The Last Of Us (by Naughty Dog) - June 14

[Smokey]

do ya really think it could look that good??

[AC!D]

When it comes to Naughty Dog expect the unexpected

[TEEDA]

The Last of Us, the new trailer is entirely in-game movie Word of Naughty Dog!

The new trailer released today by The Last of Us, was stunned by the extreme attention to detail and overall quality extremely high.

The first thing we thought was in the newsroom is that in computer graphics. For the avoidance of doubt, I personally contacted Eric Monacelli, community manager of Naughty Dog, saying on twitter that "the new movie theaters is very nice. I think is CG-executed engine, the details are too high for real- time on the PS3. "

The answer is rather: "is a movie entirely in-game!"

So the video was captured by the title running on PlayStation 3 and, as it did with Uncharted 3, the cut scenes are rendered with the game engine making the most of the computing power of the console, which can in these phases have the better hardware, not occupied by gameplay.

http://www.4news.it/11475-the-last-o...te-in-game.php

[GTAce]

In-engine is not in-game though. Difference shouldn't be too big anyway, so it's impressive.

[KRA]

you have to click viewthe full image to see the difference in the Ellie model.

IGN.The Last of Us Sure as Hell Isn't Uncharted
Cursing, terror and throat slashing sets Naughty Dog's latest apart.
by Greg Miller

It starts right after the ambush cutscene. In the smoking and totaled truck, Ellie tells Joel she's OK, and the passenger door flies open. A crazed attacker is on the young girl -- groping, grabbing and pulling. Ellie's clawing and screaming, Joel reaches for her, and another attacker throws open the driver's door and yanks Joel out. They tussle through a pane of glass, and the attacker holds Joel's head above a triangular piece of shattered weaponry.


The camera's tight here -- anchored with Joel's struggling head on the left side of the screen -- when the Square button pops up on the right. It's a patented struggle scene from developer Naughty Dog; the kind of stuff we've seen in so many Uncharted games before. The player taps the button over and over and Joel (the character we play as) raises his head. He's going to get out of it and save the day like Nathan Drake.

But in the final moment of the fight, Joel struggles to look over his right shoulder at the attacker, and there's this rage and desperation in his eye -- the vein's visible, his teeth are gritted. Joel breaks free, grabs the attacker's head and slams it into the triangle of glass. It enters at about the the Adam's apple, and the attacker rolls off the glass with a sickening wheeze and clutches the gaping, bloody hole in his throat. He collapses.

The Last of Us isn't Uncharted -- no matter how similar the button prompts look in this early build. And that's the thing: with a passing glance, you could make the case that this does look like Uncharted. Both are beautiful third-person action titles, the ammo icons are similar, and there's a moment where Joel lifts a gate for Ellie that seems pulled from Uncharted 3. But watching the game, that's where the argument falls apart.

After the impromptu tracheotomy, Joel shoots some bad guys from cover, slams one guy's face into the store counter, gets a 2x4 and gruesomely caves in another foe's skull. All this happens over time, of course. Joel moves from cover to cover and blows through his limited ammo in a flash. Throughout it all, there's blood and curses words.

The action is moving with the same fluidity of Uncharted and the polish Naughty Dog is known for, but it's devoid of the happy action. Joel and Ellie spend the next few minutes of the level sneaking around and stealth killing enemies, but there's no humor to it.


When Nathan Drake gets the drop on a pirate, he snaps the foe's neck in one cheery move -- usually with a one-liner tossed in. When Joel puts an unsuspecting attacker in a sleeper hold, the camera comes in tight, and they struggle. The man swings wildly at Joel, and Joel leans in to slowly suffocate the enemy. It's not quick. It's deliberate, upsetting.

That's what Naughty Dog said it's going for with The Last of Us. The team wants us to share the emotions of Joel and Ellie, and from the brief demo I saw -- filled with scavenging for bullets, a segmented health bar, and other humans being a larger threat than any monster -- it's working in a way Uncharted never did.

theverge.'The Last of Us' is a dark, grimy step for Uncharted devs
By Russ Frushtick

The Last of Us may be a third-person adventure game from the people that brought us Uncharted. But this is not Uncharted. It's something much darker.

At a press event in Santa Monica, Naughty Dog showed off about 10 minutes of gameplay from The Last of Us. The demo began with a drive through a post-apocalyptic city. Joel and Ellie are two survivors, just trying to stay alive in an America that seems to have been mostly wiped of life. Joel is about 40 years old, gruff, bearded. He's got a southern accent and not much of a sense of humor — a far cry from Nathan Drake. Ellie, on the other hand, is younger, with a slightly brighter take on the world. At least as bright as one could manage in a world like this.

The pair traverse a city's highway in a truck, weaving through abandoned cars. At a certain point the freeway becomes too blocked and they're forced to leave the freeway via an offramp, driving into narrow streets beneath an elevated subway line. It's far from safe.

They drive up to a man, staggering in the street. Joel's not stopping.

"What about the man?" asks Ellie.

"He ain't even hurt," says Joel.

Joel's right. Their truck is quickly surrounded by raiders. Not the wasteland-type raiders. These raiders look like they're just a few years removed from the apocalypse. They look like survivors from the world of The Walking Dead. Realistic.

Joel and Ellie's truck speeds through narrow alleyways, trying to get away. But they don't get far. A bus crashes into the side of them, shoving them into a nearby storefront. From there it's a fight for survival.

The gameplay in The Last of Us appears similar to Uncharted in that it's third-person and cover-centric. As Joel and Ellie hide out in the store, raiders stream in, attempting to flank them. They shout instructions to one another as Joel takes pot shots with the limited ammo he has in his handgun. He quickly runs out of bullets as one of the raiders charges. Ellie hurls a brick at the charging raider, but there are more still coming.

Joel opts for a two-by-four, brutally bashing the face of another raider while calling for Ellie's help. The snide remarks of an Uncharted game are replaced by heavy breathing and a pervasive sense of dread. Joel and Ellie are vastly outnumbered and there's no rocket launcher in sight. Stealth and well-timed melee attacks are the only way for them to get the upper hand, and slowly they whittle the raiders down to a final one. The hunt for him is tense, searching every aisle in the storefront as cans rattle mysteriously behind Joel. It ends with the raider taking a shot, charging at Joel, leaving him with no choice but to use his final round for a deadly headshot. The raider goes down. A brief time for rest.

The Uncharted games are about recreating the feel of Indiana Jones. They're fun, silly romps where a dozen enemies can be quickly dispatched. The Last of Us is not that. In Joel and Ellie's world, where guns and ammo are extremely rare commodities, a face-off against three enemies can prove deadly.

With the raiders dispatched, Ellie and Joel explore the area on foot. There's a predictable grit to the world. Unlike the postcard-worthy vistas of Uncharted, The Last of Us seems to be all about recreations of what cities and towns would look like after an apocalypse. Once again, the look of The Walking Dead springs to mind. It's all very grounded. Believable. Which makes it all the more terrifying.

As they delve into a nearby building, Ellie asks Joel how he knew the man in the street was faking. "I've been on both sides," says Joel. He's clearly not a hero — why is he defending Ellie in the first place?

The demo ends as the pair approaches a military base. It's surrounded by rusted out cars filled with corpses. They died while waiting for their own salvation behind fortified walls. Joel and Ellie are looking for just that, but when they approach, crows stream out of the base's front gates. They hide behind a burnt-out truck just in time. Three men appear at the gates, standing atop a bus. Friends or foes? In this world, there's really no way to know. The demo fades to black.

The outlandish, comical world of Uncharted has garnered plenty of fans. But with The Last of Us, Naughty Dog is trying something else. Gone is the bravado and bombast of treasure hunting — when it comes to surviving the apocalypse, you really can't afford to be that loud.

[Bliss]

Can't wait !

[AC!D]

It sounds like Enslaved and Condemned rolled up into one. Should be great.

[KRA]

We kick off with a late-breaking interview featuring Neil Druckmann and Bruce Straley from Naughty Dog, the creative director and game director of upcoming PS3 survival epic The Last of Us. If you’ve wondered how the game will play compared to UNCHARTED, or how Naughty Dog is handling the game’s decidedly mature themes, today’s shows will provide the answers you need.

it's a description of playstation blogcast
i haven't heard it yet so i don't know if there is really something new/interesting.

IGN.The Last of Us Live Action Reenactment

IGN.The Last of Us: New Trailer, New Ellie
Joel, Ellie and a whole lot of despair.
by Greg Miller

Sure, there's been the occasional quote here and there, but developer Naughty Dog has been really quiet about The Last of Us, its first non-Uncharted PlayStation 3 game. Months ago, we met survivors Joel and Ellie as they battled infected humans turned monsters, but then, the game went dark. Today, Naughty Dog is ready to reveal a new cutscene from the game and answer some questions -- like why the studio already tweaked Ellie's design.


IGN: So, I hear you've changed Ellie. How? I'm watching this trailer and I don't notice any "Cole"-like V-necks or anything. Why'd you change her?

Neil Druckmann (Creative Director): When we came up with the character of Ellie we put a lot of thought into what we wanted her to look like, researching the facial proportions, coloring and bone structures of dozens of faces and bodies. In addition to this, we held numerous casting sessions to ensure we had the right performance capture artist to represent Ellie, eventually selecting actress Ashley Johnson. As we’re still in the midst of development with The Last of Us, the team has been continuing to put a lot of thought into the creation of Ellie. After delving further into the game’s narrative over the past few months, we decided to modify Ellie’s model to better reflect Ashley’s personality, and also resemble a slightly younger teen more fitting to the story. We're happy with the final result shown in the cinematic we have released today, and hope the fans like her too.

IGN: What has it been like at Naughty Dog since the VGA announcement?

Bruce Straley (Game Director): It’s been a flurry of activity. We’ve been hard at work on The Last of Us for quite some time, but the VGA announcement really lit a fire under our asses. It signaled to the whole team that this is real now that everyone knows about the game, now let’s go finish it!

IGN: It can be hard to get people behind a new game, but everyone seems to have taken to The Last of Us. Were you expecting that? Were you expecting the Naughty Dog name to mean so much to people?

Bruce Straley: From the beginning we were trying to do something different, a darker look at the world, but with the depth of character and performance that Naughty Dog has been known for. Somehow we managed to take everyone by surprise by revealing that Naughty Dog has a new game in the works.

We knew people would be stoked once they found out Naughty Dog was developing the game, but we never expected the kind of reaction we felt first hand at the VGAs. It’s humbling and stressful as now we have to live up to our fan’s expectations.

IGN: Now that Game Informer and other sites have peeled back some of the layers to The Last of Us, how do you describe this title to people who don't know about it? What exactly is going on in this world?

Bruce Straley: It’s a game about the human condition. 20 years after a plague has decimated our society, how does man survive? When all moral and ethical codes have been stripped, who do you trust? After watching your friends and loved ones pass, do you think you could still love? What is life without hope? We’re trying to make you feel these dilemmas while you’re playing The Last of Us.

IGN: Who is Joel and who is Ellie?

Neil Druckmann: Joel is a brutal survivor of the world you see in The Last of Us. He’s seen what life was like before the pandemic. He’s had to do some horrible things to survive, and he has few moral lines left to cross. Ellie has only known life inside the military quarantine zone. Much of her knowledge of the world as it was comes from pop culture items like comic books and magazines —relics left over from “the old world.” She’s a young teenage girl that’s wiser and braver beyond her years. She’s been toughened by the harsh realities of her environment.

IGN: What's left of the world right now in the wake of this virus? Joel and Ellie have escaped a quarantine zone, but how safe is even that place?

Neil Druckmann: Civilization as we know it in present day has been radically changed after the pandemic. The human population has been decimated and most cities have been abandoned, left to be reclaimed by nature. Now city streets are flooded and covered in moss, vines, and newly grown trees. Quarantine zones were set up by the military as outposts for survivors – a way to escape the ever-growing numbers of infected. Martial law, however, presents its own set of dangers. Citizens are constantly monitored, supplies are scarce, and anyone caught breaking the law is executed. In the world of The Last of Us, safety is a relative term.

IGN: How are people able to survive outside of these safe zones?

Neil Druckmann: Those on the outside must be especially tough to deal with the constant threat of the infected. During their journey Joel and Ellie will meet several factions of survivors that manage to live outside of the Quarantine Zones through different means.

IGN: Why release this cutscene -- Joel and Ellie taking on some drifters? What about it makes it your showcase?

Neil Druckmann: We wanted to whet people’s appetite before E3. This trailer is a nice little teaser that shows a good look into the world of The Last of Us. It also hints at the layers in Joel and Ellie’s relationship and frames their different perspectives on this world.

IGN: What is the status of the rest of the world? Has any country or significant enclave avoided infection, or is this a worldwide pandemic?

Neil Druckmann: Communication and fast modes of transportation (like flying) quickly disappeared once the outbreak occurred. 20 years later, everyone that is still alive in the U.S. assumes that the rest of the world is in shambles.

IGN: How slow was the infection to drive humanity back to these hideouts? Did it all happen in a flash or was it a gradual process? How much of this history is in the game?

Neil Druckmann: The Infection was quick in driving mass migrations towards Quarantine Zones. While some made it, many failed in their escape. Much of that backstory will be left for the player to piece together between the environmental storytelling and conversations between the characters.

IGN: What is the status of the United States government? Are the enclaves independent, or are they taking orders from a centralized organization?

Neil Druckmann: The Quarantine Zones used to be under the centralized control of the military. Over the years most of the Quarantine Zones collapsed leaving many survivors to fend for their own. At the outset of the story Joel and Ellie are in one of the last remaining Quarantine Zones. While it’s still run by the military – this Quarantine Zone has no contact with any of the other Zones.

IGN: What are the major economic focuses of the enclaves? How do they survive?

Neil Druckmann: Each enclave has their own way of procuring food and supplies for survival. So far we’ve talked about the military quarantine zone that forces its citizens into hard labor, producing goods. With this cutscene, we’re revealing a second enclave of hunters – survivors who ambush and kill others for their precious belongings. Joel and Ellie will encounter these and other enclaves and bear witness to their methods of survival.

IGN: How's making The Last of Us different from making Uncharted? You can't really go on location for these environments...

Bruce Straley: Actually, you can. We had a rainy day field trip to a hospital that was being torn down. The whole bottom floor was flooded and the power was out. It was so creepy! But yeah, there’s a wealth of stuff out there – just do a quick search on the Internet – where abandoned buildings and ruins have been slowly retaken by nature. It’s been well documented by photographers with an interest in this kind of locale, and there’s a whole genre of photography dedicated to this. It’s really beautiful stuff. The funny thing is, anybody that’s had to deal with a leaky roof has good reference for The Last of Us.

IGN: Why didn't you make this a co-op game? You have two main characters.

Bruce Straley: Well, to put it simply, it’s just not the type of game we Dogs are choosing to make right now. We’re interested in telling a very tight, well-constructed, narrative-driven gaming experience that (if we do our jobs right) successfully parallels the player’s feelings with our main protagonist. And in co-op it’s very difficult to align both of the players’ intentions with the narrative, or even the gameplay goals. A lot of this has to do with play styles of each individual. Not everyone wants to play the game the same way, and this breaks the other person’s experience. It’s certainly an interesting challenge, but for now we’ve chosen a hard enough path just making the single-player game.

IGN: Uncharted's combat is all about wasting bullets and then just finding more. If we're scavenging in this apocalypse, is that style of fighting out the window?

Bruce Straley: Not completely, but it will have a much different feel, and greater consequence if you choose to play that way. The Last of Us takes place in a much darker, more brutal world. There has to be realistic tension between the characters, and a sense of danger and consequence when you are in combat. Civilization and the production of goods as we know it have ceased, and many things are in short supply – especially expendables like bullets, or first aid supplies. Because of this, you’re going to have to make judgment calls on when to use and when to conserve your supplies. But there still will be avenues the more action-oriented player can take to make their way through the game. That creates very different combat scenarios from most shooters out today.

IGN: What can people expect from The Last of Us at E3?

Bruce Straley: Our team has been working hard to have something ready at E3 that will please our fans. We’d love to say more, but we don’t want to spoil anything.

and

Kotaku.I Just Saw The Last of Us in Action, and It Looks Amazing

I just watched two people from Naughty Dog play The Last of Us in Santa Monica. It was the best demo for a game I've seen since Assassin's Creed III a few months ago.

Here's what happened.
What played out was similar to the trailer that Sony just shared—Joel and Ellie, the series' two protagonists drove down a road in a pickup truck. Simple, right? Well, first, of all, beautiful. The post-apocalypse in Naughty Dog's game is a gorgeous wreck, a city drained of electricity and overgrown with foliage.

Their drive quickly turned into an encounter with a man-he looked like a hobo— who threw a brick at their windshield. They crashed in a convenience store. More angry men showed, up, dragging Ellie kicking from the truck, the other smashing Joel through the glass of a meat freezer and trying to spike his throat on a shard of glass. Some of that was cutscene, but a rapid tap of the x button kept Joel from getting skewered.

This is a third-person game, but not one that presents the characters as overpowering heroes. They're not expert fighters, nor even are they at Nathan Drake's level. It all looks like scary survival. But not darkness, monsters, shadows and nighttime skulking—the scene we see is sunsplashed, but we're in a city with the power turned off and the survivors all out to kill us (presumably some may be possessed by a fungus, such is the back-story of the game).

In the convenience store, Joel shoots a revolver at the many men coming after them. Enemies called out positions. Ellie cursed back at them. This girl is calling the enemy "fuck face" and throwing a brick at him. Thanks, teenage girl!

The action in the game is brutal. The enemies seem to be regular people, but they speak from the throat, all death threats and growls. They patrol the streets with guns, two at a time. Joel tosses a brick at one of them and then runs up and whacks him to death with a stick.

It's all cat and mouse. Our heroes hide in alleys. They hear enemies calling out positions. Joel finds himself back in the convenience store, trying to figure out where his enemies went. He mutters to himself, about the "pansy-ass piece of shit" he's tracking. The enemy, just a guy in a leather jacket and pants, rushes him with a 2x4. Joel shoots him.

Ellie and Joel walk around for a bit. Every building in this city is wrecked: toppled filing cabinets in the stairwell of one building, cracked mirrors and overturned mattresses in some form. As they walk around, scrounging, searching, Joel and Ellie talk to each other. He's quiet, a bit weary. She's curious but not that chatty either.

She's impressed with his fighting prowess. He says it's because he's been on both sides of these kinds of survival ambushes.

"So, you killed a lot of people?" Ellie asks him.

He brushes her off.

"I'll take that as a yes," she replies.

It's clear they don't know each other well and would not have been friends in a pre-apocalyptic world.

They reach an overlook and see a distant bridge. Joel knows where to go. They find a schoolbus full of corpses and a yard full of cars, all of their windows punched out. They find some bodies that are strangely whitened. That may be the signs of the fungus.

Ellie notes how horrible things are, but how pretty it all is too. She's right.

Joel has them walk further, but crows stir and Joel whispers for them to duck. More hobo-looking guys-hunters-show up. A few guitar notes play.

That's it.

It all looked lovely and managed to be gentle and brutal at the same time.

It helps, I think, that the music never soared. It didn't sound like a video game. It was mostly quiet, though an old rock tune played during the opening fight after the crash.

Bruce Straley, the game's director, said that Naughty Dog wants players to feel the same emotions that Ellie and Joel feel as they try to survive in this strange post-apocalypse in the game. He talked about the game as a quest for survival, one that is inflected by a balance of power that causes enemies to adapt to Ellie and Joel's choices of weapons and tactics. Everyone is trying to live, he said.

That's it. I should say that I wasn't too sure the first time I saw Uncharted . I wasn't sold. This, however, was gorgeous. Naughty Dog is making something special.

We'll have more on The Last of Us at E3.

[Bliss]

In-engine is not in-game though. Difference shouldn't be too big anyway, so it's impressive.

Well, same as in U3, nothing new; in-game cut-scene and game-play, graphics are similar, very similar, apart from facial details, hands details, etc, at close shots.

We will be blown away, again. ND have a secret, but now it's not anymore a secret, I discovered...

[solidsnakejej]

Game of show along with Watch Dogs




Kojima seem to like it

As being a creator, after watching "The Last Of Us" game demo, I felt happy beyond jealousy. It has given me another motivation for game creation. Thank you!

[AC!D]

Brilliant!!!

[solidsnakejej]

[masteratt]

I love how the blood runs down his nose.

---------- Post added at 04:46 AM ---------- Previous post was at 04:45 AM ----------

And the AI seemed brilliant. I wonder if she would have interfered if you didn't run out of ammo.

[AC!D]

Im amazed they pulled off the gameplay. What they aimed to achieve was not easy and i dont know what you guys think but for me they pulled it off. Thats some special AI and animation going on there.

---------- Post added at 05:55 AM ---------- Previous post was at 05:52 AM ----------

@masteratt Im guessing if there was more than one enemy left she wouldnt have done a thing.

[Coded-Dude]

it was more than likely a single scripted scene no matter which way he went(but he knew which route to take), but yes they pulled it off well. Regardless, this game simply continues to amaze me. It will be interesting to see how that all transposes to the full game. especially with Move.....(I know, I said it.).

[julps31]

I imagine they used the same graphics engine they built for Uncharted because it resembles it somewhat. Regardless it looks sick. Love the premise and gameplay.

[Luis]

I would be looking forward to it if it had a release date :-|

[Segitz]

Who needs Resident Evil now... this is "real" survival horror.

[Diresu]

Who needs Resident Evil now... this is "real" survival horror.

Or at least survival.

[Segitz]

This game will have many horror elements, I am sure.