All Articles: The Last of Us

Naughty Dog has released a new trailer for The Last of Us. Titled “The Truck Ambush,” it features Joel and Ellie escaping from a band of outsiders after a truck ambush. Hmm.

As this trailer, The Last of Us continues to look amazing and will no doubt be a big hit on the PS3 when its released. Whenever that is.

Naughty Dog Co-President Evan Wells posted the montrosity on the left of your screen to his Twitter feed yesterday.

Mr. or Ms. Exploding Head is what “the infected” will look like in the developer’s next game, The Last of Us. Up until now, the only antagonists we’ve seen for Joel and Ellie have been humans living outside the quarantine zones. But these abominations will be roaming the ruined lands of the USA as well, and it looks like “shoot ’em in the head” won’t be an option.

I don’t think they have any plans to give the bust away to one of their fans, but we can dream can’t we?

There’s some news about The Last of Us over at the PlayStation Blog, courtesy of Naughty Dog’s Community Strategist, Arne Mayer. Mayer discusses all of the information that has come out in recent weeks about the game, and gives a detailed description of the game demo that publications have been playing.

Even reading about the demo has me excited for more. The game sounds intense:

Joel and Ellie are immediately besieged by the group of survivors, leading to a brutal melee sequence with Joel before other survivors reveal that they have a gun and start shooting at Joel. This tips the balance of power until Joel can draw his own gun and then both sides are taking cover and moving around to try to get a good shot off. When Joel’s pistol clicks, revealing he has no ammunition, the remaining survivor thinks he’s got the upper hand and moves much more aggressively since he still has a gun with ammo. Just when he thinks he’s got Joel, Ellie whips a brick at him, stunning him long enough for Joel to take him out via melee attacks.

Hit up the PlayStation Blog for the full description, or hit the jump if you just want to see the sweet screenshots – all of which were taken in-game. Spoiler alert: they’re gorgeous.

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Game Informer continued their month-long blowout for The Last of Us by sitting down for a short chat with Director Bruce Straley and Creative Director Neil Druckmann. During their discussion, the pair revealed a few major details from the game’s plot as well as talked a bit about the ruined world of The Last of Us.

According to Straley and Druckmann, the game takes place twenty years in the future, after a fungal infection has decimated the world. The only remaining forms of civilization are military quarantine zones to protect the remaining population from “the infected.” While they didn’t use the dreaded zed word, this is the first time a developer at Naughty Dog has referred to the antagonists as something not quite human.

Joel, the main character is a smuggler-type who can get you anything you need. He is given new cargo to smuggle in the form of Ellie, the teenage sidekick seen in the game’s debut trailer. He agrees to sneak her out of the quarantine zone, but something goes wrong and he becomes stuck outside and on the run from the military.

The quarantine zones are built with cement and barbed wire, but Naughty Dog did extensive research to create the outside world, with the two specifically citing the book The World Without Us. The team studied how nature would reclaim structures (“ruin porn” was the phrase used), as well as how flooding would affect the street level (hint: you’ll see a lot of water in The Last of Us).

Finally, they touched briefly on the possibility of a sequel. Right now, the plan for The Last of Us is to tell a self-contained story. But if it does well, Naughty Dog would consider a sequel. Straley and Druckmann confirmed that this is how the team looks at all of their titles, including every game in the Uncharted series.