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”.