As it’s June 7th, this means that we’re only one week away until The Last of Us becomes readily available on the PSN and at retail. Continuing his press tour pre-launch, Neil Druckmann, Creative Director at Naughty Dog and Writer for The Last of Us, talked to the PS Blog about a wide variety of topics.
During a Q&A for The Last of Us a couple of weeks back, it was said that the Joel and Ellie journey ends in this game, with Neil saying today that he thinks “the world is ripe for more stories, but as far as the journey Joel and Ellie goes on it ends with this game. We were very conscious that we didn’t want to leave this story dangling. If we never do a sequel, we’re okay with it, because we told the story we needed to tell.”
Sticking with the two main characters, Neil doesn’t “know about them becoming icons” like Nathan Drake or Crash Bandicoot, but he “can say confidently that these will stand as two of the best ever performances in a video game.” Also, as Anthony made mention of in his review for The Last of Us, Druckmann added that “we’ve had a bunch of focus testers play the game and have had people actually cry. They’d come up to us and say “I’ve never felt so attached to a character”.”
As was revealed in the trophy list for The Last of Us, there’s a New Game+ option waiting for you after beating the game, allowing you to replay the adventure, “encouraging players to go into scenarios and try different strategies.” You can also expect a huge amount of collectibles (comics, upgrades, etc), and as Neil puts it, “you can avoid combat altogether if you like. It’s hard, but you can do it.”
Neil’s final thoughts? “We’ve made exactly the game we wanted to play. We always said – let’s not worry about what other people like, or what’s popular, or try to second guess what’s going to be successful to market. Let’s make the game we want to play that doesn’t exist right now. And that’s what we did.”
What are you doing to get through this final week of waiting? Let us know in the comments below.
