SFX of Infected and ELLIE, like a journey through the second game
NEIL: Recording. Okay. I think we're good. First of all, I'm going to start by asking you questions.
CHRISTIAN: Oh crap. Okay.
NEIL: Have you finished the game?
TROY: Have you played it yet?
LAURA: Are you are you, are you done with it? Did you complete it, are you...
ALMUDENA: I hope you play it til the end! Let us know!
MAC: You’ve played, you’ve played the whole game?
CHRISTIAN: I finished it last night. Around 2am.
HALLEY: Oh you did?
CHRISTIAN: I probably should have lead with that. It’s incredible
HALLEY: Oh I’m glad you liked it!
CHRISTIAN: What a game. I clocked a little under 30 when all is said and told.
NEIL: Okay. And what are your thoughts?
CHRISTIAN: Uh, I mean this is just where it just sounds like a fanboy. It's incredible.
<<The Last of Us Part II Theme Playing>>
NEIL: But the overall you liked it.
CHRISTIAN: That's an understatement, my friend. It was incredible. Absolutely. I, I can't believe it was a PlayStation 4 game. Like, I don't know what you all did. Every moment, I was like, well, this is a beautiful game. And then I get to a new set piece in a new area and I'd be like, this is a beautiful game. I couldn't, the amount of times I played around in photo mode too before realizing I should let a professional do it.
CHRISTIAN: Welcome back to The Official The Last of Us Podcast, I’m Christian Spicer. Up until this point we’ve been covering the story of the first game with the people who made it. But now we’re moving on to the second game. And these next few episodes are going to be a bit different. Instead of the beat by beat conversations we had for Part I, in these next four episodes, we’ll be doing a larger overview of the making of, and really hone in on our two main protagonists, Ellie and Abby. You’re still going to get insight from Neil, Ashley, and Troy, but you’re also going to get to hear from cowriter Halley Gross, the voice of Abby, Laura Bailey, and many team members behind this new installment of The Last of Us. The game’s been out for a few weeks now, so we’ve all had a chance to play it, but please know there are going to be spoilers throughout these discussions. Proceed at your own risk.
CHRISTIAN: When did you know that you were going to make Part II?
NEIL: Yeah, there's um, there isn't like this one moment necessarily. Like we're making the first game where we haven't even finished the first game. You start really understanding these characters and who they are and what makes them tick and you can't help but think about their lives outside of that story, whether it's before or after. And like in my mind, Joel's arc was pretty much done. I didn't know where else to take that character. But with Ellie there was, it felt at least at the time like it's going to be right for all these other stories. And then we finished production. Um, we were, we already had like an outline for Left Behind, um, that I, I finished that outline before we finished actually The Last of Us. So I knew exactly when this finished peers that the DLC is going to be, but at the same time as our idea for the next game.
And a lot of them were very plot driven. Like it was like, okay, what's a cool situation to put Ellie in? And I was like, Oh, what if she heard someone else was immune and she's going to go on this journey to find this other person that's immune and none of them like... It felt like interesting again from a plot standpoint, interesting twists and turns and you can do a lot of fanservice. Joel's going to chase her and now they're going to be teamed up together and the lie is going to come into play because of what she's after. But it felt like it was missing the thing that I think was successful in the first game, which is this emotional heart, this like a very simple universal concept of love. Can we make you feel the unconditional love a parent feels for their child? And I was like, without that, I felt like it, it's just, it could be an exciting story, but he won't capture that emotional resonance that the first game had. And then kind of left it for a while, and then came back to it with this, this concept of hate, of again, this very universal feeling that we all people experience, which is just deep hate, where you're willing in your mind, you're willing to commit horrible acts of violence against another human being. Like I lived in a civilized society, you know, I'm, I, I considered myself to be a pretty easy going guy and my mind was easily able to go there from people I don't even know. Now what would happen if something that happened to someone I love, how far would my mind kind of go down this downward spiral and is there coming back from that? And all these interesting philosophical questions started bubbling up and it felt like again, this universal emotional truth and I was like this is it. This is that core I've been searching for and haven't been able to find. And once I had that, everything fell into place pretty quickly. And, and I mean like within like a couple of weeks, I had the rough outline that is pretty close to what the final game ended up being. So by the time I was talking to Ashley Johnson and telling her the story of Left Behind, we met up in a restaurant and I was like, okay, we got that story and she was asking all these questions. She was really intrigued by it. And then I was like, okay, I have this other story for you. Like it's really rough. And I walked her through that story and like by the end she's like crying and people are looking at us all weird in this restaurant.
CHRISTIAN: She throws her water on your face and walks out.
NEIL: Yeah, that was the first validation that there was like seeing her reaction. Um, that was a validation that there was something there to keep developing.
CHRISTIAN: There was a part of me that was thinking going in, maybe call me cynical as well, just like, I'm sure it will be great, but - you know, like it can't, that can't live up to it. There's no way. And then as it, the chapters or you know, the moments clicked away, it's just, it's, it's stunning and in the best way I can compare it, and I don't mean this to sound, um, just full of hyperbole, but it's, it's kind of like I have two kids. I love them both completely. I don't have a favorite. Like they, they both bring something new to the table. And I think for me, the magic of the story of, of Part II is that it does, it brings something new to the table. It's not the expected sequel. It's not, um, safe. It's, it's challenging. I found myself not liking what was happening. I found myself questioning why these characters are in these situations and what I would do if I were them. And, and I found myself needing to put the controller down and walk away. Only two moments later be like, okay, I got it. I got like, I got to get back to this. I gotta see. And I think what struck for me was that it is through this generation now that this is the world. They know this violence, this, um, perpetual fear. This old world never existed for them while in Part I with Joel as the main protagonist, I kept seeing the world through what was lost. And now there's this whole group of young adults who never knew that and seeing their world and their life was, was very powerful for me.
[JESSE: What’s up with all these posters?
ELLIE: It’s a bunch of comics. Wait, what was happening here?
JESSE: A gathering for people who were really into this stuff. Like you, basically.
ELLIE: We were born in the wrong time man]
NEIL: First of all, thank you. Those are very nice thoughts. Your analogy to having two kids is great. I wish I had that at the beginning of production to describe it to the team. Um, I don't know if there was ever a conscious decision actually to say, okay, now we're just going to view the world through people that have never experienced our world. It just kind of happened. Um, and, and trying to, the reason also we went with like late teens, early twenties. It's like people in that age feel invincible, um, and they feel righteous and they feel like they understand how the world works. And it was, it's, it's, um, you know, it's, um, maturation plot, like, like Ellie and Abby and all these people evolve through these horrible acts.
HALLEY: My name is Halley Gross and I am the co-writer and narrative lead on The Last of Us Part II. So I got hired to be a writer on the game with Neil and I was brought in super early to help him break the story, outline it, figure out scenes and characters and the whole shebang. And then I ended up getting the narrative lead title, like two years into my role at Naughty Dog. I'll have been there for almost four years when this game comes out. Um, when I started to take on sort of larger responsibilities and basically being Neil’s tiny, loud-mouthed shadow.
CHRISTIAN: What was the collaboration process like? You mentioned it a little bit...
HALLEY: So I think, Neil and I have like very, very similar tastes. We agree uh, I would say on like 80% of things. So a lot of it was trying to just plus each other and go, okay, we'd identify a problem to solve or you know, a narrative thing that we wanted to figure out in a day or in an hour or in a 10 minute stretch. And then we would just keep trying to find the best, most interesting version. Something you haven't seen before or something that feels on theme or true to character. And there was very little ego about it. It was just whoever's idea we both thought was best, that would be the one that ended up on the card. And then, um, you know, when we opened that conversation up to more people in the studio, there was also the like, okay, we're going to try and sell you on this idea and pitch you on this idea. But a lot of great ideas came from designers and artists and it was very much about like opening the circle up progressively bringing in cooler ideas, better ideas, ideas that worked more with the fact that we were making a game that a movie or a TV show, um, you know, mechanics that wanted to get involved, uh, scenes or settings that wanted to get explored and building it holistically. So mostly, yeah. Um, and I think Neil and I started out relatively polite with each other, but by the end, you know, it's just us yelling at each other that the other one is stupid and, but still going. Okay. But that was a good idea of fine. Fine, fine.
CHRISTIAN: So what was that transition then like from traditional screenplay writing to game writing and kind of, what was that like for you?
HALLEY: Well, there's, um, a couple of, well, different facets to get into, but I'd say just on the, on the writing front, initially it was very, very similar. I have come up in rooms and breaking stuff collaboratively. So when I walked in, Neil had these big tent pole kind of ideas of the story, some of which have have radically changed, so my job was that connective tissue, you know, um, and helping him sort of find the vision that he wanted. So I just carded stuff up on a board. We started pitching ideas to each other, throwing things out, trying things on. Um, and so all of that felt really similar, um, to writing a 10 episode season of television. Um, it started to get different when we, you know, when we broke it out, we didn't think about gameplay versus, um, cinematic beats or narrative beats. We just said, what's the story arc? And obviously you have to keep in mind like, okay, we've got to figure out how to have a lot of enemies that you kill. But we weren't thinking in terms of gameplay. So then, uh, once he and I had shapes that we felt were like close, we would bring in some designers.
KURT: My name is Kurt Margenau. I'm a Co-game Director on The Last of Us Part II.
ANTHONY: My name is Anthony Newman and I'm the co game director on The Last of Us Part II.
CHRISTIAN: I’m curious if we could step back a little bit and if you could just talk a little bit about what, and maybe specifically at Naughty Dog or more generally if you'd like, but what game directing is what that role is and, and what you do in it.
KURT: Yeah, that's definitely one that is going to be different for every studio. I guess on the highest level, the way that I would describe what a game director does is like to oversee and be like the, the final. I don't know the final approval or overseer of like the gameplay of the game and I guess specifically really helping and driving how the narrative is integrated into gameplay. Like I found my job at the end of the game or for most of the game really to just be, to exist for people to ask questions to.
CHRISTIAN: What was the biggest challenge that you remember that you faced in directing on The Last of Us Part II aside trying to work with Anthony, which I hear is just, you know, really,
KURT: Um, I mean that was a challenge. Like finding those roles, you know that, you know, having two people share that role which is a first for Naughty Dog.
ANTHONY: Working with Kurt was uh really interesting, and Kurt kind of, I call Kurt the godfather of script because so many of our methodologies or our best practices, what we teach new scripters to do were things that he discovered via trial and error on UNCHARTED 2, uh, and those kinds of best practices have lasted us these 10 some years. And it's, to me, I think one of the things that really makes Naughty Dog games stand out, and like how we're able to handle player interactions gracefully and stuff and that like Naughty Dog attention to detail that everybody talks about, so much of that comes from the fact that we had this very flexible scripting language and if someone sees something that they don't like or want to improve upon, we can make those kinds of atomic improvements. So much of that lineage I think comes from Kurt's work on UNCHARTED 2, and we kind of have this kinship of that early history together.
CHRISTIAN: I don't know how many hours I was into it, but at least a couple before I saw the run to jump to prone animation where instead of going to crouch first, then prone. And I don't know if that literally saved my character's life a few times after I found it. But I loved it. I'd be booking it towards tall grass and I would just do that, that dive into prone and it was so satisfying and like the little, this is where I'm just like a fanboy now for a little bit. The little touches, the moments of like so I’m Ellie and I do that and I'm going to draw out my bow
[SFX of bow and arrow shot]
because I don't want to give away this position. I just kind of fought to find. And the way she then rolls over to pull it like it, it feels very real and even in those moments of let's say a game play mechanic change of I'm in this position of hiding to now I need to be armed for combat. It still felt like a moment. And I'm curious how you all kind of balanced that or made those decisions to, you know, what is real? breaking glass, I'm going to, you know, use my elbow if I have it or the butt of my gun or rollover or reload is a different animation and reaching up to a drawer to get something is different than down.
KURT: I'm glad you bring up the pickups system cause that was uh, that was like such a big push. It's kind of a tech that we had that we started experimenting with on UNCHARTED 4. But we really embraced, which is like this uh partial animation system. So like you can play an animation on the top half of the character but not the bottom half. So there is a lot of it which is like, it just looks like I'm grabbing shit and putting in my backpack and it looks realistic. Like I would in the real world be able to pretty easily walk past something, pick it up while I'm moving and put it in my backpack. But something that is really hard in a video game to do. Another one is like the straps on the guns, uh, on Ellie and Abby. So in UNCHARTED 4, we're like, well, let’s have the strap on the gun so that it actually sits and rests and the strap goes across his body and when he pulls the gun out, the strap hangs and dangles with physics. It's like, well we did it for UNCHARTED 4, so why not? We'll bring that over into The Last of Us.
CHRISTIAN: Well now you did a manual rope recoil also. So if we ever go back to Nate throwing a rope, you know, I'm not going to, he's got a, he's got to wind it back up. Even if I throw it halfway through my rewind, you know, you keep setting the bar higher for yourself.
KURT: Sure. That was uh, so you did notice that you could throw the rope before she's done coiling it. cause a lot of people like they'll just politely wait for her to finish coiling the rope all the way.
CHRISTIAN: Oh no, I get myself into some situations. I don't have time to politely wait.
KURT: (laughs) Yeah the rope stuff was, was really cool and let us do some more traversal stuff and some interesting puzzles like throwing ropes over stuff.
CHRISTIAN: It was so great. Breaking the glass, throwing the rope through, just so fun. It just felt so good.
KURT: The breaking glass was such a like big win for, for us, like for how technically difficult it was into like how different, how many different ways we like we're able to integrate that with level design. We just always had in the back pocket like well that's a piece of glass. You could shatter it all. Oh when you shatter glass, it makes noise so it can alert enemies. So we can create like really tense scenarios where the only way to get into a space is to shatter the glass. You're gonna have to make noise, you're going to have to alert the enemies. Uh, or maybe there is another way in, but I have to climb around in there. So it's like a trade off between. So you're getting those little interesting things and it looks really sick.
ANTHONY: That's again, that's one of those things that sounds so deceptively simple. You know, the big challenge about making a game, like The Last of Us is to develop fresh and interesting game mechanics, but uh, we have to kind of make do with things that are as realistic as possible. And breakable glass was just like the perfect one of those, because suddenly you have all these puzzles where it's like, oh, what do I, how can I use this breakable glass to like, you know, get around to a locked door or something like that. You can put pickups behind breakable glass, like, uh, and resources and the player has to hit the glass in order to get the resources behind them. But hitting that glass makes a noise which could attract enemies. So, when an enemy takes cover, uh, behind a pane of glass and they want to shoot at you, they'll take cover there and then they'll quickly stand up
[SFX of glass breaking
and break it with their elbow before they start aiming at you. Uh, so it's just like another way for different systems in the game to interact with each other. Um, and then when like a Shambler explodes
SFX of Shambler exploding]
and you know, blows up all the glass or you know, one of your bombs goes off and stuff. That was really something we looked for, you know, doors were another good example of that, of these ways that we could take something simple from the real world that has these affordances that you understand right away, but nonetheless can create these very interesting moments.
KURT: For me day one, like the first, I’m trying to remember just the first time I heard the idea of like Joel is going to die early in the game and he's going to be killed by someone that was affected by what Joel had done. I think even originally it wasn't even the doctor from the first game, it was just a... it was like a little section of something between uh, that 20 year gap in The Last of Us where like there Tommy and Joel were smugglers and they were doing fucked up shit and that they killed someone and then this person came back and that was going to be the playable like opening of the game was that thing where he kills them. And then it was, you know, reworked and brought in like the actions of the first game becoming the impetus for the story of the second game was super, super compelling and like taking that moment that everyone has caught like that was probably the most controversial part of the first game was the doctor scene. And like killing the doctors, being forced to kill the doctor to kill the other two doctors. Um, this obviously the biggest choice, the biggest thing that Joel does in that game and making that the entire reason that the second game exists was, uh, like once that connection was like made, it was like, Oh, that's way cooler, but also like this is kind of the inciting incident of the whole story, the whole thing that kicks Abby on her journey.
[SFX of hospital alarm
FIREFLY: Fucking Building.
Uh, so it's important to see that.
FIREFLY: Abby, don’t look!
ABBY: Dad! Dad. No.]
CHRISTIAN: Neil and others have described this as maybe Naughty Dog’s, most divisive. So you're not only coming into The Last of Us, this game, that means so much to so many people. You're also putting them through the ringer on it. It's not the safe expected sequel if there was one.
HALLEY: No, absolutely not. Um, you know, when Neil pitched me what he had four years ago, you know, he had, and then we killed Joel right out the gate. And that actually was what, one of the things that really excited me about it, I was like, Whoa, that's such a ballsy, brave turn. And then there's so much frontier to explore. There's no expectations at that point because you know, everything, all your preconceived notions about the relationship between these two people is out the window. So to me it was incredibly exciting. And, but also, yeah, it's, it's a huge vocal, supportive community. You want to, you know, make something that moves them. But I think Neil has always been really good and the studio has always really been good about saying like, we're not trying to replicate the first game. Um, and I think a safety net that I've always had is, I'll just blame Neil. Anything people don't like, I'll just say that was, what do you want me to do? I, you know, I work for the man. What can I do?
NEIL: I recall Halley first coming on the project and, um, my office has like a cork wall that I put, um, index cards on and I'm like, all right, here's the story.
CHRISTIAN: It says like, kill person players love, kill other person players love. And that's just pinned up there?
NEIL: And I'm like, that's all I have now. Let's figure out the rest. Uh, well it's not that dissimilar from what I had. So I was like, I'm like, here's the beginning. Um, here's this beat in the middle where we swap like, um, who we play. Like we're going to hit this part of the country. I don't know what part. We're going to spend some time with everyone to see the story from both the perspective and here's the end. I don't have anything else, so let's start figuring out. So I remembered that even back then, which is around when we finished UNCHARTED 4. That was what we knew and uh, knew that we wanted to spend a relatively short time compared to the first game in this one area. And then which area to go to become a bigger conversation with art and design to say, okay, because we want to spend so much time in this one city. Potentially it has to be an outdoor game, pacing is very important to us. And by pacing I mean it's, it's varying up the kind of gameplay that you're doing. So it can all be combat. It can’t all be conversations and it cant all be cutscenes about switching these things up. It's about switching up the art. Um, so we needed a variety of looks and we could use architecture but we needed a city that was interesting. And then also interesting from an aesthetic point of view but also interesting from a design point of view. So what kind of shapes can this place afford us? And again, Seattle is interesting cause it's very hilly. Um, you got all these slopes which create far more interesting, um, level design with a lot more verticality and shifts and changes. And then we can like, because if it rains there, we could flood it. So Seattle became this very exciting place pretty early on in production. Um, and I talked a little bit about this earlier when we talk about where the idea came from, which was when you started making a sequel. Then now there's an, uh, people think they know, I hate this term franchise, what the franchise means. I feel like franchise should only be like a term used by marketing people. And you could say, okay, the first game was successful, so let's deconstruct it into these beats or this template. And that will be the roadmap of how we capture that success again. But to me that is a recipe for disaster. Meaning it's like at best you could come close because you will never replicate the freshness of that journey by just going on the same journey. Um, you might like, you might get a beat that's like, Oh, that's kinda like the giraffe beat or oh, that's kind of like the David beat and I'm seeing the structure now. And um, so instead it was like very early on we said, we're not going to replicate the first game. Um, meaning even the pacing of the first game, I think the first game has more of a cinematic movie pacing to it. Just the way it keeps ratcheting it up and keeps getting more and more and more and more intense. With this game I want it to have more of like a good novel that you get lost in that there's going to be moments of like rest where things don't have to keep ratcheting up because we're going to have those moments as well. And that's what I had the idea of like the farm sequence very early on. I was like, I want it to just have, what is it like to just live in this world without combat? Um, and how can we make you experience that on the stick. So knowing we have those moments, um, knowing that, for example… one of the things people talk about the most, one of the parts from the first game that people talk about all the time is the opening. How people have said like, oh, that's one of the best video game openings ever. And I was like, okay, we're not going to try to replicate that. There's no way we're trying to like top that we gotta do something different. And it's very purposeful to have like the opening, you know, it's just you riding a horse with Joel and it's calm and it's just giving you a sense of the world. And it's Joel gifting Ellie this guitar and we spend like a few minutes just him playing a song
[JOEL: Some folks call this thing here a guitar.
ELLIE: Funny
SFX of JOEL beginning to play guitar
where like all your instincts of like telling these kinds of action stories like, no, you've got to start with a bang. You got to the end. It's like, no, let's fight that instinct. We're telling a different kind of story here and let's throw up the logo after this moment of connection between these two characters. Cause so much of the stories about this connection.
[ELLIE: Well that didn’t suck
JOEL: She’s yours!
ELLIE: No. No, no, no, I don’t know the first thing about this.
JOEL: I promised I’d teach you how to play.
ELLIE: You did.]
So that kind of allowed us to play with pacing in a different way, to say, okay, what? And that's where note cards again are so important because you could throw the whole game up on the wall and look at it and be like, okay, we have too much combat here. Let's shift things around. Oh, we have too many downbeats, let's shift them out. There's not enough space between these flashbacks. How can we create more space? And like so much of that work is pacing, is storytelling to say, is the story evolving in this area? Like, Oh do we just have a sequence that's cool but it's not really doing anything for us, for the characters and we should really consider cutting it.
CHRISTIAN: No, 100%. I mean it felt like I had these moments where I was just the character. And one of the notes I wrote down because I couldn't talk to anybody about this, um, was this game was, it's one of the rare games where I wasn't running when I didn't need to. So many games and games. I love, I'm holding down the run button. You know, cause I'm just, I'm going through it and, and and my play of Part II, I rarely if ever did that. I think the time I can remember running cause I but not because I was impatient or trying to get to the next beat. I felt like that's what the character would have done is when Ellie came back to the farm with the rabbit and I saw the horse out front and Tommy's horse I ran with the character then cause she, I felt would be interested in like Oh what's happening? We don't get visitors that often, what is this moment?
[SFX of farm ambience]
But for the most part I was in the world taking in these moments of exploration and wonder and experiencing these things.
ALEXANDRIA: I'm Alexandria Neonakis. Um, I was, when we talked before on [The Last of Us] I was primarily UI. Um, on Part II I was a Character Concept Artist.
CHRISTIAN: Let's start there cause uh, in terms of character, concept art and, and what it entailed for this game. Um, and the characters are all grounded and real and different and um, whether it's Ellie's physique versus Abby's versus Dina's versus Owen compared to Manny. Like they all are all people. So I'd love to kind of talk to you about your process for character design in a game where many of the characters we've seen before, um, they've aged but then also bringing in new characters into the world and kind of that process is like.
ALEXANDRIA: So I mean obviously we're really narrative driven and because of that are super character driven. Like they're very character centric games. So it does, it is different I guess from quite a lot of other games that don't tend to put such a heavy, heavy emphasis. And I think that shows in like the detail and the characters and like the thought that went into it. Um, my lead on this project was Ashley Swidowski. She's the character lead, um, at, at Naughty Dog on The Last of Us Part II. Um, and she, uh, really had this very clear vision right from the very beginning. I'm working with John Sweeney, the art director of like kind of how we wanted these characters to, to move through the story and to be influenced by the story, everything from their costuming, like the colors of their costuming, the patterns that were on certain shirts down to like, um, how much blood they collect over the span of like the time spent in Seattle for instance, with Ellie. Like we, we would go into super specific detail on like, she got cut at this time, uh, to prevent it from being too distracting. We're going to heal it this much. And like I would do like an individual, like concepts all the way through of like degrees of damage she's taken and like what happened to her clothing after that fight and stuff like that. So it was very, we were like involved from the very beginning all the way to the very end in detailing all of this out. And I'm really trying to make them feel as real as possible. You know, the blood,
[SFX of rain]
The blood actually like interacts with rain, which had nothing to do with a character as much as with the VFX, like something like that, like that level of detail, the amount of tech and like the amount of people that have to go into building a system like that is astronomical.
CHRISTIAN: Do you have a favorite moment and maybe a favorite moment in the game and then also maybe a favorite moment you worked on seeing it realized?
ALEXANDRIA: Yeah. So my favorite one I worked on, it's pretty easy. It's the museum, um, with, with Joel that M- I love natural history. And so I like, um, apart from doing character, I'll also do kind of narrative heavy spaces. I'll help set them.
CHRISTIAN: Um, so you put hats on dinosaurs.
ALEXANDRIA: That was, uh, there was a designer who came up with that, uh, that idea. But that was awesome. Obviously again a team effort with everything. But I, um, chose all the dinosaurs and like where they were in the rooms and like went without sourcing to, you know, count all the vertebrae and make sure that they were all accurate and all that and just picking like the different spaces in the museum, which is a type of space that I really love to be in and kind of that's that moment that I feel like fans of the first game are, they really crave so that when they get to it, it had to be very soft but still amazing to look at and exciting and like full of stuff that people want to explore because that's your like tender moment with him that, I mean, I know I even craved by the time you get to it, it's like, yes, we got some, we got some Papa Joel time.
[SFX of footsteps in the museum
ELLIE: Did you know this was here?
JOEL: Oh you don’t like it. We can head back.
ELLIE: Oh shut up!
ALEXANDRIA: It's like a nice, uh, yeah, it's like a nice soft moment and I think we don't have very many of those in this game, but when, when they're there, I feel like they're, they're much more impactful for it. Um, I also just love all the fool around with Dina. Like all the joking around with her when Ellie plays, um, that song for her, the take on me song,
DINA: What was that?
ELLIE: Nothing
DINA: Nothing sure sounds nice.
SFX of ELLIE starting to play]
CHRISTIAN: This game is massive. I believe it's two disks if you get it physical, um,
ALEXANDRIA: It’s like 30 hours or something, right?
CHRISTIAN: It's ma, it is massive. So I'm curious, was it massive for you as well in terms of the art asks and the undertaking or is it every game is, you know, 10,000 hours of art, even if the game is only five hours off.
ALEXANDRIA: This game was huge so big for all of us and felt very overwhelming. And I like to talk a little bit about some of the struggles people had. It's one of the things that I heard a lot about so many concerns. It was just too long. Like we had too much to do and it didn't feel like we were going to be able to hit the Mark and get the quality that we wanted, um, at different points in the project where it's like, Oh my God, this is overwhelming. Like I forget, Ashley told me how many costume changes Ellie has. I think it's like, it's a number that's wild. It was like 15 or something like that through the whole thing. Because like anything you change, like when you put the little jacket on her, uh, in Seattle when it rains, where she puts her hood up, which is a detail that I really, really love. I love that they got that in, but that's a con, that's a whole costume change. Like, so, um, there's not just a whole lot of characters. They all have different costumes. They'll have hair sets unique to them. Like they all like a few different types of hairs. Like, I don't know if you noticed that Dina and festival hair, it looks different than Dina, like out on patrol with Ellie. Um, not on patrol, but um, when she goes to Seattle with Ellie, uh, that's a completely different thing. Abby's got wet hair or they all have wet hair versus dry hair, um, for when it rains, when they get in the water, all that stuff. So it's just like as I sit here and talk, but I'm sweating. I mean it's really hot here today. It's like 90, but I'm just like, I'm just sweating, thinking of like, wow, that was so much work. And it's for us, like at this time, it only just kind of like we're in the ramp down now from it being fully final. Um, and we're in that stage of it where it's just like you kind of sit back and you're like, Oh my God, we like, how did we do that? Like, because other people will be like, how did you do that? And I'm like, God, I don't know.
CHRISTIAN: Um, I'm curious if it's personal experience or, I was on a team kind of talking about how Abby and Ellie are both similar and how they're both different. These are two women that are kind of about the same age bracket. Um, similar experiences to some extent were experiencing this great loss and being born post outbreak and this is the world they know. Um, and kind of the design of those characters to have them feel like different characters and not a pallet swapped Ellie for example, or something like that.
ALEXANDRIA: Yeah, it hurts my guts a little bit with Abby because I feel like when you're playing through, it's like, I think they'd be friends, like I think in a different world they would really each other or maybe be a little bit competitive with each other or have some sort of bond, but they, they're not the same. Obviously. It would be more just like I could see them liking each other in a, if the situation was different. Like they both have very similar values. Um, Abby wants to sacrifice her, like said to her dad, like, if it was me, I'd want you to sacrifice me. And that's very Ellie. Like they seem to be so similar. Obviously Abby's a lot bigger than Ellie. There's like a physical difference between them. Um, which kind of harkens a little bit to liking Joel versus Ellie from the first one. Like Ellie's a bit more nimble and like slight and Abby's like, like hits like a tank. Um, so there's obviously some gameplay differences with them. Um, but I think like personality wise I felt like, um, the writing team did a good job of showing that they're both like really stubborn, really driven, really passionate people. Um, and it's like true that sometimes when you, when you come up against a person just like you, like they're the hardest ones to deal with. Um, so yeah, I feel like visually we kept them obviously very separate, but I felt like their personalities were quite similar and Ellie went to a very dark place. Um, Abby was able to kind of pull herself a little bit out of that earlier and sort of like maybe jolt Ellie in that direction as well. Like they both kind of went into these ups and downs of lightness and darkness throughout the, that end set there.
CHRISTIAN: You've written some very nuanced deep characters who are not afraid to be violent. Women who are not afraid to be violent, which, you know, even today, I would say five years ago, 10 years ago, very different in terms of how we accepted that as a society. And now we're seeing more of it. Not enough, but more of it. Um, but I'm curious what that's like for you as a creator to write these characters that aren't afraid to let an ax fly.
HALLEY: You know, I love writing violent characters. I, um, I started out, well, I started out writing comedy, but I got into film and television professionally on writing action. Um, I think there's something incredibly interesting to how base it is, how it is, um, this language for people who maybe don't know how to use their words you know. It's like, it's this, um, it is a language for people who have not necessarily been able to develop, um, super mature ways of communicating in the world and, and addressing their feelings. And I think we were all guilty of like, you know, I, the amount of iPhones I threw in my twenties into walls, you know, is, is really real because I didn't know how to self soothe or whatever. Um, I love violence and I love, I don't, you know, I don't love violence. I love examining violence because I think it is the epitome of, um... Of...survival. And like the desperation of survival and, and this feeling of, of such disenfranchisement. Like if someone's throwing a punch or throwing an ax, uh, cause they probably fucking need to. Um, and if they don't, that's also a really interesting conversation as well. Um, I like that heightened world, I like talking about trauma and survival and resiliency and in a a world in which the violence is more on the surface makes those conversations, I think clearer for people a little, um, um, they become much easier to understand when you're speaking on a grand scale where it's like, Oh, I mean they have to, you know, we, we kill outsiders cause they're scary. It's like, okay, but then you can, when you're speaking in those hyperbolic terms, I don't have to sit there and spend the half an hour giving you the nuance of the struggles with the WLF. It's like, no, no, no. This is a nice way that feels black and white. Um, and I think, I think women, women especially, who have grown up in violent worlds like can be or can have just as violent impulses as, as men and can be traumatized by that violence. It is universal in a way...I love badass women.
ALMUDENA: My name is Almudena Soria and um, Co-lead Animator at, uh, Naughty Dog.
So we, we redid all the locomotion, uh, system and we based it on motion matching, uh, which is, uh, uh, a technique that was used before, but we made it our own. So we took all those concepts and uh, we develop our own system that is actually very, very complex and only a few people at the studio understand. Uh, so that was a massive challenge. Uh, and I'm very proud of what the team achieved. Like how everyone came together and managed to make a great game that was, stays responsive, that looks grounded, that has weight. And being able to do that, not just with humans, not just with Ellie but with enemies, with dogs and with horses. Um, we, motion captured horses and dogs, which was as well, like something we've never done before. So this, this, uh, game, Part II is, is full of new things we've, we've just taken on and we knew the game was going to be big, but when we were finishing or even towards the middle, we were like, this is bigger, bigger than big. This is just big and huge.
CHRISTIAN: Um, I'd love to talk about, uh, like the animations of what I've kind of internally been calling in my head, the Ren and Stimpy moments, which I don't know if you watch that cartoon where and Ren and Stimpy there'd be like the wide shot and then they'd cut in for the close thing. It'd be like very detailed of, you know, usually a grotesque thing and Ren and Stimpy and then The Last of Us Part II it’s I mean it's stunning at all times. It's stunning. But those scenes when we see their fingers playing guitar on the frets, on the strings,
[SFX of guitar strumming]
CHRISTIAN: I meant it’s mind blowing. And you all are not only showing the hands, I mean it is zoomed in with the fidelity and authenticity that's just asking for people to criticize it. You know, like if there's anything wrong in it, it's focused, uh, that the camera's attention is focused on that. I'd love for you to talk about how you manage those different types of perspective from an animating standpoint and an art standpoint of how you kind of create those hyper-focused settings and then are able to pull out from that and go into the more traditional third person gameplay.
ALMUDENA: Yeah. Um, that's done very early on in the project. So that would be the first trailer we saw. All that tech was developed back then. But that was, you know, like how do we come up with these hands that are more real because hands are very, very hard to, to rig, to model, to make it look believable, you know, their knuckles and a squishy fingertips. So all that was developed with the TD team and the cinematic team to come up with something that could be animated, that could, you know, feel like the strings are pressing against the fingertips. Um, so it's a back and forth to get that look. Uh, once the look is established, then it's easier to propagate, uh, to different characters. Uh, but definitely it took time. Um, not just the guitar and, um, in the, in the fingers. Also the facial, like we redid this time, the facial rig was completely redone from UNCHARTED 4, uh, it used to be able to be more, um, to have more fidelity. Uh, and then also like muscle, this deformations like we see the hanging scene when, uh, Abby gets hanged.
[SFX of ABBY gasping, struggling]
Um, like we see like the veins and the, and the phase getting red. So it's like, you know, that's very hard to do. It's, it's uh, but that grounds the player into believe that it's in this world and everything has consequences and, and feels what the players are feeling. You're not getting red eyes bald. So it's all a collaboration to this you know, Neil's vision, cinematic team. And then feedback from the whole studio affects shaders character artists. So it's not just animation, it's all the departments together.
CHRISTIAN: Part I certainly had its memorable animal moments. The giraffe and monkeys I think jump out for a lot of people and I'm curious, um, what the process was for Part II to make them, um, a bigger part of the game. Certainly with the horse and dogs. And I'm curious what that experience was like and how you brought that greater realism, um, to the game and to those types of creatures or animals.
ALMUDENA: It all comes back to being a hero character, uh, the horse and the, uh, and the dogs. So we thought we needed to motion capture this to bring up the realism. So we went that route and that was, that was challenging, but it was super fun. It was, it was really interesting. Um, what the limitations are having a smaller space, you know, it, you can’t get to full sprint. So we've had to make some tweaks to, to, to make that happen, you know? So, uh, we motion capture, but we also have a very animated, talented animation team that takes that data and needs so much adjustments. It gets complex and complex and more complex with, uh, with animals. Um, but I have to say that, the result, I think it speaks for itself, um, in not just horses, but also dogs. Um, you know, the F the end game facial system is something that came together pretty late, but it adds so much to the, to compare to any other game we've made. Like these, uh, the players and the MPCs and the bodies and the enemies have emotions. So they could, if they're saying a line with they're smiling or like they're laughing, they would communicate that on the facial expressions. Um, and you know, like from the dialogue, uh, team where they, uh, decided that they wanted to like call you enemies by name, which means, you know, that gives such a, you know, you're going to kill someone because you have to in this world, but they have a name and they have friends like you have. So everything just makes experience so much more robust.
CHRISTIAN: A moment that has stuck with me. And the first time it happened, I was like, did I just hear what I thought I heard? Uh, and I was out, I'm getting my revenge and I got my revenge on an individual, and then someone else yelled out like they killed Sarah. And I was like, Oh, I did kill Sarah. These are people, they're not just not idle, animating things that you go and take out. It's like they have a life. And even, you know, soldier one 14 now I know is Sarah, uh, she has someone that she's been, she cares about and that cares about her and I killed her.
[SFX of ELLIE killing someone
NPC 1: Brook? Goddamn it where are you! Amir? You with me? Come on.
NPC 2: Someone took out Amir! Someone’s out there! Spread out!]
It's, it's incredible. It is emotionally traumatizing, but in all the right ways. And there's a theme that I feel kind of runs through it of revenge, certainly in violence, a cycle of violence. But I also feel like I keep hearing versions of you gotta find something to fight for. You gotta have a reason to fight. And I think in game, the way I've kind of interpreted that is you have to have a reason to live. But I also think characters in this brutal world take it literally and fight like they are fighting. And I'm left with the feeling of is any of that worth it? Is any of it worth it? And I don't know if I have an answer, which makes all those difficult moments prior to that more difficult.
ALMUDENA: To me. That's what the games are about. At least the games we make there, they're meant to mean something. You know, you're, you have to like, if you end up playing a game and then you'd finish it and then there's no emotion or there's no investment, there's no care about anything, then it's, it's, to me, I wouldn't be satisfied. So if I'm playing a game and it evokes these reactions, it's like your brain starts working. You want to play it, you want to keep playing to see what happens, whether it's right or wrong, you're leaving this journey with, in this case with Ellie, you're living this journey with these characters and that's what you're going through is this. You have to, uh, there, there has to be conflict at some point, but we give the stealth tools to be able to avoid and make your own decisions. And like if you don't want to do it, maybe you don't have to. Maybe you can really, really find ways around those difficult moments. So yeah. And, and I understand that we try to give every character a purpose. Even when we have these crowd sequences or like this, these populated areas, those are so hard because it's like, okay, how do we populate this with this amount of people that they are having a purpose in this world? And believe me, that is not an easy thing. But we want the players that played that it's yeah, you're here. And all these people, maybe they're the people you fought before.
CHRISTIAN: Is this the scariest thing that you've written in your opinion?
HALLEY: Oh, what a nice question. Um, gosh, I don't know. I think everything you write should be scary for you to write. I think writers have a responsibility to write what scares them because it is historically the most honest and usually the things people are most hungry to, to hear and see and relate to, you know? Uh, shame dies in the light, right? Like we all want to feel seen. And...if you're not saying something that feels vulnerable, I don't know. What are you doing? So, so yeah, I think this is scary. I don't know if it's the scariest. I think everything I work on is super scary. There's a lot of me in this, there's a lot of me and Ellie and Abby and Dina and Lev. Um, those are, those are my main homies. Um, Uh, and some of those things were sort of, you know, writing about trauma can, can be scary to write. You're putting it on the page, but you think about like 17-year-old me or, or the 17-year-olds that are out there now and you're like, look, I want to give you an example of, you know, life can be hard, but you can pick yourself back up and you're not going to be the same person you were before, but you can be somebody cool and interesting and you can enrich other people's lives and you can have a beautiful life for yourself and you can, you can grow. And so, so I don't know, writers should always write shit that scares them. That's my thesis.
NEIL: I'm now playing the game again and looking at different parts and playing with the photo of motives. Like how fucking lucky am I, right? Like how lucky that I get that I have this job and I get to work with all these talented people and like I get even to do this podcast and talk to you in depth about what we're trying to achieve and that people care about what we make. Um, it's pretty incredible and like as disheartening as some of these leaks have been, right, that that negative feeling doesn't come close to the positive of like what it was like to go on this journey to make this game and come out on the other side and make something that we're so incredibly proud of. Nothing can take that away.
CHRISTIAN: Next time on The Official The Last of Us Podcast...
[JOEL: Happy Birthday, Kiddo
ASHLEY: Again, I would do it all over again, I love this game so much, I love this character and after 8 years of playing this character, I’d go anywhere with her.
SHANNON: For me, like loving Ellie was not a job. Like, it was easy.
ELLIE: I’m just a girl. Not a threat.
DINA: I think they should be terrified of you.]
CHRISTIAN: The Official The Last of Us Podcast is produced by PlayStation and Spoke Media
It’s hosted by me, Christian Spicer and written by Brigham Mosley.
Our Sony PlayStation team includes Charlie Yedor, Cristian Cardona and Carrie Surtees.
Our Naughty Dog team includes Arne Meyer and Scott Lowe.
Our production team is Carson McCain, Kelly Kolff, Tre Jones, Reyes Mendoza and Aleisha Force.
This episode was mixed by Evan Arnett who contributed additional sound design and music.
Today’s episode included interviews with Neil Druckmann, Halley Gross, Anthony Newman, Kurt Margenau, Almudena Soria, and Alexandria Neonakis.
Our executive producers are Alia Tavakolian and Keith Reynolds.
Thanks for listening.
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