He’s been on sabbatical for a year, but Naughty Dog veteran Bruce Straley will not be returning to the kennel. After spending 18 years at the Californian company, The Last of Us and Uncharted director has called time on his tenure at the award-winning studio. There’s no word on what he’ll do next, but we’re sure that we’ll be hearing all about that in due time.
Straley’s story with Naughty Dog dates all the way back to 1999, where he was recruited to work as a texture artist on Crash Team Racing. He worked on various Jak & Daxter titles, before going on to co-art direct Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. But his big break came as game director on Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, which would go on to win a spate of awards.
Of course, Straley will probably be best known for his partnership with Neil Druckmann on The Last of Us and latterly Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End. It’s a shame to see the double-act broken up so to speak, but we already knew he wouldn’t be involved with The Last of Us: Part II, and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy has proven there’s a new crop of talent at Naughty Dog hungry to come through.
Still, we wish Straley all the best – he'll forever be Naughty Dog royalty as far as we're concerned.
[source naughtydog.com, via naughtydog.com]
Comments 17
Farewell, Bruce! Thanks for everything!
Sad news that he is moving away from ND. I hope he stays in the industry and keeps creating more amazing stories.
A shame for sure but after The Last of Us plus Left Behind then jumping straight into Uncharted 4 with a decent break probably played a part in it.
Nothing wrong with finding new endeavors.
Crazy that he worked on everything Naughty Dog related from Crash Team Racing and Jak all the way to Uncharted and Last of Us.
Also that epic beard.
That's a pretty big blow for ND. Thanks for the outstanding work over the years Bruce!
I became a little sad when I heard that fake Kaz will be retiring, but now I'm super sad! Best of luck to Bruce in his new endeavors.
Seems like a lot of the OG staff is jumping ship from ND. I really hope they can pull in some talent to keep up the extremely high standards set by their previous games. Really don't want to see another Bioware situation....
I'll bet the gang over there will miss that beard. Wowza.
@RedMageLanakyn Judging by The Lost Legacy — which was led by newer staffers "stepping up" into the lead roles — they're going to be absolutely fine.
@RedMageLanakyn There'll be fine, the company coped when the co founders left, heck people started doubting them when Amy Hennig left yet U4 turned out great.
The uncharted games are good but Last of Us was on a different level for me, so I'm worried for sure but obviously won't expect that standard going forward.
@get2sammyb Here's hoping, I'm genuinely rooting for them. UC2 and TLOU are two of my favorite games of all time, i'd love to see them replaced!
@adf86 Yup, there's so many doubt when amy left and many people say that naughty dog is not the same anymore, then we've got uncharted 4 and everything is back to normal again
It's a loss for Naughty Dog but they've lost top talent before only to see others step up and take the reigns. This is a studio in the class of only a few others (Nintendo, Rockstar, Bethesda) so while Straley's influence will be missed ND will continue to tick along like usual. Would be nice to see Straley end up at 343 to save my once favorite franchise, Halo, which has become an absolute joke since Bungie handed it off.
I hope this doesn't signal a problem or creative differences but as the article said, the studio isn't just one person and the Lost Legacy was mint. Oddly enough, Neil Druckmann was posting loads of images from TLOU Remastered on his PS profile last night.
@Rudy_Manchego
He announced after Uncharted 4 that he was taking a break because he needed some time off. Definitely sounded like burnout more than anything else. Wouldn't be surprising given some of the stuff reported about the pressures of 'AAA' game development.
@Gamer83 Fair dues - I work in Software and the crunch is part of it but the pressure and crunch on game development is just something else. Going from game to game to game must put serious strain on anyone.
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