Naughty Dog | Through the Shattered Lens

Naughty Dog’s The Last Of Us was one of the first modern videogames to gain my younger cousin’s interest in playing. Although I finished it the normal difficulty, she was able to complete it on its hardest settings and went on to continue with the sequel. So, we’ve been looking forward to HBO’s Live Action adaptation. What I didn’t realize was that Craig Mazin was involved in this, whose work on Chernobyl was amazing. Mazin is handling the writing along with the original author, Neil Druckman.

The Last of Us takes place in a world torn apart, where Joel & Ellie (Pedro Pascal & Bella Ramsey, both featured in Game of Thrones) have a difficult mission to accomplish. The show looks as if it’s keeping most of the elements from the game. The Fireflies and the Clickers, they’re all there. The cast listing even includes some of the voice cast from the game. I’m curious to see how they’ll incorporate that into this.

The Last of Us is set to premiere next year, on HBO and HBO Max.

I’ll fully admit that the PS3 I bought hasn’t seen much action since I purchased it. I still use it to watch Blu-Ray films, but it’s gaming side I rarely touch. Most of the games that I would play on the console I already own and play on my Xbox 360. Once in awhile a game that’s exclusive for the PS3 comes out or gets announced that makes me rethink my non-gaming of the console. At Sony’s pre-E3 press conference on Monday I saw one game whose gameplay demo has convinced me that I need to get this game and dust off the Ps3 controllers.

The game is Naughty Dog’s latest title called The Last of Us and it’s a post-apocalyptic title that’s set in a world that has succumbed to some sort of viral infection which causes those infected to turn homicidal and searching out those still uninfected. Unlike other post-apocalyptic games this one sets the game in a world still reeling from the end of the world as we know it and with survivors doing just everything possible to survive the cities and infrastructures we take for granted has slowly been reclaimed by nature.

The game follows two characters in Joel (the one the player controls) and a 14-year old girl named Ellie (controlled by the game’s AI) who have a sort of father-daughter relationship despite not being related with they being survivors their only common link. The game touts a robust AI that allows the enemies in the game to adjust how they come at the player depending on the player’s mode of fighting. The game also does make use of the post-apocalyptic setting by making scavenging for supplies and ammo a high-priority.

The game is still in development, but if the gameplay demo shown at Sony’s presser is any indication then this game is a must-buy for me and probably for many others.

The Last of Us has a tentative release date of Late 2012/Early 2013.