Naughty Dog's Neil Druckmann Concludes Work on The Last of Us TV Show

If they follow the full year cycle of the game, there is probably still a fair amount of shooting to do.

I'm actually looking forward to watching this.
I wonder if they'll do major changes from the first game... One thing for certain is that I'm not ready seeing Sarah dying again xd

They let a video game guy direct episodes of a TV show? That has me a bit worried if it's his 1st time directing, I don't care how good he is at everything else.

Oh well, if it's just a couple of slow mid season episodes it probably won't matter, the first and last couple will make or break the show.

Still looking forward to it, who knows, maybe TV is his next career.

@BoldAndBrash Imagine this but 4 foot tall and that’s Ellie in the show.

@rjejr he wasn't directing he was a co-writer bud

@Bagwag82 Kinda the same deal as Robert Kirkman (Walking Dead) then?

The first season of that show was great at least, although the comics are much better than the TV series after Darabont left, imo.

Woah, I didn't know they had the best tv crew in the world working on this! In that case, anything other than debuting as the greatest and most successful show of all time will be a substantial failure.

@Bagwag82 I’m sure he was down to direct a couple of episodes

@Fuzzymonkeyfunk ah well I didn't say that in the article 👍

@Bagwag82 OK bud I have 2 questions for you.

1. If he wasn't directing, only a co-writer, then why is the first sentence in the article this:

"Neil Druckman’s television directorial debut has concluded."

2. Why did he tweet a photo that says "Director Neil Druckman"?

Ellie will be played by Tom Holland and voiced by Chris Pratt.

@rjejr Neil doesn't make any video games. He makes movies with slightly interactive elements. I trust him directing/writing a movie far more than a video game. It's what he's actually been doing for years anyway. They should have kept him in Canada.

I remember reading about how Druckman kept making Troy Baker redo that sad scene of Joel and Sarah at the beginning of TLoU until he was happy with it. So he is a perfectionist at least.

@rjejr fair enough, I actually missed that unless the article was updated. Oh well we all make mistakes I guess.

@NEStalgia "Ellie will be played by Tom Holland and voiced by Chris Pratt."

Ha ha! Brilliant!

Dont care for show at all,they probably change Joels appereance to resemble Pedro Pascal in the unnecesary remake of first game that will be day and date on pc. Hehe

@NEStalgia I don't know maybe. My wife and I have reached that age in life that when we binge watch TV shows we can usually pick out when it's a guest director or they let 1 of the actors direct. But not in a good way.

If he directs all of it we wouldn't be able to tell but it may not be good. 🤷

I thought TLOU had it's fair share of gameplay. I really didn't like some of it - having to repeat all 3 floors in that building and the creep in the restaurant took me like 3 dozen tries, and it had nothing to do with anything, I think he just wanted to make the Luke rapes Laura scene from General Hospital - but there was gameplay. I don't want to have to watch the same scene in a show a dozen times b/c the character dies.😝

@rjejr Naughty Dog games have gameplay the same way Sonic Boom had gameplay. It's there....but it's mostly just tedious poorly executed filler between cutscenes.

At least their PS4 era games moved beyond 1980's lightgun shooting gallery arcade gameplay of their PS3 era. And I don't even want to talk about what happened to Jak after 1. I don't want to even think about Crash before other companies made it.

ND has always been a weird studio. Famous in the UK and nowhere else for Crash, and then famous everywhere else for "it's like playing a (B) movie!" after Jak2. But objectively, never actually good at video games! I'll never understand how they're basically the face of Playstation considering they're easily the worst game makers of all of Sony's studios. Though Santa Monica is coming awfully close to just being their mini-me. Look at what Sucker Punch, Guerilla, Insomniac (heck 4 AAAs in as many years, even if they're all lousy copy-paste Marvel games) are doing. And their games aren't consigned to the $45 bargain bin yet unlike ND's "masterpiece" with the exception of the now fairly old by any standard but Nintendo's GoW. Insomniac is dead to me now that they're the Marvel factory, but can't deny they at least make something workable out of a license to swill. Santa Monica.....are they really down to one GoW game every 6 years? They say they're doing other stuff. Hopefully they are, otherwise from 2016-2028 they only thing they'll have is GoW2016-Part2.

@NEStalgia Well Naughty Dog made 2 of my favorite games of all time, though the more I think about it the more I realize my "favorite game of all time" has a hard time standing pat, so I kind of cheat by making genres. Jak is my favorite game, Xenoblade Chronicles my favorite JRPG, Uncharted 2 my favorite interactive movie. Jak and U2 held that distinction from the first time I played them, it took a few years for me to finally admit as a long time FF7 fanboi that XC was better than FF7. Jak 2, 3 & X aren't that good, U1 is terrible but 3, 4 and LL are good enough.

I think I benefit from having no nostalgia for old Nintendo & Sega consoles, starting w/ PS1 it's easier to pick, and not pick what most people would consider "games". Though I had an Atari and played it a lot it's a separate thing, like breakfast cereal. Sure Captain Crunch Peanut Butter was the best thing ever, but I ain't putting that stuff in my mouth now.

So every other company going all "Naughty Dog" and Sony going all-in on "the ND look" doesn't surprise me or bother me a all, I kinda like it. Can't you just go play Xbox and leave us interactive movie lovers alone? 😉

@rjejr Jak1 is an anomaly. It's an actual good game made by Naughty Dog. It's the only one I'm aware of in existence. Then Jak2 happened. Then Jak3 happened. Then Jak 4 became a bad kart game. But it's all good because at least it wasn't the nightmare that was Crash Bandicoot. Then Uncharted 4 happened and forced me to play Crash-freaking-Bandicoot.

I actually do love Jak 1. It was wonderful. A better Rare game than Rare was putting out at the time. They really nailed the collectathon platformer. And then they just.....did whatever they did after that.

Of the Uncharted PS3 trilogy I'd have to put 3 ahead. The gameplay stopped sucking as bad, somewhat, and it was even more of a movie. The Lawrence of Arabia vibe was fun. 2, I thought I loved but when I went back to it it was the same lightgun shooting gallery and the pacing was terrible. And it kind of jumped from the beginning to the end without a middle. Or did it end at the middle and never had an end?

LOL, I don't mind ND being regarded as an interactive movie maker as its own genre. I just hate seeing it become the face of the platform, heralded as the best, and everything else trying to copy it. You have ND on one side and Fortnite on the other. What's in between? Sands of Time remake coming 2038?

You like XC and Jak1 so you know whats up. You just need to wash the Uncharted/TLOU stink away so you can remember what proper video games are.

@NEStalgia But I don't like, and have never liked, proper video games, if the sales of CoD and Madden are anything to go by. When you don't like sports games or first person games the only games left are non-proper games. Honestly I've really only ever liked Final Fantasy type jrpg and Jak type 3D platformers w/ action games like GoW, Uncharted and DmC as an offshoot of those. I need a story, 3D, and 3rd person. I basically only play 1 type, style and look of game w/ slight modifications. Oh and it can't be too hard, if I die more than a few times I'm done.
So... Kirby's Odyssey is about all I have left. And knowing Nintendo it will be a 6 hour game.

@rjejr Sales data is the wrong data to go by, otherwise Fortnite, Madden, CoD, and Crash would be proper games.

"I basically only play 1 type, style and look of game w/ slight modifications. Oh and it can't be too hard, if I die more than a few times I'm done"

LOL, that's literally the meme-level personification of post-PS4 Playstation. That's the complaint right there.

To be fair, ND and Santa Monica are the worst offenders of that and also get all the undeserved praise. Insomniac is pretty close to that now too. GoT isn't exactly that, though it's a cookie cutter copy of Assassin's Creed Origins in a Japanese skin. HzD is.... it borrows from too many things too many times, it's still too derivative for me to hold it next to classic Sony games, but it's at least not part of that ND/SM/Insomniac trifecta of sameness. What HzD gets very wrong that GoT gets more right though is player agency. I've nicknamed Hzd "Horizon: Zero Agency." It gives the illusion of being an open world, but it's really on rails. It only looks open next to GoW which is literally a corridor slasher.

Oh yay! So excited for a truly inclusive & political correct TV series!

@NEStalgia Oh I forgot Fortnite, thanks.

I prefer my open world games to be linear so that works for me. I finally figured that out w/ Grandia 2 on the Dreamcast. Everyone was complaining about how it wasn't good b/c it was "too linear" and I realized that story driven games work better that way. God of War (Again) I'd argue is the worst GoW game b/c a lot of it is time wasting. A lot of people said the same thing about BotW but it's actually my favorite Zelda b/c Zelda games basically suck. Oh, and you can add "backtracking" to things I don't play. That whole Metroidvania come back to the same place after you get X tool is so lame. New tool, new world. Now I don't mind extracurricular backtracking for collecting, R&C does that well for the Golden bolts, but that's after game type stuff. Back tracking should never be a feature or integral part of the main story. BotW gets away w/b/c open world let's you do whatever. I think the same can be said for Skyrim and Witcher 3. But I prefer more forced linear. Darksiders was the best pre-BitW Zelda game. 2 was lame, onky played half. 3 I heard was hard so...

If I'm only going to be remembered for 1 meme I'd rather it's this one.

@rjejr Lucky you. Most can't forget it.

So you're the one who loved FFXIII right? IDK, I still think AC1 was the best AC, and that was pretty linear, but with total player agency along the way. Spiderman represents the wrong kind of linear open world. The "open" world doesn't actually have any purpose, it's empty and exists simply to have to travel through between levels. It's really just a mission-based game with a fake open world connecting it. Kind of agree on GoW. Haven't finished it yet. I just keep getting bored slogging through it and put it down. Lots of "dead air" time. And I hate nothing more than wasting time. It's why I hate roguelikes and could never deal with Souls games, it wastes so much time repeating the same thing. I was having another conversation here recently about Souls, and said I think I could tolerate the difficulty more if it would checkpoint me right at the bosses rather than making me redo stuff I already did every time I die. Same with multi-phase boss battles. I don't want to play phase 1 and 2 over and over because I can't figure out phase 3. I just lose interest and stop.

I like Metroidvania (and Zelda) in general though. I like puzzles. But it has to be done right. Metroid is surprisingly linear for a "metroidvania", Ori does it right. It has to feel organic like you're going full circle, rather than feeling aimless.

IDK why, but I liked Darksiders 2 more than 1. 1 felt very "samey" owing mostly to it's technology limits and being the epitome of PS360 era brown-everything. Puzzles were hard that weren't meant to be due to the coloring. 3 is literally a Souls-lite. It's more fun than Souls in a lot of ways but it's Souls, right down to the campfires. But 1 was actually surprisingly hard, too. I'm not sure how it escapes the reputation.

@NEStalgia FF13 if I read that Roman numeral right is not good, no. So not good I passed on parfs 2 and 3, which was huge for a Squaresoft fanbois like me. Last good FF was 10 though my wife really liked 12. 12 was a good monster hunter game but a terrible FF game.

Both Ori games are really good considering how much I hate everything about them - 2D, backtracking and difficult. There is really no reason for me to like them but I did. Ori 1 is the hardest game I ever made it thru. I think 2 had an easy god mode or something otherwise I wouldn't have played it.

AC Assassins Creed? I played the first 1 a bit I hate stealth. And it's first person, right? The 2 new ones - Greece and Egypt? - looked really good but I just watched my kid play Immortals Fenyx Rising instead, I like the pretty colors. You don't need Twitch when you live with a teenager. 😂

Every boss fight with multiple parts should always restart in the part you die in, that's just common sense. I'll low it in video arcades for $1 a play bragging rights, but if I'm spending $300 on a console and $60 on a game then I already paid to see the ending. I don't even finish final boss fights anymore. I'll try a few times but then I move on, they are almost always more trouble than their worth. 🤷‍♂️

@rjejr 13 is linear. Totally your thing.

Actually I don't hate 13. I hated it when it launched, but it's grown on me since. It's fun to bash it though.

It's surprising how hard Ori is. I still haven't finished 2. I started it when I got the XSX but never went back to the later parts. It's such a depressing world, but such an amazing game.

AC1 is third person, same as all the others. Much more linear. It does focus more on stealth, though. Which is why I think it's the best AC game. I mean you're an assassin, not a barbarian, you're kinda supposed to lurk the shadows. You have the hoodie and everything. AC1 is much more like Hitman, it's all about making the big kills vs the more "do quests & stuff" modern ones. I like the modern AC as well (GoT is basically AC Origins with a Japan skin) but I absolutely loved Fenyx. That's
my 2020/2021 GOTY. It was just a plain fun video game. No
pretension, just fun.

Yeah, totally agree on multi-part boss fights. I see them as the same as a roguelike or soulslike, making you continuously suffer through things you already successfully did just to pad the time and "add to the challenge." Like an endurance test. I'm not 15. I don't want to test my endurance. I don't mind having to "git gud" with skill, but let me retry the part I'm failing until I learn it, not replay the last 15 minutes I'm not failing over and over just because it's the sequence. Let alone the designs, be it Mega Man or Souls that starts you at the beginning of the level or the last checkpoint 2/3 through the area before having to face the boss that ohko's you in 4 seconds. How can I learn how to fight it if I have to keep redoing 10 minutes + of gameplay every time I try to dodge his opening attack? Let alone the opening attack of Phase 4. Some people seem to love wasting that kind of time.

I actually have never finished most boss fights in most games. I've always, since the NES days found them to be more trouble than they're worth. There's some game I endure it out of OCD to not have played the whole thing only to not see the ending (Metroid Dread. That boss was absolute BS in the worst NES way. But I actually Soulsborned it just because I refused to not see the ending. But I do that maybe once a decade. I did to the challenge vaults of fenyx though after the ending in the DLC. Loved that game...)

@NEStalgia I can't recall exactly what I didn't like about 13, my brain keeps confusing it w/ 15, but I know that Hope kid was 1 of the worst most annoying whiny characters I've ever come across in a game. Oh, and it also made a big mistake by being linear b/c I think 12 was much more open. And of course as a true FF fan I skipped 11 and 14, those are just for WoW fans. But 13 had some long ugly corridors. Then it all just opened up on the moon, since it was basically 2 games by 2 different directors. That never helps. I'll ask my wife later, pretty sure she disliked it more than I did.

Probably a good time if I haven 't mentioned it already that my wife and I began dating in summer '97, moved in that Christmas, got a PS1 the following Christmas '98, and my wife has watched me play video games for most of our lives ever since. She's played 3 or 4 but mostly she watches. It's why I played so many JRPG, it's what she likes to watch b/c she's a fantasy reader. So she remembers stuff I can't b/c I'm old and my brain is a sieve.

After 9, I'm fried.

@rjejr You mean Hopesuke Crusher?

You know 13 done messed up when the internet's biggest fan of linear games hates it. But it really has grown on me. The controls for movement are worse than the design. Then again I don't hate 15 either now.... It's weird and incomplete but fun in it's own way.

Haha, the classic armchair gamer! That always sucks though because the pressure is on to deliver a show.... No wonder you like easy games

Speaking of old, you know you're getting too old for this when you're talking about the Keighly awards and start dropping Susan Lucci references. . The kids are like "is she on twitch?"

@NEStalgia Susan Lucci is the best. Honestly have no idea what I said to bring her up but she's the best so it's ok. 😁

@rjejr LOL, no, it was me in a different thread arguing about the Keighleys with someone else that referenced her. I tend to forget some humans weren't alive back when meaningful reality used to exist....

@NEStalgia You know I'm confused enough in my old age I don't need any help from you. 😅 (I don't really know what this emoji is it's just the first 1 I saw)