that, and…

>being able to share that knowledge and work with someone,

>even if they're more experienced than me, and it's been great so far.

>Anthony: We have a very large and robust production department now, that we didn't have.

>Matthew: Holding us accountable when we make a decision,

>when it's just everyone going, "Yes, more. Yes, better. Yes, polish."

>Tallying that up and going, "Okay, well this is the result."

>"Now you're not in your ship date anymore."

>Anthony: It feels so much like a different studio.

>Arnaldo: I hope that we can keep changing for the better.

>And make sure we're making the games that we wanna make,

>that we're really passionate about, that we don't stop doing that.

>Matthew: We want self-driven, healthy designers.

>We wanna have it all, we wanna have both.

>Can we do that? That'll be the question I guess.

>Neil: The HBO thing has been... a wild ride.

>Anthony: I just wanted it to be good.

>Like, if it comes out and it's a good show…

>that's gonna be huge.

>Laura: I'm sure it will be very different when I actually see Abby being portrayed.

>That will be so weird--

>I can't imagine what Ashley and Troy must be feeling.

>Ashley: Specifically because Ellie is a part of my heart,

>in some ways it was really hard.

>I feel like Bella was the only person who could play her.

>Because I feel like she IS Ellie, there's a part of me that's…

>weirdly protective of her.

>Troy: I remember when Neil told me, "We found Joel."

>I was like, "He wasn't missing."

>He goes, "Pedro Pascal."

>And I went, "Ah… we're bulletproof."

>Halley: It felt like Craig and Neil together saw this was a story about humanity,

>and they made it a story about humanity.

>Troy: We got Frank.

>Who knew that was waiting?

>Craig's screaming from the sidelines going, "I did!"

>Ashley: When Neil and Craig asked me to play Ellie's mother, Anna…

>it made me so happy.

>And I'm crying so it doesn't seem like it, but…

>it was symbolic in so many ways to me.

>Being able to bring Ellie into the world, be the first one to fight for her…

>it breaks my heart.

>Neil: It felt like, on the other side,

>we could get this story to people that will never play a video game.

>Halley: My mom is watching the show, and she can enjoy this story,

>and she can be a part of it.

>She's so excited I'm working on season 2 and getting to see that.

>Neil: I love this idea…

>that someone can watch the show, and then realize,

>"Wait, that's based on a video game?"

>and come back and check out the game,

>and realize there's all these rich games - AAA, indie,

>all sorts of stories that are really unique to this medium.

>I did some other interview where someone asked me…

>about The Last of Us, and would there be any more stories or something.

>I mentioned we have written a story that takes place after Last of Us II

>that stars Tommy.

>I hope one day we get to make it.

>The headlines across the industry were like,

>"Naughty Dog has outlined The Last of Us Part III."

>And that's actually wrong.

>It was always a small story, it was never a full title.

>At the time, we had higher priorities at Naughty Dog,

>to fix our pipeline, to fix work-life balance issues.

>Just based on where we were, I didn't wanna prioritize this story,

>so that story was shelved.

>I still believe one day it will see the light of day.

>I don't know if it'll be a game or a show… TBD.

>The first game had such a clean concept of…

>the unconditional love a parent feels for their child.

>The second one, once we landed on this idea of…

>the pursuit of justice at any cost, justice for the ones you love,

>it felt like there's a clean concept here

>and there's a through-line from the first game about love.

>If we never get to do it again, this is a fine ending point.

>The last bite of the apple, the story's done.

>The great thing about working at Naughty Dog is that we don't have to.

>It's always like, we would love another Last of Us,

>but if you guys are passionate about something else, we'll support this other thing.

>Very privileged position to be in.

>I never take that for granted.

>I've been thinking about, "Is there a concept there?"

>And for now years, I haven't been able to find that concept.

>But recently that's changed.

>I don't have a story, but I do have that concept,

>that, to me, is as exciting as I, as exciting as II,

>is its own thing, yet has this through-line for all 3.

>So it does feel like…

>there's probably one more chapter to this story.