Report: The Last of Us aiming for late 2012-early 2013
Naughty Dog is aiming to have The Last of Us out by last 2012 or early 2013, a USA Today report has said, while its also been confirmed who will compose the game's score.
The USAT article says the title, unveiled at the VGAs, will be based from the same third-person perspective that Uncharted came from, with Naughty Dog co-president Christophe Balestra telling the publication it was "trying to move the medium of video games into an area elevated in the same manner of respect" that films have done.
"We want to redefine what our medium is even called. 'Video game' is not an accurate name anymore. It is not necessarily a game with rules and a winner and a loser. It's an experience."
Creative director Neil Druckmann said the idea of The Last of Us came about after watching BBC nature documentary Planet Earth, in which it showed how the cordyceps fungus infected ants, resulting in taking over its brain and producing growths from its head.
Hence, the clip of it being used in a teaser before the reveal.
As soon as game director Bruce Straley seen it, he admitted: "We instantly thought 'humans'."
On creating the second team for the game, ND co-president Evan Wells added if it didn't "expand the roles for people, we could potentially lose them, because they really wanted to be challenged. We didn't want to lose that talent."
After Uncharted 2 shipped in 2009, some of the dev team from that moved over, while everyone else worked on Uncharted 3.
Oscar-winning Santaolalla to compose score
Naughty Dog's also confirmed via a presentation to press in the US overnight (via Eurogamer) that Oscar-winning composer Gustavo Santaolalla will score the soundtrack.
Santolalla scored Brokeback Mountain and the incredible Babel. Part of his work can be hard towards the end of the unveil trailer.
"He's awesome," said Druckmann. "He picks and chooses what he works on; he could work on all these big movies. We brought him in here, showed him the game, walked him through the whole story and what we're trying to do, and he said 'I want to be a part of this'."
He added the focus on the game won't be on the monsters, but rather "the relationship between Joel and Ellie," the lead characters for the game.