Post: Naughty Dog Talks Combat in The Last of Us + Free 'The Last of Us' Dynamic Theme!
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02-13-2012, 08:10 PM
#1
TheBigRod
uh-may-zuh-zing
Source: You must login or register to view this content. // By: Empiyah-XIII // February 13th, 2012
You must login or register to view this content.
Over the past week or two, more information has been slowly pulled out from the shadows about Naughty Dog's The Last of Us, which is showing a lot of promise, due to the game developer's recent trilogy of the Playstation exclusive title Uncharted. The post-apocalyptic world with very dark, violent, and illustrated settings. Thanks to You must login or register to view this content., the details have been confirmed on what's actually going down on this new game, let's take a look!
A video regarding the gameplay mechanics and conventions are discussed between the game's director Bruce Straley, and creative director Neil Druckmann, also brought to you by Game Informer.
"Combat really starts with the tone of this world," Straley explains. As a bleak world that's been turned upside down, humanity has been corrupted by their more primal instincts. Humans themselves will act "as realistic opponents" that are "also trying to survive." As Bruce Straley talks about all of this, concept art is revealed, showing Joel ruthlessly strangling a human enemy from behind. Another piece of concept art shows him bludgeoning a bearded man with a wooden beam. Unfortunately, they never go into how fighting the "infected" enemies will feel, look and play.
The "stop and pop cover-based shooting" of Naughty Dog's Uncharted series is a hopping-off point for The Last of Us, but it isn't at the core of the experience. "How do we take what we learned [with Uncharted] and push it into a new realm?" asked Straley. The answer is to emphasize things like stealth and strategy. You can use stealth movements to get around unaware enemies, distract them with various AI partners you meet on your journey and use any number of tactics to fight your enemies, depending on important parameters like how well-equipped your foes are, and what kind of weapons they have on them.
A "sense of lethality" and a "sense of reality" is how the design team approached combat in The Last of Us. While in many games a person has no regard for himself or his own health, The Last of Us doesn't follow the same conventions. As Bruce Straley notes, if a man draws a gun on you, you won't draw your own gun, take a few shots and ultimately kill him. You'll probably run away. Then again, what if you have some buddies with you? Perhaps all but one person will run to cover while one person draws his weapon and returns fire.
At the heart of such a system is AI. "Making them feel real, making them intelligent, making them make smart decisions" is the key. And as Neil Druckmann points out later in the interview, The Last of Us totes "dynamic health," meaning that your health doesn't restore automatically as it does in, say, Uncharted. Rather, when you take a gunshot or get struck with an object, that damage stays with you until you have the means to heal yourself. And even the act of healing yourself "has consequences" and "takes time."
The most important AI decision it seems Naughty Dog had to make was in terms of Joel's persistent partner, the teenage girl named Ellie. Straley points out that one of the hallmarks of the Uncharted trilogy is that you usually have an AI partner that doesn't obstruct you. "But we wanna evolve that," he admits. "We're not on a babysitting mission, we don't have to supervise these people, they're capable of doing things on their own."
"It was important for us from the get-go to make Ellie a very capable character," Druckmann admits. Thus, they stayed away from making easy decisions with her. When considering how to "incorporate Ellie into the gameplay space," the team decided to make her as dynamic as other AI characters. She won't just run off, hide, and come out when it's safe. If she sees Joel in danger, for instance, she might throw a brick at an enemy to stun him so that Joel can run to cover, reload his weapon, or take any number of other actions.
But it seems like complicated decisions with huge payoffs are at the heart of The Last of Us' development. "It's a weird way of looking at it," Straley explains, "but everything we're doing in development of this game is going for the hardest thing possible. And then when it breaks, we'll pull back to what games tend to rely on, which is HUD, interface, control schemes, these kinds of things."
The Last of Us Dynamic Theme!
Enter this code into the 'Redeem Code' section of the Playstation Store:
G2LJ-GTNE-NKHM
The following user thanked TheBigRod for this useful post:
02-13-2012, 08:41 PM
#2
TechMemphis
< ^ > < ^ >
Originally posted by Empiyah
Naughty Dog Talks Combat in The Last of Us
Source: You must login or register to view this content. // By: Empiyah-XIII // February 13th, 2012
You must login or register to view this content.
Over the past week or two, more information has been slowly pulled out from the shadows about Naughty Dog's The Last of Us, which is showing a lot of promise, due to the game developer's recent trilogy of the Playstation exclusive title Uncharted. The post-apocalyptic world with very dark, violent, and illustrated settings. Thanks to You must login or register to view this content., the details have been confirmed on what's actually going down on this new game, let's take a look!
A video regarding the gameplay mechanics and conventions are discussed between the game's director Bruce Straley, and creative director Neil Druckmann, also brought to you by Game Informer.
"Combat really starts with the tone of this world," Straley explains. As a bleak world that's been turned upside down, humanity has been corrupted by their more primal instincts. Humans themselves will act "as realistic opponents" that are "also trying to survive." As Bruce Straley talks about all of this, concept art is revealed, showing Joel ruthlessly strangling a human enemy from behind. Another piece of concept art shows him bludgeoning a bearded man with a wooden beam. Unfortunately, they never go into how fighting the "infected" enemies will feel, look and play.
The "stop and pop cover-based shooting" of Naughty Dog's Uncharted series is a hopping-off point for The Last of Us, but it isn't at the core of the experience. "How do we take what we learned [with Uncharted] and push it into a new realm?" asked Straley. The answer is to emphasize things like stealth and strategy. You can use stealth movements to get around unaware enemies, distract them with various AI partners you meet on your journey and use any number of tactics to fight your enemies, depending on important parameters like how well-equipped your foes are, and what kind of weapons they have on them.
A "sense of lethality" and a "sense of reality" is how the design team approached combat in The Last of Us. While in many games a person has no regard for himself or his own health, The Last of Us doesn't follow the same conventions. As Bruce Straley notes, if a man draws a gun on you, you won't draw your own gun, take a few shots and ultimately kill him. You'll probably run away. Then again, what if you have some buddies with you? Perhaps all but one person will run to cover while one person draws his weapon and returns fire.
At the heart of such a system is AI. "Making them feel real, making them intelligent, making them make smart decisions" is the key. And as Neil Druckmann points out later in the interview, The Last of Us totes "dynamic health," meaning that your health doesn't restore automatically as it does in, say, Uncharted. Rather, when you take a gunshot or get struck with an object, that damage stays with you until you have the means to heal yourself. And even the act of healing yourself "has consequences" and "takes time."
The most important AI decision it seems Naughty Dog had to make was in terms of Joel's persistent partner, the teenage girl named Ellie. Straley points out that one of the hallmarks of the Uncharted trilogy is that you usually have an AI partner that doesn't obstruct you. "But we wanna evolve that," he admits. "We're not on a babysitting mission, we don't have to supervise these people, they're capable of doing things on their own."
"It was important for us from the get-go to make Ellie a very capable character," Druckmann admits. Thus, they stayed away from making easy decisions with her. When considering how to "incorporate Ellie into the gameplay space," the team decided to make her as dynamic as other AI characters. She won't just run off, hide, and come out when it's safe. If she sees Joel in danger, for instance, she might throw a brick at an enemy to stun him so that Joel can run to cover, reload his weapon, or take any number of other actions.
But it seems like complicated decisions with huge payoffs are at the heart of The Last of Us' development. "It's a weird way of looking at it," Straley explains, "but everything we're doing in development of this game is going for the hardest thing possible. And then when it breaks, we'll pull back to what games tend to rely on, which is HUD, interface, control schemes, these kinds of things."
The Last of Us Dynamic Theme!
Enter this code into the 'Redeem Code' section of the Playstation Store:
G2LJ-GTNE-NKHM
Source: You must login or register to view this content. // By: Empiyah-XIII // February 13th, 2012
You must login or register to view this content.
Over the past week or two, more information has been slowly pulled out from the shadows about Naughty Dog's The Last of Us, which is showing a lot of promise, due to the game developer's recent trilogy of the Playstation exclusive title Uncharted. The post-apocalyptic world with very dark, violent, and illustrated settings. Thanks to You must login or register to view this content., the details have been confirmed on what's actually going down on this new game, let's take a look!
A video regarding the gameplay mechanics and conventions are discussed between the game's director Bruce Straley, and creative director Neil Druckmann, also brought to you by Game Informer.
"Combat really starts with the tone of this world," Straley explains. As a bleak world that's been turned upside down, humanity has been corrupted by their more primal instincts. Humans themselves will act "as realistic opponents" that are "also trying to survive." As Bruce Straley talks about all of this, concept art is revealed, showing Joel ruthlessly strangling a human enemy from behind. Another piece of concept art shows him bludgeoning a bearded man with a wooden beam. Unfortunately, they never go into how fighting the "infected" enemies will feel, look and play.
The "stop and pop cover-based shooting" of Naughty Dog's Uncharted series is a hopping-off point for The Last of Us, but it isn't at the core of the experience. "How do we take what we learned [with Uncharted] and push it into a new realm?" asked Straley. The answer is to emphasize things like stealth and strategy. You can use stealth movements to get around unaware enemies, distract them with various AI partners you meet on your journey and use any number of tactics to fight your enemies, depending on important parameters like how well-equipped your foes are, and what kind of weapons they have on them.
A "sense of lethality" and a "sense of reality" is how the design team approached combat in The Last of Us. While in many games a person has no regard for himself or his own health, The Last of Us doesn't follow the same conventions. As Bruce Straley notes, if a man draws a gun on you, you won't draw your own gun, take a few shots and ultimately kill him. You'll probably run away. Then again, what if you have some buddies with you? Perhaps all but one person will run to cover while one person draws his weapon and returns fire.
At the heart of such a system is AI. "Making them feel real, making them intelligent, making them make smart decisions" is the key. And as Neil Druckmann points out later in the interview, The Last of Us totes "dynamic health," meaning that your health doesn't restore automatically as it does in, say, Uncharted. Rather, when you take a gunshot or get struck with an object, that damage stays with you until you have the means to heal yourself. And even the act of healing yourself "has consequences" and "takes time."
The most important AI decision it seems Naughty Dog had to make was in terms of Joel's persistent partner, the teenage girl named Ellie. Straley points out that one of the hallmarks of the Uncharted trilogy is that you usually have an AI partner that doesn't obstruct you. "But we wanna evolve that," he admits. "We're not on a babysitting mission, we don't have to supervise these people, they're capable of doing things on their own."
"It was important for us from the get-go to make Ellie a very capable character," Druckmann admits. Thus, they stayed away from making easy decisions with her. When considering how to "incorporate Ellie into the gameplay space," the team decided to make her as dynamic as other AI characters. She won't just run off, hide, and come out when it's safe. If she sees Joel in danger, for instance, she might throw a brick at an enemy to stun him so that Joel can run to cover, reload his weapon, or take any number of other actions.
But it seems like complicated decisions with huge payoffs are at the heart of The Last of Us' development. "It's a weird way of looking at it," Straley explains, "but everything we're doing in development of this game is going for the hardest thing possible. And then when it breaks, we'll pull back to what games tend to rely on, which is HUD, interface, control schemes, these kinds of things."
The Last of Us Dynamic Theme!
Enter this code into the 'Redeem Code' section of the Playstation Store:
G2LJ-GTNE-NKHM
Whats with the top pic being from tomb raider?
02-13-2012, 08:46 PM
#4
TechMemphis
< ^ > < ^ >
Originally posted by Empiyah
Oh damn, you're right, didn't even notice, thanks, fixed. 
lol no prob im interested in both games just didn't think it flowed with the title.
02-13-2012, 08:53 PM
#6
TechMemphis
< ^ > < ^ >
Originally posted by Empiyah
Indeed! Haha, same here.
It's a really good read, this article, you just can't be lazy, you'll get into it quick.
It's a really good read, this article, you just can't be lazy, you'll get into it quick.
Already read it over on ign earlier Naughty Dog is my favorite Development company I always keep track of their information releases and bioware as well. I noticed from your Mass Effect 3 post you seem to also lol.
The following user thanked TechMemphis for this useful post:
02-13-2012, 08:54 PM
#7
TheBigRod
uh-may-zuh-zing
Originally posted by TechMemphis
Already read it over on ign earlier Naughty Dog is my favorite Development company I always keep track of their information releases and bioware as well. I noticed from your Mass Effect 3 post you seem to also lol.
I'm a news fanatic, I keep track of just about everything.
But it's good to see a frequent news reader on NGU like yourself!
Naughty Dog is insanely creative, can't wait for The Last of Us, Uncharted 3 was brilliant.
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