14 DAY TRIAL // The Last of Us developer Naughty Dog is quite confident in the appeal of the game's two heroes, Joel and Ellie, as Creative Director Neil Druckmann even goes so far as to say that the two protagonists deliver some of the best ever performances in a video game.
The Last of Us is a survival experience that's set to appear for the PlayStation 3 next week and developer Naughty Dog is hyping it up ahead of its release on June 14.
Fans got to admire lots of interesting details in recent weeks, as the studio talked about the single-player campaign and about the special multiplayer that blends traditional matches with a meta-game.
Now, Neil Druckmann has talked with PS blog about the main characters, Joel and Ellie, and how their actors delivered some of the best ever performances in a video game.
"I don’t know about them becoming icons, but I will say that having seen how people play the game and seeing their reactions, I can say confidently that these will stand as two of the best ever performances in a video game. It’s a bold claim, but these guys really blew us away," he said.
"Not only that but we’ve had a bunch of focus testers play the game and have had people actually cry. They’d come up to us and say 'I’ve never felt so attached to a character.'"
The conversations in the game were streamlined quite a lot with input both from Druckmann and from the actual actors.
"I just tried hard to stay in line with what we were trying to say with the game, and to write simple dialogue. The mantra I had was ‘'ever get fancy with the dialogue'. Just keep it short and natural. If it ever sounds wrong, change it."
"The actors were really good at telling me when things weren’t working. We’d spend a lot of time in rehearsals saying lines, ironing them out and making them as natural as possible."
The Last of Us is out next week exclusively for the PlayStation 3.