When pre-production started in earnest on The Last of Us there was a folder of music files featuring work by some of the preeminent musicians in video games, television, and film. These tracks held a sampling of the ideal musical quality, direction, and tone we wanted to have for the project. The Academy Award winning work of Gustavo Santaolalla appeared multiple times. Being that he had never composed for video games before the thought of getting him to work on The Last of Us seemed a bit farfetched. He was approached by our music group at Sony and, well, this video will tell you the full story about the man himself and how he came to work on The Last of Us: We are honored to have Gustavo’s music and talents in our game. The texture of Gustavo’s musical score serves the game’s narrative and the music is rife with poignant, descriptive and intimate sounds. His work is unlike anything heard in a video game before. It’s a beautiful, haunting, sonic Read more...

We kicked off the television campaign for The Last of Us on Sunday, with our first official TV spot on the season finale of AMC’s The Walking Dead. We’d like to share with you the extended version story trailer that TV spot called out. Take a look at some new gameplay from The Last of Us: This gameplay represents a slice of the journey Joel and Ellie will be taking across the United States. They’ll travel westward, traversing different climates, environments, and seasons. The moral dilemmas and decisions they’re forced to make will test the limits of their conscience and humanity. Who is a friend and who is a foe? The Last of Us explores many questions that deal with themes of loyalty, love, and redemption. We’re excited to hear what you have to say about the game and its narrative. The Last of Us will be available June 14th, 2013.   Read more...

Happy Monday! You may already be stringing up paper hearts or you may be the down on love type but ready or not this week is the week that Valentine’s Day happens around the world. To make sure you’re prepared for V-day this Thursday we’re starting your week out right and giving you a set of awesome UNCHARTED and The Last of Us Valentines to print out. These are perfect to give to your friends, family, and super-secret crushes. How could anyone spurn Brock the Brick? And Sully’s stache will surely melt anyone’s heart! Credit: Alexandria Neonakis (@beavs) You can download the full set of valentines via here or here. We challenge you to come up with your own Naughty Dog themed Valentine’s Day valentines. Please link to your own creations on our forums. We will still take submissions in the comments section below. We’ll review them internally on Valentine's Day (Feb 14) and select a random person to receive some very cool Naughty Read more...

In just a few short months, The Last of Us will launch and put the fate of Joel and Ellie into your hands as they embark on a brutal journey across a post-pandemic United States. Right now, May 7, 2013 might seem like a long way away so to help assuage the excruciating wait we have some very exciting news to share with you. We’re announcing today that you’ll be able to demo The Last of Us when it becomes available prior to launch by picking up a copy of God of War: Ascension. Fans that picked up God of War: Ascension will be the only people to get their hands on this chapter of The Last of Us prior to the launch of the full game! We teamed up with the development crew at Santa Monica Studio to include a chapter of The Last of Us in every copy of God of War: Ascension so you won’t have to wait too long to get your hands on two of the biggest games of the year. You’ll simply have to load your God of War: Ascension disc into your PS3 and find The Last Read more...

As 2013 starts to dawn and we all know we survived the 2012 phenomenon we wanted to wish you a very happy holidays from Naughty Dog studio! 2012 was jam packed with breaking news about The Last of Us and fresh content reveals for Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception. On the Uncharted 3 front, we recently announced our holiday items and we’ll have even more content inbound in the New Year. Additionally, we have some very exciting information about multiplayer around the start of next year. Get ready for all the big news by checking back to the PlayStation blog and Naughty Dog blog once 2013 hits.   Speaking of 2013, there’s a very special date you need have marked down if you haven’t already: May 7, 2013. We’re all working towards that date now as we announced that The Last of Us will be in stores globally May 7, 2013 during the 2012 Spike Video Game Awards. If you haven’t been able to watch the Story trailer we released at the show check Read more...

We have a special episode of Naughty Dog TV this month. This year at PAX Prime we were finally able to publically release everything we had prepared for E3 2012. Now that everything is out we want to share a video that speaks to what went into making The Last of Us demo and all the accompanying assets we have put out there. The Last of Us team also talks about the reception we got coming out of E3 and what it was like to be there. It was a challenging, nerve-racking, but ultimately a very rewarding and very fun ride. Here's a glimpse into our view of the event: Hope you enjoyed that. Thank you for all the support and feedback on The Last of Us, both positive, critical, off-kilter, negative, and everything in-between over these past few months. It's already been a wild ride and we're really just getting started. Get ready for more in the coming months as 2013 comes upon us.  Read more...

We’re heading to PAX Prime! Along with PAX East this is one of the most exciting conventions of the year for us as PAX always features some of the best panels, all the most passionate fans and we’re all there for one thing: GAMING. To that end we’ll be showing off a demo of The Last of Us in these digs: Recognize the room? Probably not but some of you may be able to place it in the world of The Last of Us. If you can’t figure it out watch the announcement trailer and our E3 demo for some clues.   For everyone who stops by to check out the demo we’re giving we’ll have exclusive PAX Prime 2012 t-shirts for you: Over the course of the show we will also be giving away 11x17 posters to hang on your wall or plaster around your town. The poster features custom artwork by Alexander Iaccarino, That Kid who Draws, made specifically for PAX Prime. It’s pretty amazing:  The Last of Us Game Director (The) Bruce Straley will be Read more...

Yesterday at Gamescom in Germany Troy Baker, the voice of Joel, and Ashley Johnson, the voice of Ellie, took the stage with moderator Arne Meyer, Community Strategist at Naughty Dog, to talk about the cinematic process, the performances, and the creative ideas at play in The Last of Us. Before the presentation began our game’s directors had a few words to say about the project: In order to make everything Bruce and Neil discuss in the video a reality, the performances of Troy, Ashley, and every actor involved play a crucial role. Performance capture is a long and time intensive process. It involves tight mocap suits, long hours, a ton of writing and often some fortuitous ad-lib. We called attention to these performances, one of the first steps to the game’s cinematic process, at our panel during San Diego Comic Con. At Gamescom we went deeper into the process and now you can watch the raw mocap for the cinematic that introduced Bill, played by W. Earl Brown. Read more...

Hello from Gamescom everyone! It’s always a treat to head out to Germany and show our latest project to media and fans from all over Europe. Earlier today we revealed a brand new trailer we edited especially for Gamescom. Set to a fitting and haunting track by Hank Williams, Sr., this new trailer mixes previously seen content along with some brand new cinematic and gameplay footage to provide some more detail of the beautiful environments and dangerous opposition Joel and Ellie face on their journey across the United States. I’ll be here for a couple days with Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson, who play Joel and Ellie in The Last of Us, as they reveal more about the acting process to press from all over Europe. If you’re at Gamescom, be sure to hit the convention floor to get your own eyes on our E3 demo. Read more...

  @Naughty_Dog saw this cool #lastofus hood on the outskirts of Moscow. I want one and so do you... twitter.com/rickarabian/st… — Rick Arabian (@rickarabian) July 25, 2012     Read more...

While we’re still processing the awesome and inspiring reception from fans and critics at E3, we’ve been heads down working to make The Last of Us something to get really, really hyped about. To that end we’re excited that our San Diego Comic Con plans afforded us the opportunity to discuss our mocap process and share some new content. It was really just a small glimpse into what we’ve been hard at work developing but we think you’ll enjoy it greatly. Take a look: First shown during our San Diego Comic Con panel, if you listen carefully at the onset of the video you’ll hear the noises and sounds of Infected as they hunt Joel and Ellie. They manage to escape into the house of some guy in a gas mask. Are they safe? The masked man turns out to be a new character named Bill. Bill knows Joel somehow and, as you can see in the cinematic, owes Joel a favor.  What for? Well, we’re not talking about that yet but you’ll Read more...

I can't tell you enough how excited I am for Comic-Con! It's probably my favorite non-gaming specific convention every year, even when I've been busy working all five days at a booth. There seems to be a larger presence of gaming content every year, as videogames continues to gain more mainstream acceptance as an entertainment medium, and SDCC 2012 is no exception. We're glad to say that Naughty Dog will be back at SDCC again this year, with some fresh The Last of Us content in tow. Top on your list should be our panel on Friday, July 13, at 5:00 PM in room 25ABC on the second floor near the Lobby G escalators. Creative Director Neil Druckmann and Game Director Bruce Straley will be joined by Troy Baker (Joel), Ashley Johnson (Ellie), and a special, still-secret guest to discuss The Last of Us, featuring an exclusive reveal of a new cutscene. Our panel "The Last of Us: Behind the Scenes with Naughty Dog" will be Read more...

Last night video game week on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon continued as Game Director Bruce Straley and Creative Director Neil Druckmann injected some post-pandemic, brutal reality into the late night talkshow world. We were stoked to be able to demo a clip of gameplay first shown at E3 live on the show and happy to confirm the release year for The Last of Us. Jimmy's response to the gameplay speaks volumes and has to be seen. Check out all the action and Jimmy's reactions in this clip: The Last of Us is coming in 2013. More information about The Last of Us and the story of Joel and Ellie is around the corner so keep your eyes open, stay focused, and be ready for anything. We can't wait to dive more deeply into the rugged, lethal world of The Last of Us with you!  Read more...

Throughout E3 2012 there were many announcements but one man stole the show, Bruce Straley. For us in the office we know Bruce as the Game Director of The Last of Us, but on Monday June 4th he became "The Bruce". At the Sony Press Conference after the amazing God of War Ascension demo, the lights went dark, the ambient sounds arose from the speakers and Bruce Straley walked to the stage to show the first gameplay demo of The Last of Us. As he played, a single light shined above him revealing the first ever recorded footage of "The Bruce".  The reveal of "The Bruce" it took off like a wild fire and during E3 you could see people all over the show floor channeling their inner "Bruce". Below are some of the Naughty Dog family doing their best impression of "The Bruce": More photos can be found on our Photo Dog Iki's Flickr account here As awesome as these are we want to see your best "The Bruce" poses. Send us links of your "The Bruce" in the comments and we Read more...

Did you catch the PlayStation press conference livestream? Notice when it went all black? We wanted to set a proper mood, tone, and stage for our debut of The Last of Us gameplay. The venue, as well as the hard work of the press conference production crew, afforded us a fantastic setup. It was an amazing opportunity to showcase our blood, sweat, and pixels on the massive video screen in the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena this Monday night. We’re amped by the response we’ve received so far and looking forward to a very busy, very fun E3. Everyone is willing to do whatever it takes to survive.If you didn’t catch the livestream or would like to see unadulterated, pure images of the gameplay watch this video. At this point in the story Joel and Ellie are attempting to get to the bridge and out of the city. They are tourists in an area that’s controlled by hunters. They are hunted and yet they too are hunters. Everyone is willing to do Read more...

It’s been nearly six months since we announced The Last of Us and development has been a beehive of activity. If you picked up the March 2012 issue of Game Informer or have seen any of the online coverage you might have read about Joel and Ellie’s time spent in an abandoned city they have driven to. We are excited to share a very fresh, very provocative video with you today. This video should answer some of the questions you had after reading the stories about what went down inside those city walls. You’ll get a glimpse into the lethality of the world Joel and Ellie are surviving in and what being a survivor in that world truly means.  ...glimpse into the lethality of the world Joel and Ellie are surviving in Joel and Ellie won’t have an easy road ahead on their journey across the U.S. Their path will intersect with other remaining survivors, some of which won’t be so friendly. In this scene Joel and Ellie continue the journey west in a Read more...