- Director Bruce Straley on online: “We’re going to have some sort of online component. We’re working on a bunch of ideas, but we haven’t nailed anything down. We definitely know it’s going to be awesome.”
- Once Uncharted 2 was done, there were major changes at Naughty Dog
- Naughty Dog was receiving a lot of requests to license the Uncharted engine from internal/external studios
- Naughty Dog co-president Evan Wells: “[The engine] just isn’t set up to be able to be worked on outside of our office. So really the only way to leverage that would be to get a second team going.”
- One reason for Naughty Dog’s expansion was that they had a ton of talent and Evan Wells didn’t want to lose anyone
- Wells: “So many people here at Naughty Dog who are environment modelers or designers or animators could be leads or directors at any other company. They’re just really masters of their craft and doing a great job here, so we wanted to give them an opportunity to grow.”
- Two different teams made so the creators could focus completely on one project rather than bouncing back and forth
- New team decided to make a new IP that allowed them to make what they wanted
- The team looked at their favorite films like Road to Perdition and True Grit
- Combat is inspired by Anton Chigurh’s intense gun battle with Llewelyn Moss (No Country for Old Men)
- Movie had little music and sometimes no dialogue for long stretches of time
- Movie uses ambient noise, like exhausted breathing and booming guns
- The team is going for as much tension as possible in place of a non-stop action thrill ride
- Since there are limited resources, Joel won’t be running around blasting a machine gun
- One bullet can kill in this world
- This lethality affects enemy decisions
- When Joel pulls out a gun and kills an enemy, the others will hide or try to flank his position
- Enemies will come right at Joel is they notice he only has a melee weapon
- Naughty Dog calls the AI system “Balance of Power”
- This system always adapts and dynamically changes as enemies and Joel trade off the upper hand
- The team is adding emotion and personality to the enemies alongside the advanced AI
- Enemies get angry when a friend dies, they warn each other of danger, and they’re scared when they’ve lost the upper hand
- Can’t just hide and wait for your health to recharge
- Since there is persistent health, you’ll have to use a health pack to repair damage and budget enough time to apply it
- Control Joel
- Ellie is an AI-driven non-playable character
- Naughty Dog has decided against co-op play
- Ellie will be very capable and won’t get in your way
- “We know if the entire thing is an escort mission you’re gonna hate it. The easy thing for us to do is every time there is combat she just hides somewhere and then she comes out at the end. We gave ourselves the insane challenge of, ‘How do we make her a part of the combat space?’”
- Game Informer says Ellie does a great job of tagging along in the demo, staying out of sight, warning Joel of danger, and getting him out of jams
- Players won’t have to worry on blaming a game over on Ellie as long as they don’t purposely lure enemies to her position or completely ignore when she’s obviously in trouble
- Platforming and puzzle solving were minimally present in the demo
- It will be important to figure out how to navigate spatial problems with unique Ellie and Joel abilities
- Each can do things the other can’t, and they must work together to move forward
- Game Informer also didn’t see the spore-infected humans like those in the debut trailer
- Focusing on the human antagonists currently since they’re the focus of the game
- There will be more encounters with humans than the infected
- Different human factions all have different goals
- Some factions will help you along the way if it benefits them somehow
- Joel/Ellie are part of a larger cast of characters full of allies and enemies that will come in and out of their adventure as they pass through cities, suburbs, and rural areas
- Game begins as Joel and Ellie meet in Boston 20 years after the fungal outbreak
- Ellie is an orphan, so she hasn’t seen the old world or anything outside the walls of the oppressive military quarantine zone she grew up in
- Ellie is obsessed with relics from our culture such as music and books
- She always gets in trouble at her boarding house
- Joel is in his late forties, has been through a lot of heavy stuff to survive
- Joel runs drugs and weapons through the quarantine zone’s black market
- The bleak locale is littered with checkpoints and constant body scans for traces of the infection
- You’re executed immediately if you come up positive
- Spores can be transmitted through the air, though it needs to be a concentrated and confined space to truly spread
- Joel is recruited to sneak Ellie out of the quarantine zone
- The reason for this is unknown
- Joel agrees, but things go horribly wrong and they are pursued by the military
- Joel thinks about leaving Ellie, but he promised a dying friend that he’d escort her to safety
- Both of them go west on a journey across the U.S. when a nearby safe haven doesn’t work out
