More ‘The Last of Us’ Details Revealed

Coming from NeoGAF, new details were released yesterday about Naughty Dog’s hotly anticipated title, The Last of Us.  After reading through the latest Game Informer magazine, user Nirolak posted details about The Last of Us, giving insight into the games’ plot, structure, characters, gameplay, and multiplayer, among other things.  Here are some of the more interesting details:

-Releasing in “Late 2012″.  This date is listed by Game Informer at the start of the article.

-The main campaign is singleplayer.

-There will be multiplayer: With all of these human factions scavenging through the cities, it’s not that hard to imagine what online multiplayer could look like in The Last of Us. Though Naughty Dog isn’t prepared to discuss specifics, game director Bruce Straley at least admits it exists. “We’re going to have some sort of online component,” he says. “we’re working on a bunch of ideas, but we haven’t nailed anything down. We definitely know it’s going to be awesome.”

-There will be platforming and puzzle solving in the final game. These were not seen in the demo, but will involve the dynamic of having two characters. However, these events will be grounded in reality, so you won’t get wild jumping actions like Nathan Drake does.

-The game’s plot is self contained, so were this game to bomb and the franchise die, you won’t have to worry about a cliff hanger ending. They didn’t directly rule out sequels though, but just said that they think about one game at a time. However, earlier in the article, they refer to this as a “new IP that we’re definitelyl going to be supporting”.

-They assert that once again the game is about the characters and their relationship, not the whole infected thing, which is why they showed the infected up front.

-The look of the game was inspired by “Ruin Porn”, which is a branch of photography where people take pictures of ruins that have been overgrown by nature.

-The AI and game dynamic is explained a bit more. They want it to be like No Country For Old Men, so a single bullet will kill, but you have very few bullets to give it a “realistic” feel to the setting. The AI also uses a “balance of power” system, where they will stay in cover and try to flank you if you have a gun, but if they see you only have a melee weapon, they will rush you and try to overwhelm you with numbers. They also react based on other events that are happening. They get angry when their friends die, they warn each other when in danger, and they get frightened when they’ve lost the upper hand. Also, during combat you can do things like hitting people with a heavy object such as a thrown brick, which will stun them for a bit and let you get some melee hits in with something like a wood plank. This can also happen between the two characters, with Ellie throwing the brick to let Joel move in with the plank

So far, The Last of Us looks like it’s shaping up to be one of the this years best titles.  That is, of course, if it’s actually released this year.  I have a feeling that it might get pushed to Q1 of 2013, but we’ll just have to wait and see.  Once again, if you’d like to see the all of the details that were posted, they can be found here.