Head of Naughty Dog studios Neil Druckmann has made interesting revelations about The Last of Us and the studio at large. The revelation was made in a recent interview with the LA Times. In the Interview, Druckmann mentioned that The Last of Us was supposed to be a graphic novel but ended up becoming more.
Druckmann conceived the story of a man and girl crossing a post-apocalyptic landscape while in college. However, when he joined Naughty Dog, he was tasked with recreating Jak and Daxter into something more reality-based.
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However, they felt it wasn’t working because of the high demand for animation instead of authenticity. Frustrated about their lack of progress, Druckmann and his then-partner went to Naughty Dog’s head Evan Wells, and asked, “Do we need to do Jak and Daxter?” To their surprise, Wells said no.
That was when Druckmann thought of giving life to the idea living in his head since college. Druckmann’s idea of a hardened man and a young girl trying to create a father-daughter-like bond in a post-apocalyptic world changed Naughty Dog and the video game industry forever.
Druckmann showed that teenage girls can also be protagonists in a world dominated by male protagonists. Presenting America as “a place of both wonder and danger”, the launch of The Last of Us in 2013 also raised moral questions in interactive media.
Last year, The Last of Us was adapted into a series by HBO and turned out to be a hit. HBO had to renew it for a second season. In the interview, Druckmann who is now the studio head at Naughty Dog said the studio will not be The Last of Us studio forever.
“I promise you, we will not be ‘The Last of Us’ studio forever,” Druckmann said, adding that the studio is currently working on “multiple single-player projects”. Whatever the projects may be, they will also carry Druckmann’s ideology of deep characters and story.
“We create experiences that are steeped in story and character, especially relationships,” Druckmann said. “The stories have some sort of philosophical core that everything is going to revolve around and feed into.”
