The Last of Us
Publisher: Sony
Developer:
Platforms: PS3, PS4
Genre: Action Adventure
Release Date: PS3: June 14th 2013, PS4 (As The Last of Us Remastered): July 29th, 2014
The Last of Us was revealed at the VGAs back in 2011 and it was something that really made a lot of people excited.
The game is being developed by Naughty Dog and will be published by Sony.
It was supposed to be released on May 6 but was delayed to June 14. They wanted to polish the game more. The game also received a GameInformer cover and a lot of details were revealed in that issue. [reference]
It also has a multiplayer component and Naughty Dog has revealed that it won’t be tacked on, however, we do not have a lot of details on it yet.
The game is about a parasitic infection that wipes out most of the people and how the main protagonists survive together.
The Last of Us was released on the PS4 on July 29, 2014 as The Last of Us Remastered which brought numerous improvements to the game, running at 1080p at 60fps.
Development
The game is being made by Naughty Dog’s second studio and yes, they’ve expanded. [reference]
“That’s right… We have 2 teams at Naughty Dog now and our next game on PS3 is ‘The Last of Us’,” said Cristophe Balestra.
The trailer was also entirely captured from the Playstation 3, according to Even Wells. “Btw, The Last of Us trailer was entirely captured from a Playstation 3,” he said.
They seem to have nailed down the rendering pipeline, which results in accurate models. The character models are tremendous, and it is vintage Naughty Dog at its best.
The AI will be the star of the show, Naughty Dog explained. It features a “balance of power” system, where the AI decides on what to do depending on what type of weapons you have. If you have a club or something like that, they will charge in. They will get flustered or react when seeing their mates go down. [reference]
Gustavo Santaolalla is composing the music for this game. His notable work was Brokeback Mountain and Babel, and he is also widely regarded as one of the best musicians around. The game will be about Ellie and Joel and their father-daughter like relationship.
The Last of Us will share the core technology of last year’s super hit game: Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception with a few changes. It will focus more on non-verbal communication thereby putting more emphasis on facial expressions. The actor’s voices will be captured along with their physical movement, similar to what Naughty Dog have done in the Uncharted franchise. [reference]
Gameplay
The game is a third person shooter and features a lot of stealth elements. The main theme of the game is survival and Joel and Ellie can create things out of the spare parts they find in the environment while exploring.
Bullets are scarce so every shot counts. The game also has a multiplayer component however more information on that has to be revealed.
Left Behind is a new DLC coming to The Last of Us soon, there are currently no details regarding the contents of this DLC but it does involve Ellie.
Story
The Last of Us is genre-defining experience blending survival and action elements to tell a character-driven story about a population decimated by a modern plague.
Cities are abandoned and being reclaimed by nature. Remaining survivors are killing each other for food, weapons, and whatever they can find. Joel, a ruthless survivor, and Ellie, a young teenage girl who’s braver and wiser beyond her years, must work together to survive their journey across what remains of the United States.
Multiplayer
The Last of Us has a multiplayer component and Naughty Dog hasn’t revealed a lot of details on it. The multiplayer could be similar to Uncharted 3 but there have been pre-order bonuses announced for the game.
Here’s what Naughty Dog community manager Arne Meyer had to say regarding the concerns fans have, he has assured that the game’s multiplayer component wont be tacked on. [reference]
“We don’t approach MP in any of our games as tacked on. And we also always have separate teams working on the different components so that we can maintain full focus on making SP and MP up to our standards,” he said.
“And we have faith that our MP will stand on it’s own. If we felt like it would be tacked on, we wouldn’t have added it. We want all our game experiences to be of the highest quality and that’s what we work extremely hard to deliver.”
The studio has two teams and both have resources allocated to them to complete their tasks.
Check out the pre order bonuses below.
- The official soundtrack of the game
- A PS3 dynamic theme featuring the cover art
- Two avatars for your PSN profile – Winter Joel and Winter Ellie
GameStop will provide exclusive bonus content in addition to the Sights and Sounds Pack. Pre-ordering at GameStop also nets you the Survival Pack, which includes:
- Bonus experience points for multiplayer
- A multiplayer melee attack booster
- Some extra starting in-game cash
- Special customizable character items for multiplayer
- Two special bonus skins for Joel and Ellie which will be unlocked after your complete the single player campaign
Characters
The Last of Us has a lot of interesting characters including Joel and Ellie, who are the main protagonists of the game. They will also be met by a lot of secondary characters.
Ellie: Ellie is a 14 year old female in the game who is voiced by Ashley Johnson and she depicts a lot of intelligent qualities and also supports Joel well. In a game about survival she has a good head on her shoulders.
Joel: Joel is the guy that does all the hardwork in The Last of US, intelligently supported by Ellie. Their routes have been joined together and now they depend upon each other to stay alive in a post apocalyptic world.
Tess: “Tess and Joel subscribe to the same dog-eat-dog philosophy. They survive by being willing to do what others can’t or won’t. Her trust in and loyalty towards Joel runs deep. However, secretly, she questions whether Joel shares the same emotions that she feels for him.
Enemies
Naughty Dog has revealed that you may not meet a standard type of infection in the game but as you keep on playing, you will encounter enemies who have different stages of infection with fungus growth on face and a lot more. [reference]
“Well, the Runners are Stage One, and the Clickers are Stage Three, so there’s at least one more hanging out in there,” Jacob Minkoff, Lead Creative Designer on the game, he said.
He also revealed some new information on the human enemies in the game.
“It’s an interesting element of contrast. When you have this pressure of this difficult world and these incredibly dangerous enemies, the infected who have destroyed civilization, how do people choose to survive in this world? What sort of civilizations do they try to build?
“Is it everyone grab something for themselves, survival of the fittest, like you saw in [the Pittsburg section of gameplay that was shown off at E3 last year]? Or is it people trying to rebuild society, and get a hydroelectric dam working, and get electricity again? You’ll see… this kind of rainbow of different ways humanity tries to survive in this world.”
“So far you’ve only seen the Hunters. You’ve still got the military, who run the quarantine zone. And, of course, they’re opposed by the faction of the Fireflies, the militia that we’re trying to smuggle Ellie to. And those aren’t the only factions; there are other factions.”
Marketing
Sony has revealed two new special editions for North America called Survival and Post-Pandemic Editions which are quite same in content but the latter contains a 12 inch statue of Ellie and Joel. [reference]
The Survival Edition will run you at $79.99 and it’s something that most people will also buy because the other edition is quite expensive at $159.99, and if you are a Naughty Dog fan, you know which edition to get here.
The Survival Edition contains a hardcover book The Art of The Last of Us, Darkhorse comic The Last of Us: American Dreams #1, and the cover will only be available to the buyers of this edition.
The Post-Pandemic Edition contains all that the Survival Edition contains but includes the statue as well. It will also be exclusive to Gamestop. You can check out the Ellie and Joel edition here which was announced for Europe.
This wiki was last updated on 1st January, 2015.
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