The Last of Us 2‘s creative director Neil Druckmann has opened up about Naughty Dog’s anxieties regarding meeting players’ expectations, discussing how those working on the game are now looking for ways to expand the level of tension present in its PSX trailer across its runtime.
Druckmann appeared on the Game Maker’s Notebook podcast earlier this week to discuss the upcoming game, offering some insight into its creative process. With The Last of Us 2 still not having a concrete release date, Druckmann stated that it was still a “broken mess” in certain stages, and that Naughty Dog is working to replicate the quality of its second trailer across the full length of the game.
Discussing The Last of Us 2‘s PSX presentation, Druckmann said: “This and some other parts are like the most polished parts of the game because we knew we were going to show them, and now it’s like there’s a daunting task ahead of us.”
“We’ve got this sliver of five minutes, now how do you make that into tens of hours of experience to look and feel that visceral, that kind of intensity?”
When the host pointed out how Naughty Dog were faced with the difficult task of matching the game’s impressive trailers with a ‘Game of the Year’ title, Druckmann replied: “People don’t see that the rest of it – at different stages – is a broken mess.”
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But this isn’t the first time Naughty Dog has faced such an issue.”When we showed the Uncharted 2 demo with the collapsing building and we got the great reaction we did, we were then like ‘Oh my God, how are we going to make the rest of the game like this?'” Druckmann continued. “So at least from a fidelity standpoint, from a tone and from a tension standpoint, there’s many parts of the game in The Last of Us 2 that we want to feel like [the trailer].”
Judging from Druckmann’s comments, the scene in The Last of Us 2 was created specifically to be shown at PSX, indicating that it may not make it into the final game. It also sounds like The Last of Us 2 is still a while away from being released, making its tentative 2018 launch window seem somewhat optimistic.
