The Last of Us: Development Pipeline

DEVELOPMENT PIPELINE
Ideation
Ideation as a term, is a combination of the words,
“idea” and “creation”. Its definition is quite literally the
meaning of the two together, creating ideas. It
involves developing the story of the game and
merging that with possible mechanics and gameplay.
It can be a very iterative process and can change drastically over time. One of the first
struggles for Naughty Dog was making world realistic and believable, where nothing could be
seen as a monster. They thought initially of an infection that just kills people, and the story
would be about how humans deal with a post apocalyptic society and how different people
survive. They then realised that because they are making an action game, a lot of the
storytelling happens on the joystick (through
gameplay), and once the infected were taken out,
the story could not be told through gameplay of
what happened to their world. They then brought
the infected back in, so when you are fighting the
infected you can see the threat that the people in
this world had to deal with and experience it
yourself. An early inception came from a BBC
Planet Earth documentary on Cordyceps fungi in ants and
insects, where a fungi infects the insect and takes over their
brain. They asked themselves what if it jumped to humans?
How would people in this world react? What would happen to
their society? In terms of appearance they tried out really
alienated, sub-human and zombie like concepts but they
needed something more original and believable. One artist
made a photo mash up using images of real life diseases and
fungal overgrowth to create a new type of infected. He used the fungi as focal point for the
infected and could be distinguished from a distance with pretty saturated colours found in
other fungi. Elements of it are beautiful, eerily human but very disturbing. “To us it’s scarier
when things on it are somewhat benign or beautiful”.

The character artist then created a full biological cycle of the infected to show the different
stages of the infection and how it gets worse. They discussed how the infected would move
about once the infection split the face in two, rendering the eyes useless and decided there
would be a ‘clicking phase’ where they would use echolocation to navigate with an eery
clicking sound. The last stage of infection is called ‘Bloater’, the body is almost fully replaced
with fungal plates and completely takes over the body, and blooms. The body is covered in
things that have been growing on them. When the infected feels it is going to die it will find a
quiet dark corner and becomes part of the environment, the body is consumed/disappears
and the fungi sprouts and spews spores to spread the infection. These stages are linked to
the real life fungal infection, so the player can believe that this could happen with the science
behind it, and they can then get more into the game. The world is seen as its own character in
The Last of Us. They took inspiration from a book called ‘The World Without Us’ which
describes in detail how much fighting humans have to do to keep nature back on a daily
basis, and when you stop fighting it, how quickly nature can come back. Naughty Dog also
used previous research on how temples were ruined from the Uncharted series and put some
of those ideas in american cities. They experimented with lots of concept art to show how the
city has changed and how nature has taken over. They also use real life scenarios such as
trees radiating, so the base of a tree isn’t covered in snow, which makes the environment
more believable and immersive.
Production – Programming/Gameplay
Naughty Dog mainly thought what they could “enable
players to do on the joystick to get them to feel the
same emotions that characters feel in the game”.
They need a contrast between the “negative space”
and the “high tension spites”. Neil Druckmann
emphasised how they couldn’t underplay the
violence in the game as the threat needed to
seem real. They tried really hard to add impact
to attacks and for the player to gain a certain
feeling after unleashing an attack by adding
certain camera angles to violent encounters
and cutscenes of sorts, with one touch attacks
such as triangle to grab an enemy. He also said how important it was for Naughty Dog to
reach a ‘middle ground’, where the gameplay actions and violence were not subtle and not

too over the top and cartoon like but had enough impact to be somewhat disturbing. Game
designer Anthony Newman tested the different fighting moves in a unique test level to ensure
that they flow effectively. This involved him counting out and selecting minute frames in order
to modify certain combat actions.
The game designers use special software that layers out the SPUs, the GPUs and the PPUs
altogether, calculating how many seconds each one is using within their cycle. Benson
Russell, a game designer, said that many of
the programmers got frustrated about how
many seconds certain layers were using.
Peter Field, a Naughty Dog game designer,
worked with the background artists to ensure
that the player was getting the most from the
unique scenery of the game and experience.
For example, on one level/point, Joel would enter a location, an abandoned bus station and
former quarantine zone, through an opening that approached the bus station flat on and
enabled it to be right in the player’s proverbial vision. However, by letting Joel enter the
location here, the player would not be able to see the detailed bus sign and it’s attractive
architectural design. In order for the player to see this, Peter moved Joel’s spawning point a
little further back and to the left, so that the player would still know where the bus station was
but would be able to notice more aspects of the environment’s design. Also, Field stated that
the new spawning point enabled the view to become “less symmetrical” and therefore more
effective.
It was important that the team animated the characters with some, not necessarily
exaggerated actions, but with some clear mouth and hand/arm movements whilst they were
talking, so that the players could tell clearly when they were engaged in conversation.
These animations also played a big part throughout the game in the sense that at the
beginning of the game, Ellie is shown to be nervous around Joel, seen in her overall stance
and holds her arm. Later on, as she becomes more comfortable around him, you can see the
difference not only in the dialogue but in the way she uses gestures and her open stance.
Production - Acting/Mo Cap

Once the parts have been cast the actors are not only supplying their voice but their bodies
as well. The actors will act out the scenes using motion capture technology to get the dialog
but the basic body movement and the natural fluidity of a real human. By all the actors playing
out the scene together and with the director they can improvise or come up with new ideas.
Due to this, the acting can also influence the story, changes can be made if the script sounds
good on paper, but when acted out, may not completely work. Once the shoot is done the
scene is passed to animation. Real life motion doesn’t always translate into the gameplay so
a team of animators will make adjustments as well as frame the scene for the game. One
example of what the animation team do is the facial expressions as there is no facial capture
recorded. Animators must go through the video recording and hand key each frame of
movement on the faces of the characters. In post production animators can also edit and
swap dialogue if that is needed, without the use of the actor due to the flexible cameras and
technology they use.
Ashley Johnson, who voices Ellie, claimed that her character and herself shared many
similarities, the only major difference being age. Troy Baker learnt early on that Joel was
described to have few moral lines left and this, Troy said, acted as an “anchor point” for his
character. Neil Druckmann thought Troy Baker was perfect for Joel’s role as he could hear
the “gritt in his voice” and his movements “fit right into it”.
The cameraman had a pretty relaxed job on this one. The team kept in the missed focus hits
and late movements of the cameraman with the characters to add an rugged, edgy feel to the
game’s coverage.
Production: Sound/Music and Lighting
An interesting part of the development of The Last of Us
was that composer, Gustavo Santaolalla, entered the project
very early on to get the feel of it. As the story was still being
written as the music was being recorded, the writers could
really get a feel of where the story was going due to the
music. Basically, the music was inspiring the story to an
extent. With the infected already drawn out and designed,
the sound artists just had to give them a noise. At first they
struggled. There was no obvious sound that they’d make.
They decided to hire some voice actors who had done some interesting past work and hand it
over to them. They produced some interesting screams. They wanted a fuller sound so the

sound designers began to use other sources to combine with the screams. They tapped on
the keyboard in front of them, making a clicking sound and combined it with the scream to
form the clicker’s sound. One of them also owned a suitcase synth that proved very effective,
providing alarm sounds as well as a convincing wind noise.
The User Interface system was changed many times, notably because to many menus were
present for if a character simply wanted to access their inventory. UI designer Alexandria
Neonakis’ plan for a well developed UI that was integrated into gameplay when she was
flagged up on this and therefore took a few menus out and made the whole system a lot more
simple. She realised that if your inventory is so hard to function that you need a tutorial to do
so, it’s too hard. Everything in The Last of Us is naturally lit as there are no man made light
sources available in the post apocalyptic environment. An effective element of the lighting
process was the addition of self shadows projecting on the wall off the characters depending
on the light source. Vivian Ding, the lead light artist claimed that this made the game scarier
with the feeling of you being alone with your shadow in the dark rubbing off on you.
Post production
Post production involves crunching down in order to finish the game in time for the deadline,
which is the game being shipped off to a press demo. The developers state that the game is
never really finished, more work can always be done, except they have to meet the deadline.
So the post productions shows that every part of the team is working to refine and polish the
game to the best of their abilities in a short space of time. The refinement begins when the
game is sent off to QA (Quality Assurance), a team of people who rigorously play the game in
order to check its functionality and if there are no bugs. One example of this would be the
clunky UI (User Interface) which in theory worked well, but when played in the game was
frustrating and slow.
Anthony Newman declared that his “favourite video game is making video games” as it is “as
challenging
and as
stressful”.
Everyone is
said to be
“giving it
150%” in
terms of

effort and the whole team work on altering, modifying and adding to certain aspects of the
game as a team through their individual works. The actual send off and shipping of the game
is “terrifying” according to co president Evan Wells. The team hold a very strong sense of trust
with each other and ultimately just “hope for the best”.

The Last of Us: Development Pipeline

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