'The Last Of Us Part 2' Latest News: Neil Druckmann Discusses His Creative Process
"The Last of Us Part 2" director Neil Druckmann has recently discussed his creative process in writing and developing video games.
During a broadcast from DICE Summit 2017, Druckmann – who also worked on "Uncharted 2: Among Thieves," "Uncharted 4: A Thief's End," and "The Last of Us" – explained how he writes his games and pitches them to developers.
As reported by DualShockers, the creative director revealed that he must first be able to confidently speak about the story. He usually fills out the simplest version of the story on index cards so that he can see the arc and know where the ending is. The ending is important because it guides him on what the story will be about.
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After fleshing out the core of the story, Druckmann works with the design team and the art team so they could begin developing the look of the game and how it plays. In this stage, the team starts to create assets such as a gameplay prototype, preview animations, and concept art of environments in order to help Druckmann visualize the game.
During this process, the story of the video game gets more fleshed out although everything is still written on index cards. The first scene of the game only gets written when the team is ready to shoot scenes and cast actors. In this stage, more details about the characters are revealed.
With the pitch, visuals and animations prepared, the whole team is brought to the studio and gets a walkthrough of the entire experience of the game. Lasting between one and two hours, the walkthrough has an extensive description of the beginning, characters, story arc, conflicts, gameplay and more. The session is recorded so that developers can refer to it while they are still going over the story, gameplay and aesthetics of the game.
"The Last of Us Part 2" does not have a definite release date yet. Druckmann has confirmed that the game is not yet finished and that it will take some time before it will be ready for launch. However, new trailers are expected to be released in the coming months.
