The AI-controlled little girl will be useful during the campaign

Jun 10, 2013 13:28 GMT  ·  By

Naughty Dog tried with the story campaign in The Last of Us to create a lifelike version of Ellie that will constantly help and interact with the player, who controls Joel in the single-player experience.

The Last of Us is out later this week, and both developer Naughty Dog and publisher Sony have hyped it up with lots of interesting details about its single-player campaign and its Factions multiplayer experience.

According to Creative Director Neil Druckmann, who talked with the PS blog, he and his team wanted to create a natural interaction between Joel and Ellie throughout the single-player campaign.

"I will say that what we try to do with Ellie is to constantly keep her alive and feeling human. Whether you’re in or out of combat, Ellie should make interesting or surprising decisions on her own," Druckmann said.

The director then explained that non-playable characters in games are either annoying, because they need to be managed by the player, or useless, as they won't help in tough situations.

"In a lot of games where you have NPCs that come with you, they’re annoying as you’re essentially babysitting them. We didn’t want that, but we didn’t want the opposite either – them sitting in the corner with enemies ignoring them. If that happens they don’t feel like a real person."

"For us, it was important that enemies do engage with Ellie. And in combat if you’re being attacked she will pick up a brick and help you. As you progress through the game and she’s spending more and more time with Joel, her abilities grow. You’ll feel like she’s changing as a person."

The Last of Us might even get sequels in the future, fact admitted by Druckmann, but the new titles won't star Joel or Ellie, as the Naughty Dog team want to start fresh.