For those who haven’t been paying attention, Uncharted developer Naughty Dog has for the the past two years been working on a brand new IP: The Last of Us. Officially revealed at last year’s Spike TV Video Game awards, The Last of Us is being pitched as a unique post-apocalyptic action-adventure.
Naughty Dog recently released a brief video interview explaining in detail the game’s back ground, storyline, and the environments that players will get to explore.
The game will take place 20 years after an infection breaks out which causes people to go crazy and attack each other. Whether or not Naughty Dog was inspired by the likes of 28 Days Later or other similar fiction is not clear, but the similarities are quite tangible. Remaining survivors are kept safe in protected quarantine zones, which over the years have become few in number.
The Last of Us
Our story takes place in one of the last remaining quarantine zones with protagonist Joel, who is in his 40’s and still remembers the world before the infection. Joel is hired to smuggle a 14 year old girl, Ellie, out of the quarantine area. Naughty Dog is not ready to talk about the reasons that Ellie must be evacuated, but this will supposedly unfold later into the broader story arch.
As Ellie and Joel push out and begin to explore the ruins of civilisation, they discover a world both decrepit and beautiful. Naughty Dog wants The Last of Us to stand separate from other post-apocalytic fiction, and part of this will be creating a world that, while in a constant state of decay, is also beautiful and lush.
In true Naughty Dog style, the developer has thoroughly researched the background elements that will form part of the game’s environment designs. Subways will be flooded, because apparently New York city pumps thousands of litres of water out of the ground every month, and if if they stopped doing so for just 2 days the entire underground rail system would be flooded.
As the underground begins to flood, the structural integrity of buildings begins to wear down, and nature begins to move in throughout the city.
The Last of Us
Against the background of a lush, decaying metropolis, Naughty Dog plans to tell a compelling character driven story about a modern plague decimating mankind. “Nature encroaches upon civilization, forcing remaining survivors to kill for food, weapons and whatever they can find,” said Naughty Dog president Evan Wells.
The Last of Us is going to be released excusively on PS3, and is expected out either in the final quarter of 2012, or early in 2013.
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