In an interesting article published on the PlayStation Blog, Naughty Dog has revealed the story behind The Last of Us Part II‘s popular guitar mini game, and how the idea originally came up.
According to game designers Grant Hoechst and Mark Burroughs, the development team wanted the guitar to be playable because it formed part of the story as a connection between Joel and Ellie. However, Naughty Dog didn’t intend to make a freely playable mini game, and it actively avoided making a rhythm-based game because that wouldn’t gel with The Last of Us‘ dark and somber tone.
“A flashy guitar mini-game wouldn’t fit the tone of our post-apocalyptic environment,” the duo wrote. “Moreover, Ellie playing guitar shouldn’t be about showing off your skills or fulfilling your dreams of being a rock star, it should be about remembering a loved one and expressing oneself through music to connect to them.”
Naughty Dog then turned to music-making apps for inspiration and worked on the Take on Me prototype that depicts Ellie (Ashley Johnson) singing the song. The studio continued experimenting with more songs that fit into The Last of Us II‘s theme.
“This was the origin of our Free Play (Practice) mode,” Hoechst and Burroughs revealed. “This mode wasn’t our original intention, but rather an idea that emerged from expanding the system to multiple songs. Once we started down the Free Play rabbit hole, we got to lean even further into our goals of player expression.”
It took several departments within Naughty Dog to come together and make the guitar mini game work, and the developers were pleased to note that it worked as intended, with players publishing videos of themselves covering and singing songs, and even making original music.
“The Naughty Dog team sent a ton of videos back and forth internally of our favorite renditions, so huge shoutout to everyone out there who made something like this!” the studio gushed. “You have no idea how special that was to see.”
[Source: PS Blog]
