Naughty Dog’s action-adventure survival horror, The Last of Us went on to become the biggest video game launch of 2013, the fastest-selling PlayStation 3 game of 2013 at the time and more, but Naughty Dog wasn’t sure if this game would be a huge success during the development phase.

In the latest episode of Conversations With Creators, Naughty Dog guest starred and talked about the development process of The Last of Us.

Naughty Dog: We Thought The Last of Us Was Going To Tank 1

ND was asked if they anticipated The Last of Us’ huge success, Director Bruce Straley replied: “We thought it was going to tank.

We thought we were going to ruin the name and image [of Naughty Dog] that’s been so heartily built for years with blood, sweat, and tears. We thought we were ruining Naughty Dog’s image.”

Creative Director & writer, Neil Druckmann adds, “The joke we would say throughout production was that ‘This game is the downfall of Naughty Dog.'”

When quizzed about why they thought the game wouldn’t be a huge success, Lead designer, Anthony Newman explains that there were some issues with game mechanics.

“A big part of it was on the mechanical side; I thought, ‘We’ll be lucky to scrape by with an 85 Metacritic.’ Just because it wasn’t gelling.

It wasn’t coming together. So it was really a a set of really lucky breaks in terms of gameplay decisions we made that really made everything fall into place and turned it into a fun game.”

Naughty is currently finishing up Uncharted 4 and then will work on a sequel for the game, but Joel voice actor says that he knows nothing about The Last of Us 2.

The Last of Us was first released for PlayStation 3 in June 2013 and an updated version, The Last of Us Remastered was released for PlayStation 4 in July 2014.

As of August 2014, the game sold eight million copies (seven million on PS3 and one million on PS4).

 

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