Naughty Dog goes survival horror with The Last Of Us
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Tonight at the VGAs Naughty Dog let loose the first trailer of their new survival horror game, The Last Of Us. The trailer shows us the two main characters, a gruff man named Joel (voiced by Troy Baker) and a smart teenage girl known as Ellie (voiced by Ashley Johnson). They’re survivors in a post-apocalyptic world over taken by nature and doomed by a plague which has resulted in bloodthirsty mutants. With The Last Of Us Naughty Dog hopes to “take a leap forward in cinematic gaming and storytelling, providing gamers with an experience unlike anything else in the industry”. They may just do that too you know? Putting the cinematic prowess of the Uncharted series together with a horror game based more so on survival than violence sounds like it could be a brand new experience. Unlike many modern horror games, the two main characters are normal people. They aren’t walking war machines, they aren’t on a mission to stop anything. They are just normal people trying to survive in a broken world, nothing more. |
It definitely seems like a promising idea, however I don’t know if I would label it “survival horror.” When I think survival horror, I think of pouring over every square inch of playable space to find tools that will help me advance and solve upcoming puzzles in addition to replenishing my constantly sparse ammo. The Last of Us could be like that, however I really can’t think of many true survival horror experiences akin to something like Silent Hill that have come out this gen, and toward the end of the trailer all of those cars look suspiciously like chest-high third-person shooter cover to me. I have a feeling this game will lean more towards action as opposed to survival-eque, but we’ll see. Either way, it’s Naughty Dog, so it will definitely deserve my attention.
when I hear “Survivor Horror”…I get terrifying visions of misplaced valves and piles of diaries/notes/journals written in very poor engrish.
Definitely excited. It’ll be good for Naughty Dog to venture into a new series, and having their knack for creating real characters in a space typically reserved for stereotypes and war machines will be an excellent change of pace.