Details make the difference
The signature of a Naughty Dog game is going an extra mile or two miles, co-game creator Anthony Newman tells Chris Schulz.
Anthony Newman was nearly finished working on The Last of Us Part II, the sequel to one of the best video games ever made. As Naughty Dog’s co-game director, he’d helped shape the game, implementing many of the impressive things that have helped it climb to a whopping 96 per cent approval rating on Metacritic, like the emotional heft of its story, or its thrilling combat and the terrific and terrifying zombies.
Instead of relaxing, Newman chose to join the rest of his Naughty Dog team to help get the exclusive PlayStation sequel over the line by doing some basic ‘‘bug fixing’’.
It was then that he realised just how detailed the game had become.
‘‘There was a scripted moment that involved a dog,’’ he says, talking to Stuff on a Skype call from his Los Angeles home.
‘‘In order to make it play correctly, I had to write a line of script that would disable the dog from sneezing.’’
Yes, in The Last of Us Part II, the dogs, which are a very small part of a very big game, sneeze. They also scratch their ears and wag their tails while sniffing through grass looking for scent trails.
Newman admits that level of detail for a minor part of the game is over the top.
But it’s what has earned the Santa Monica video game developers legions of fans and masses of critical acclaim across some very big titles, including platformers Jak and Daxter and Crash Bandicoot, and five instalments of its excellent Uncharted series.
Set in a post-apocalyptic world ravaged by zombies, The Last of Us Part II is a very different game to Naughty Dog’s other hits.
In the highly anticipated follow-up to the 2013 original, gamers play as Ellie, the sidekick who was rescued in the first game by a lone smuggler called Joel.
She is all grown up and embarks on a hellish revenge mission that takes players through several decayed American states, including a version of Seattle overgrown by grass and covered in crumbling buildings and roads.
It’s a game full of nightmarish zombies that need dispatching with Ellie’s vast arsenal, so it’s easy to forget how much detail is involved in putting together apocalyptic cities that look and feel real.
‘‘We would choose appropriate vegetation based on what kind of light is likely to hit that environment,’’ says Newman. ‘‘If an area needs to have grass, the ceiling will have a hole in it so water and light could have come in to allow the grass to grow.’’
That extreme dedication to detail extends to characters, too. If it starts raining, Ellie puts her hood up. Enemies make random comments or quips, calling out each other’s names, and discuss things yet to be found in the game.
In one scene, players searching an abandoned apartment find a PlayStation console with a copy of the game Uncharted 2 – a nod to Naughty Dog’s previous mega-popular franchise.
Newman admits the studio’s attention to detail can be overwhelming, but there’s a reason for it.
‘‘The signature of a Naughty Dog game is going an extra mile or two miles, to get our characters to examine their fingernails, or check their weapon straps or adjust their backpacks.
‘‘Those types of details are absolutely what makes a Naughty Dog game.’’
As many critics have already pointed out, Part II is a bleaker, more violent sequel that doesn’t hold back when splashing about buckets of blood and gore.
Players can’t complete the game without familiarising themselves with weapons like molotov cocktails, pick axes and automatic weapons.
Confrontations involving suffocation, axe attacks and brutal hand-to-hand knife combat occur regularly.
In New Zealand, the game has received an R18 rating with a warning of ‘‘graphic violence, offensive language and cruelty’’.
Newman admits the game is violent, but says there’s a point to it.
‘‘What the game has to say about the hatred of your enemies, and how ultimately foolish that is, is really relevant to our current social and political moment,’’ he says.
‘‘I’ve never personally felt society feel as heated or combative these past few years. I’m happy to work on a game that speaks to that and tries to make people think about that differently.’’
Besides, Newman has spent every day for the past five years immersed in the world of The Last of Us, and he says he feels fine about it. ‘‘Do I seem well adjusted?’’ he jokingly asks at one point.
Critics seem to agree. The gaming website IGN called the sequel a ‘‘masterpiece’’ and the
said it ‘‘lands an emotional punch that will be felt long after the credits roll’’.
Newman thinks players will want to replay the game as soon as they’re finished – and he has some advice for those planning on doing exactly that.
He says players should crank up the game’s difficulty level to its hardest possible setting.
‘‘I feel like the game absolutely sings when it is as challenging as possible, when the enemies are as ferocious as possible, and you’re using every single strategy, every single improvisational ability you have, to just get yourself through.
‘‘There’s a thrill there that I love, for sure.’’
The Last of Us Part II is available on PlayStation consoles from today.