Uncharted developer Naughty Dog’s next game The Last Of Us looks like an intriguing new direction. Check out the trailer and conjecture within…
Given just how well-received the Uncharted games have been, it’s unsurprising that Naughty Dog’s next, non-Nathan Drake related project would be so eagerly anticipated.
And with the studio’s penchant for bringing a cinematic sensibility to its videogames, that its newly announced game should have a big-budget blockbuster feel to it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, either.
What is a surprise, though, is that Naughty Dog should decide to draw on the imagery last seen in post-apocalyptic action flick, I Am Legend, as opposed to the Indiana Jones adventures of its previous games. What the trailer for PS3 exclusive The Last Of Us appears to point to is a survival horror adventure featuring lots of fast-moving, 28 Days Later-like mutants. It also appears to star Ellen Page.
The promo seems to hint at a more adult, gore-spattered direction for Naughty Dog and – though this is a bit of a stretch – perhaps a more open-world style of gameplay than we’re used to from the developer, too.
A quick look at the game’s website, which went live at around the same time as the game’s announcement at the Spike TV game awards, contains the promo we’ve included below, as well as a couple of odd teaser trailers – one featuring some live-action shots of riots and a male voice mumbling poetically about the smell of hotdogs clean consciences, the other full of close-ups of ants, of all things.
Could we be looking at a post-disaster future full of giant, humanoid ants, or at least some sort of epidemic carried by the little critters? That’s certainly the vibe we’re getting from what we’ve seen so far. At any rate, we hope that Naughty Dog aren’t about to unleash another zombie invasion on us – the sheer number of titles featuring the undead has reached saturation point of late.
When Uncharted 3 came out a few weeks ago, the general response to it was that, great though it was, it was sticking to a winning formula rather than trying something new. “It’d be exciting to see the developer come up with a new property that takes its talents in a different, unexpected direction” was how we put it back in November.
The Last Of Us looks like the work of a studio finally branching out in a different direction; the inter-character relationships appear to be present and correct – this time, it’s between a grizzled middle-aged man and a vulnerable young girl – but if the game is as open-ended and full-blooded as the trailer implies, then that really is new territory for Naughty Dog.
As yet, there’s little more to go on than a few video clips, images and conjecture – even its projected release date is currently unknown. Naughty Dog describe its game thus:
“Abandoned cities reclaimed by nature. A population decimated by a modern plague. Survivors are killing each other for food, weapons; whatever they can get their hands on. Joel, a brutal survivor, and Ellie, a brave young teenage girl who is wise beyond her years, must work together if they hope to survive their journey across the US.”
We do wonder whether the studio’s getting a little cheeky in its appropriation of celebrity likenesses in its videogames. Jason Statham and Helen Mirren were quite clearly used as the basis for two major characters in Uncharted 3, and to both model a character so closely on a well-known Hollywood actress, and even borrow her name (albeit in slightly modified form) seems to be taking the practice a little far.
On a somewhat related point, we wonder whether the resemblance between Nathan Drake and the rather older male character in The Last Of Us is the result of unimaginative character designers or a deliberate link. Some eagle eyed Internet dwellers have already noticed that Uncharted 3 contains newspapers carrying headlines about viruses. Could The Last Of Us’ Joel be some relation to Nathan Drake?
Whatever the specifics of Naughty Dog’s game prove to be, it’s got an entire back catalogue of acclaimed titles to live up to. But then again, whether The Last Of Us proves to be as popular as the Uncharted series or not, it’s still great to see the developer tackling what at least appears to be a different type of cinematic action game.
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