The 2011 Spike TV VGA (Video Game Awards) has provided gamers with quite a few surprising and memorable moments to cap off the year. No, the results of the VGA’s were anything but surprising with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 taking out the best FPS (first-person shooter) title, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim earning its place as the best RPG (role-playing game) and Uncharted 3 revered as the best PlayStation 3 title by veteran developers Naughty Dog.
What did come as a surprise were the rumoured announcement for upcoming title The Last Of Us, developed by none other than the recent award winning studio Naughty Dog.
Image Source: Naughty Dog
This reveal was hinted a week prior with some teased screenshot of an incredibly realistic image of lush foliage and a desecrated newspaper dispenser with the print heading ‘The Last Of Us.’ Coupled with some viral videos we see humanity at the crossroads of anarchy hinting at some post-apocalyptic game and a strange video of ants, sending the community abuzz with vivid speculation.
Speculation mounted as to which first party developer would be making The Last of Us, but Naughty Dog was the by far the best contender with fans discovering a hidden Easter Egg in the opening chapter of Uncharted 3. After the London bar brawl, tucked away in the corner was a newspaper with the heading ‘Scientists are Still Struggling to Understand Deadly Fungus.’ Being a PlayStation exclusive, it was highly expected, yet equally surprising that PlayStation first-party developer Naughty Dog has had this game in production for two years with the websites domain name up for about five years.
The official Sony press release touts the game as a genre-defining experience that blends survival and action elements to tell a character driven story about a population decimated by a modern plague. In the debut trailer we are introduced to the story’s protagonists Ellie, a young teenage girl who is ‘wise beyond her years’ and Joel, the middle-aged man described as a ruthless survivor on a journey across the remnants of the United States. Both characters seem combat capable with Joel brawling with another survivor and Ellie casually whipping out a switchblade with uncomforting ease. With the current cast of clichéd characters – similar to the ‘brains and brawn’ combination of Trip and Monkey seen in Enslaved: Odyssey to the West – it will be interesting to see how Naughty Dog aims to provide a compelling story to have players invest in the lives of the protagonists, a skill in which this developer is already well versed.
With information scarce on the actual gameplay elements, the teasers and debut trailer instead opts to provide gamers with the back-story of the game. Very much in the spirit of ‘I am Legend,’ the debut trailer reveals the hollow husk of humanity slowly yielding as Mother Nature aims to reclaim its dominance over the world. The exposition as narrated by Ellie at the end of the trailer reveals enough information to assume this modern-day plague is in full effect – with the fallout of the epidemic clearly evident – so most likely the narrative of these two survivors will pick up well after the global catastrophe has taken hold.
“This is our routine, day and night, all we do is survive, it never lets up, he tells me how these streets were filled with people going about their daily lives”
Savvy internet and nature documentary enthusiasts have already established the original ant teaser footage was appropriated from a BBC documentary looking at the fungus known as Cordyceps that infects the brains of ants with spores visibly growing from the brains of the infected. Juxtaposing this information with the enemies revealed in the trailer dubbed ‘the infected’ reveal anthropomorphic creatures with protrusions emanating from their heads (or brains), as their supposed humanity has been taken over with savage animalistic tendencies. Kudos to Naughty Dog for revealing the enemies in their debut trailer and it begs the question what other permutations will players encounter, especially if the plague is not limited to humans.
Analysing the footage of the debut trailer, we can see that it was all rendered within the game engine (not a pre-rendered FMV) and is most likely the same one used for Uncharted 3. The characters were definitely a product of Motion Capture animation of the actors supplying the voice of Ellie and Joel based on Naughty Dog now in possession of an in-house Mo-Cap stage and a team of writers and developers dedicated to providing rich character driven stories with cinematic flair, the same strategy used in the Uncharted series to resounding success.
Image Source: Naughty Dog
My predictions of the franchise will most likely be third person – evident by looking back at all of Naughty Dog’s releases titles from the original PlayStation era – with co-op and online multiplayer definitely an option. With no release schedule or information about the genre of the game, it’s somewhat difficult to convince myself entirely to invest in the series but I have imbued full trust in Naughty Dog to provide players with not just another stock-standard zombie-esque survival game with anticipation insatiably high for more news about this upcoming title.
