It depicted a lush overgrown world and a society ravaged by a real-world fungal virus called cordyceps. Inspired by David Benioff’s City Of Thieves, it had the sombre loneliness of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and the violent ferocity of 28 Days Later.
Hell, even the internal code names aim high: Next ( Jak & Daxter) Big ( Uncharted) Thing ( The Last Of Us).īut The Last Of Us was different and its impact was orders of magnitude larger.
The latter series has grossed more than a billion dollars. It wasn’t the studio’s first hit, as a corridor of statuettes will prove, and Crash Bandicoot, Jak & Daxter and Uncharted became the gaming mascots of their era. They’re indicative of how much he thinks about video games: a lot.Īs two more Old Fashioned arrive, he relaxes even further and explains how you make a sequel to a game like The Last Of Us. “What’s your favourite love story in a game?” “They’re all perfectionists and you want to make sure they come out of the other side and they look back and say, ‘Yeah, it was fucking worth it.’” “You’re asking people to follow you and work on this thing for years and give so much of themselves,” he says. A team he regularly talks about with the utmost pride himself. He tells me the pressure he feels most isn’t the one from the fans, or from sales expectations, or any of that, but of making his team proud. He’s not bothered by occasional lulls of silence, and isn’t – at least outwardly – phased by the pressure on his shoulders. He lets little out there without some coaxing. Throughout my time with Neil Druckmann I discover that he is sort of unknowable without significant time investment. He walks with a subdued shuffle: a stark contrast to the confidence of his games.
Dressed in hoodie and Vans, the man-bunned 41-year-old has spent the past seven years as one of the most famous developers in the world, but he contorts with discomfort when I ask about it. Part II is his third.Īt dinner later that evening, he greets me with a hug. No Dog has ever directed more than three games in their tenure. Backstage, I meet Druckmann and his cowriter, Halley Gross, for the first time. Naughty Dog just debuted a new trailer in a full-size reconstruction of a dance hall scene in the game, with an intimate performance by its two-time Oscar-winning composer, Gustavo Santaolalla.
It’s June 2018 and E3, gaming’s most prestigious convention, is in full swing. They’d poured everything into making something worth the wait.
They’d kept secrets from their friends and family. All 350 developers had spent a significant portion of their lives making it.
This is an unspeakable scenario in any situation but, so close to release, an indefinite delay was imposed the threat of not recouping untold millions of dollars of investment was too great. To add to that pressure, the Covid-19 pandemic will, in 12 months’ time, create a unique problem: having to finish development from home. “It is one of the best movies ever made,” he tells me, “and there’s something about trying to replicate that magic of that ‘ Part II’. It’s a sequel inspired by, even named after, Francis Ford Copolla’s The Godfather. A benchmark for diversity in blockbuster games, launching in the midst of a racial reckoning. A game about an apocalyptic virus released during the most lethal pandemic in a century. Part II makes brave and shocking choices with some of gaming’s most loved characters and its release is timely. With the next game, Druckmann is attempting to better it. It won more than 200 Game Of The Year awards, sold more than 17 million copies and paved the way for more mature storytelling in video games.