Naughty Dog: 'Nobody' Made Games Like The Last of Us Before Us

Ever feel like every big game these days is a character-driven survival story? You can thank The Last of Us for that. But before Ellie and Joel hit the scene, Naughty Dog's own directors said "nobody" was making games like it.

Speaking to OPM back in 2012, before the original game launched, game director Bruce Straley explained how the studio landed on what would become its magnum opus. "It pretty much fell in our laps, that no one else is doing character-driven survival action games," he said. "That's really what it came down to. And we love that genre – we love playing it, we love watching it, we're influenced by it."

The goal back then? Find out "if we can do what we do with Uncharted with this other genre – nobody's doing that." Neil Druckmann, now studio head at Naughty Dog and previously writer and creative director on The Last of Us, added that "when you look at film, or comics, or any other medium that deals with this content, it's all about the characters. It's all about the pressures of the world forcing them to make really difficult decisions, and you learn something about who we are as human beings."

According to both devs, that was something games weren't really pushing at the time. Sure, Resident Evil had been around for ages before Ellie and Joel showed up, but Druckmann argued "no one [was] approaching it from the character side. It's all campy, over-the-top violence."

Whether you buy that Naughty Dog was doing something entirely new or not, one thing is undeniable: The Last of Us had a massive impact. It's definitely not an underused genre anymore. Just look at A Plague Tale and Dying Light series, plus Days Gone – all pay close attention to character within their apocalyptic worlds. Elsewhere, the new Tomb Raider trilogy, along with God of War and Ragnarok, borrow heavily from Naughty Dog's design. And ironically, the Resident Evil remakes seem to have learned some lessons from the games they originally inspired.

And Naughty Dog isn't done with The Last of Us yet. Neil Druckmann has confirmed the studio has "a couple projects in the works," even if the TV show is ending. So while the landscape has changed dramatically since 2012, the studio that started it all still has more stories to tell.

What do you think – did The Last of Us really change the game, or was it just the right game at the right time? Will you be picking up whatever Naughty Dog does next?