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How Naughty Dog aims to improve on a classic with The Last of Us Part I, now out – PlayStation.Blog

If you had the opportunity to improve what many consider perfect, how would you do it? That’s the question Naughty Dog faced when rebuilding the PlayStation 3 classic, The Last of Us. This prospect presented the famous developer with one of the most difficult challenges: the total combination of all the technical and creative innovations learned during their nearly 40-year development career. . With such great expectations in mind, Naughty Dog inside and out, the team set out to do what they do best: exceed expectations.

The different teams of the studio have detailed the changes you will experience in the game with extensive extensive developmentincluding combat animations, lighting, sounds, etc. But today, as the title launches worldwide, individuals from those groups reflect on how they chose to answer that question and that what it means to them personally as creators.

Guiding principles

“How do we take our favorite game we’ve ever made and rebuild it?” This is the question Creative Director and Writer Shaun Escayg and Naughty Dog’s team asked themselves. His personal philosophy has been a mainstay for developers from the start: “We build on it. We double down on areas that we think will enhance the experience or dive deeper into its storytelling, using all our abilities and skills and faithfully applying them to building this again. Just re-imagine everything, enhance every moment and sell it even more to players. That is our goal, our guiding light, and our challenge at the same time. “

This is the North Star Naughty Dog that follows as it rebuilds The Last of Us for a new generation of hardware. Each team involved in this rebuild has an enormous task on their shoulders and takes a different approach when it comes to answering that challenge.

Emphasize emotions through light

For Art Director Erick Pangilinan and the visuals department, it meant a journey back to 2013 and a thorough study of the original game.

“We tried to identify the most important scenes, storylines, and events in the game that we should focus on to ensure that it maximizes the impact on the game,” explains Pangilinan. “Prioritizing and figuring out how we can capture all these key moments is the first thing to do, to better analyze the original game and understand it better. That’s when you start to form how you can emphasize that. What are all the lessons we’ve learned from making The Last of Us Part II, and how can we apply that to something we did to ourselves ten years ago? “


“What are all the lessons we learned from making The Last of Us Part II, and how can we apply that to what we did to ourselves ten years ago?”

– Art Director Erick Pangilinan


Many members of the teams involved in the project share similar accounts of what their process means with countless side-by-side comparisons to keep the rebuild faithful to the original. Concept artist Sebastian Gromann discussed how the team’s challenge goes much deeper than just fitting in or trying to enhance an original image. It’s important to analyze cutscenes, find narrative rhythms, and understand what both lead to. This naturally leads to the question, “How can we use what we have learned for emphasis? [those moments]? “That means studying screenshots, figuring out the time of day in a scene, how light plays a part and part, and applying modernization techniques.

“If the shot is about tension in a very tense moment, then we can reduce the fill, increase the main light,” for example Gromann. “We can then change the sliders a bit to push that emotional response up a little more.”

Reshape iconic audio scenes for 3D sound

When it comes to audio, Sound Director Neil Uchitel breaks down the way pulling dialogue and the original sound from the original game gave the team a way to keep the familiar feel of The Last of Us world but elevate it. provide the audio experience for a modern console. This involves both innovative and new technological developments that, in some cases, go beyond what they achieved in The Last of Us Part II.

“We actually took a lot of the original sounds we had from The Last of Us, because a lot of that sound was so iconic and we didn’t want it. [fundamentally] change the experience,” said Uchitel. Retaining the actors’ original performances is key to capturing that familiar experience for fans old and new. However, Uchitel added that despite the “extremely limited” resources on the original PS3/PS4 version, working on the PS5 offers the opportunity to expand the sound. And they did, greatly expanding the environment on each level, using the infected murder from The Last of Us Part II, new recordings to upgrade the workbench, and a host of additions and improvements. another advance.

Because Naughty Dog’s previous audio engine is not compatible with the new, proprietary Playstation 5 audio features, such as a dedicated DSP chip and Tempest Engine audio processing algorithm, Uchitel explains, “The Our Audio programmers spent over a year refactoring our audio engine to be able to take advantage of those new features. [In addition] we changed the basic mixing and mastering process which gives the game much higher fidelity and clarity. ”

Set personal limits

Similar tool changes and revamps occurred throughout production, from art to animation and combat, but the team also had to learn restraint. Naughty Dog pushed ahead while making sure to set limits on this epic project.

“Moving to new hardware shouldn’t be a problem,” says Pangilinan. “I think it’s trying to make sure we understand or remember the artistic direction and purpose behind each scene in the original. Sometimes we forget, so we will change them, but then that will affect other scenes later. One big hurdle is making sure we don’t change so much that it affects the experience of what people already remember.”

“Yes, reworking is hard,” says Combat and Melee Designer Christian Wohlwend as he ponders this rebuild. “They are like an exercise in control and patience. It’s not as simple as completely remaking a game, and it’s easy to start overdoing it and start doing too much. At first, I felt we were going to have an easy time until I knew the bar was higher, and we felt we could carry on. But you have to keep yourself within certain limits mechanically. “


“Redoing is an exercise in control and patience… it’s easy to start going overboard and start doing too much.”

– Combat designer Christian Wohlwend


Returning to The Last of Us brings a lot of emotions to each person working on the game. Many members share a feeling of extreme pride and never doubt the high standards the group has set before.

Pangilinan explains how the original spurred him to increase the quality of his work and how he was delighted to get a second crack in it. Uchitel says how proud he is of the Naughty Dog Sound Team built over the years and how surprised he is at the level of skill they have achieved with the game. Cinema Animation Team Lead Eric Baldwin and Lead Programmer John Bellomy shared their and their team’s ambition to ensure the most important aspects and factors in rebuilding this caliber were met.

Game director Matthew Gallant powerfully summed up the studio’s sentiments about the project: “I came to The Last of Us originally as a new member of the team. I was a completely different person. At the time of this remake, I’m a dad and was playing through the game and saw Joel in action at the end. It gives me a different feeling than before. I’m glad that I can go through the game again, see things from a different angle and understand it from a different perspective, and I hope others can share that sentiment or find the right one. me after all these years have passed since then. “

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