Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckmann Wasn’t Sure “The Last Of Us” Would Be Recieved Well
There have been many a game released in this past year, from BioShock: Infinite and Tomb Raider, down to less savory fare like SimCity. One of the break out games of the year, however, isn’t something you can find on every major console. Indeed, I’m talking about the PS3 exclusive The Last of Us. And believe me, if you haven’t played it yet, then do it! If you don’t have a PS3, then do what I did and borrow one from a friend! Then, when you give them their PS3 back, make sure they play the game as well!
As you can tell by my gushing, I was a fan of this game. But not everybody was sure it was going to do well, least of all Naughty Dog’s creative director Neil Druckmann. In an interview with Game Informer, he admitted that he thought the game was going to be reviewed poorly, and that only during the last few months of its development did it really start to mesh together. According to Druckmann, “As we got closer to finishing it, it felt like it was coming together. I remember going into E3, and I was telling [game director Bruce Straley], ‘I don’t think it’s going to be received well.’ I get Uncharted – it’s got that summer blockbuster feel. It’s got the spectacle. Here, it’s got this very different, intimate feel to it. There are long stretches where there isn’t much action and I don’t know how gamers are going to relate to that.”
Sometimes though, you just need to make something different, which is what Druckmann and his team did. They created the game they wanted to play and we are all the better for it. Here’s hoping that the next game they create has such an attention to detail and story-telling, because as far as I’m concerned the story has really been suffering in gaming over the last several years in most games.
