Ideation:    After  Naughty  Dog  finished  Uncharted  2,  a  second  team  began  work  on  a  new  IP,  they  decided  early  on  to  make  a  post-­‐apocalyptic  game  based  around  two  characters,  they  contemplated  what  genre  was  best,  third-­‐person  adventure,  first-­‐person  shooter,  etc.    While  many  elements  of  the  game  changed  throughout  the  concept  of  the  game,  the  one  main  part  that  remained  the  same  was  the  concept  of  the  two  characters;  Joel  and  Ellie.    Their  names,  age,  gender,  appearance,  and  so  on,  where  not  set  in  stone  immediately,  however.  Naughty  Dog  had  decided  from  the  beginning  that  they  wanted  the  player  to  empathise  with  the  characters’  emotions  and  feelings.      While  they  had  decided  from  the  beginning  to  have  a  game  set  in  a  post-­‐apocalyptic  world,  the  “infected”  where  not  part  of  the  game  to  begin  with,  Naughty  Dog  didn’t  want  to  go  for  the  cliché  type  zombie  world,  so  after  receiving  inspiration  from  watching  a  documentary  called  Planet  Earth,  they  came  up  with  the  concept  of  the  fungus-­‐like  infection,  it  was  also  die  to  a  documentary  on  what  would  happen  if  the  Earth  was  not  tended  to  for  20+  years  they  came  up  with  the  general  over-­‐grown  look  for  the  game  world.    Pre-­‐production  The  pre-­‐production  stage  for  the  last  of  us,  was  filled  with  the  research  behind  the  story  as  well  as  the  concept  art  and  the  casting.  The  basic  idea  behind  the  last  of  us  is  to  have  an  infection  cause  the  collapse  of  civilisation  and  the  game  is  played  at  this  post  apocalyptic  point.  When  researching  the  infection  the  team  watched  the  BBC  documentary,  planet  earth.  In  one  of  the  episodes  of  planet  earth  there  was  the  a  fungus  which  infects  ants  forces  them  to  climb  a  tree  and  bite  into  it  at  which  point  the  fungus  sprouts  out  if  the  ants  head  and  releases  more  spores,  the  idea  was  to  transfer  this  fungus  so  it  infects  humans.  They  also  researched  into  what  the  world  would  be  like  without  us,  using  the  factual  “world  without  us”  book  that  describes  what  would  happen  to  cities  without  us  and  how  nature  eventually  takes  over.  All  of  this  research  was  used  in  the  concept  art  of  the  infected  and  the  locations.  The  infected  had  to  show  the  fungus  is  an  obvious  way  at  some  stage  of  infection;  they  tried  many  different  versions  but  eventually  went  with  placing  fungus  photos  on  a  person  and  refining  it  to  look  as  one  piece.  The  fungus  had  to  show  some  form  of  natural  beauty  in  this  case  the  vibrant  luminous  quality  it  has,  as  did  

the  cities  designed,  the  destruction  had  to  be  matched  with  some  beautiful  aspects  produced  by  nature.    One  of  the  most  important  parts  for  the  pre-­‐production  of  the  last  of  us  was  casting.  The  cast  had  to  be  perfect,  as  the  game  has  a  powerful  story  line  which  needed  the  audience  to  connect  to  and  feel  emotional  with,  the  way  that  is  achieved  is  by  have  actors  perform  the  voices,  and  the  graphics  show  their  face  and  body  emanate  emotion.  The  actress  (Ashley  Johnson)  who  is  the  voice  behind  Ellie  was  one  of  the  first  few  who  auditioned;  her  performance  blew  the  creative  directors  away.  Once  they  had  Ellie  they  needed  to  find  the  voice  for  Joel  (Troy  Baker)  the  other  main  character,  Ashley  was  heavily  involved  in  finding  Joel  as  both  character’s  needed  to  have  a  special  bond  which  was  felt  and  shared  by  the  players.  The  casting  auditions  were  done,  by  acting  out  scenes  from  the  storyline  by  doing  this  Ashley  and  Troy  were  able  to  show  the  connection  that  they  could  bring  between  their  characters.      Production:    Motion  capture  was  used  to  create  the  movement  of  the  characters  in  the  gameplay.  Naughty  Dog  used  the  “mo-­‐cap”  for  body  movement  and  the  animators  separately  changed  facial  expressions  using  footage  of  the  actors’  faces  as  a  reference.          Post-­Production:    Gustavo  Santaolalla,  a  double  Oscar  winner,  was  brought  in  to  compose  the  soundtrack  for  The  Last  of  Us  ,    Santaolalla  said  he  like  to  start  work  on  the  music  early  on  in  projects,  so  he  started  work  on  

the  game’s  score  whilst  the  game  was  being  written.  Naughty  Dog  stated  they  were  going  for  “emotion  over  horror”.    For  the  infected,  voice  actors  were  hired  to  make  odd,  human-­‐like  sounds  and  screeches  for  the  infected,  they  decided  not  to  use  any  animal  sounds  and  didn’t  wan  the  infected  to  sound  “witch-­‐like”  or  like  normal  zombies  at  all.    Postmortem:    During  the  “crunch”  part  of  production  just  before  the  game  was  completely  finished,  it  was  described  as  “cleaning  a  room  the  day  before  a  guest  comes  to  stay”,  and  that  they’re  giving  “150%”  to  finish  the  game.  They’re  adding,  and  changing  stuff  right  up  until  the  game  ships.