The Last of Us Part 2 exclusive interview | Neil Druckmann on that lesbian kiss, extreme violence and what has happened to Joel (original) (raw)

The Last of Us Part II sees the return of Ellie Credit: Sony/Naughty Dog/Sony/Naughty Dog

26 September 2018 5:24pm BST

As it is Outbreak Day, the anniversary of when the Cordycep virus decimated the world in the first The Last of Us, we thought it was the perfect time to revisiting this scintillating interview with The Last of Us Part 2's director Neil Druckmann from E3 earlier this year.

The new trailer for The Last of Us Part II was arguably the highlight of Sony’s E3 2018 press conference. A gripping and grimly violent taste of the next chapter in original protagonist Ellie’s survival story, it managed to combine the tenderness of a blossoming same sex relationship with scenes of graphic dismemberment and gory murders.

The Telegraph sat down with vice president of Naughty Dog and the director of The Last of Us Part II Neil Druckmann for an exclusive and wide-ranging interview exploring the game’s controversial themes, delving into some of the backstory leading up to the events of the demo, and addressing the question of what happened to Ellie’s surrogate father from the first game, Joel.

Warning: mild spoilers for The Last of Us Part II’s plot lie ahead.

A few years ago you said you wouldn’t do a sequel to The Last of Us because the story of Joel and Ellie was done.

That sounds right.

So what changed?

Well, one, I’m not sure I was telling the truth wherever I said that quote… I guess there was a period where I was trying to find a story and felt like I was failing. I didn’t realise at the time my approach was wring but I was very kind of plot-oriented. I’m like, ‘oh, this was cool, and here’s this kind of journey…’ and then I’d step back and look at it and be like, ‘Oh no, there’s this kind of interesting twist, but what are we trying to say with this?’ I didn’t have anything to say.

And then I kind of stumbled on this concept that we could talk about but I’m actually glad that because of a bunch of circumstances I was diverted to work on Uncharted 4 for two years. And because of those two years I really got to develop this concept and let it marinade and come to its own. And now we feel very confident in the story that we’re telling and the reason to have a sequel.

Can you elaborate on ‘this concept’?

Yeah, absolutely. So with the first game, the thing that really sparked the whole thing is this concept of the unconditional love a parent feels for their child, and how a parent is willing to do anything - even horrible things - to protect their child. So it’s got this love aspect, this really dark aspect, and it felt ripe to explore in a video game. That’s like the whole concept of Joel and Ellie and their relationship and that how do we make a player feel the unconditional love a parent has for their child. That’s the whole first game.

Which set up the ending of course.

Exactly - where Joel is even prepared to sacrifice his relationship with Ellie in order to protect her. And then with the second game it started with this concept of - and it’s a hard thing to articulate - this idea of hate. And by that I mean, I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a fight or you’ve seen a video of someone torturing an animal or you’ve read about some atrocity and for a moment your mind goes, “I wish I could make that person pay. I wish I could make them suffer in the way they’ve made others suffer.’

So that idea is this exists within all of us and the only thing that prevents us from just tipping into this primal urge is laws, and the rule of law, and society. But if society is gone - and you see it in parts of the world where they don’t have those safeguards - the hate comes through and this cycle of violence permeates and people commit sometimes horrible acts.

So that became this primal thing, this ripe thing to explore in a video game. And it felt like it slotted right into this world, the characters fit right into the story we’re trying to tell and it felt like this complimentary piece to the first game. By the time you finish playing the first game you’ll be able to look at the two games and be like, oh, I see how everything kind of locks into place.

They’re two very different emotions, obviously…

They are and yet they are very much connected. One of the things I did research for this, there’s a documentary on HBO called Paradise Lost. It’s about the murder of these three children by these teenagers (I might be getting the numbers wrong - I’m not sure). And it’s three movies and by the end of it you find out the teenagers are actually innocent. But what I found interesting was that in these interviews with the parents who didn’t think the teenagers were innocent, you hear normal citizens, normal Americans, say, ‘I would skin them alive’. Again, it’s like something that exists within us. And for them it’s a perversion of love. It comes form a place of how much they loved this person that was close to them that they’re willing to commit this heinous act because they believe that is just. And we often pursue justice at any cost - whether it’s on a global scale with politics or on a personal scale. So that’s where the idea of hate is surrounded by good intentions.

Ellie is all grown up Credit: Sony/Naughty Dog/Sony/Naughty Dog

And presumably in the game there’s a specific incident that triggers this hate?

That would be a good presumption to make. Uh huh.

And presumably you can’t mention it?

No, it’s hard. The only thing I’ll say is with this demo we really wanted to show the duality of showing Ellie at peace within this community that has electricity, that has some semblance of old society. She can be in love with this other girl. Like, you see her almost at her happiest. And then something happens that takes this away from her that thrusts her onto this journey

It’s an incredible demo. Will it play out like that in the game or have you stage managed it to go from the kiss to the neck slice and back again?

E3 demos are an interesting thing. Normally when you play that level there are all these paths you could take of how you enter the garage or circumvent it, whether you’re going to engage with these people or not at all. But for E3 we take a complex system that has a lot of randomness and make it deterministic and then we play it a lot and we rehearse and choreograph it because we’re trying to show you very specific beats and moments but you’re seeing all game mechanics and systems and assets that you’re going to experience in the final game.

But will the story be told in flashback?

Oh, I see where you’re at. Some of the story will be told in non-linear, non-contiguous flow.

How much time has elapsed since the first game?

It’s been roughly four years. Ellie was about 15 when they arrived in Jackson. Now she’s about 19.

Where is she in her life now? What’s going on?

She settled down. From the clues you get from the cinematic she’s part of this group of older teens/young 20’s that enlisted in this… they’re not quite soldiers but they go on patrols protecting Jackson’s small town making sure Infected aren’t coming out or if there’s any wandering Marauders they report it back to the town. And during those fours years she’s had… a complicated relationship with Joel as he’s mentioned a little bit in that trailer.

So the ‘your old man’ reference is Joel? Because he’s the elephant in the room. Or rather not in the room because he was in the first PSX reveal but nothing since.

You saw the back of his head in the first one, yes.

So the popular fan theory that he’s dead is… not true?

Ha ha ha - that’s a weird question, right? Because first of all, everyone dies eventually so I don’t know exactly what the question is. But.. I guess the thing is with The Last of Us, first of all it’s these deep relationships and the stakes of who lives, who survives, what happens sometimes is a fate worse than death and to spoil any of that for any character would be doing a disservice to the story.

The demo also showed us Ellie is continuing to explore her sexuality…

Like any teenager would.

You started that in the Left Behind DLC but that kiss was still a bold thing to show at an E3 press conference. Was that a bold choice to make?

It didn’t feel bold… I guess I can speak for myself - I don’t know how the other people on the team felt about it - but for me Left Behind was harder maybe because I wasn’t as confident writing something like that. For Left Behind we took the kiss out and then we put it back in, I felt like we didn’t earn it, I didn’t want it to feel like it was there for shock value. I really wanted it to feel earned, like it was true to her character. That’s really important to me: are we telling the story and are we writing these characters as honestly as we can.

Then with this, we wanted to show that duality of… Ellie’s already this complex character and then we get this opportunity to spend this whole game with her and see all these other facets with her. And here we can see her being awkward, being naive, being in love, kissing, you see her smile - this is the happiest she’s been maybe in years, and then to contrast that with again whatever this event is that’s thrust her into that situation and she’s a hardcore survivalist, she’s violent - maybe even cruel at times - and that’s the same character. So that felt like the right ingredients for a demo, just representing the tone and feel of what this game is about.

And then once we realised, ok we’re going to show that, it was like, oh, we’re going to show these two girls kissing at E3. I was like, that’s kind of cool, I don’t think that’s been done at E3 before. So it was more like an afterthought, like, that’s going to be cool. It’s going to be something fresh.

Have you been disappointed by some of the reaction online?

It’s funny because it’s Pride month and I had this tweet where we had #pridemonth and we had the Naughty Dog logo with a rainbow flag and that one disappointed me. I guess not surprising in that that there’s some bigoted reactions but just the quantity of it surprised me. So going in to this I’m like, oh, of course there’s going to be some people who are uncomfortable with this. Which is always weird to me because you’re uncomfortable with two girls kissing but you’re ok with everything else that happened in this demo? Even if it maybe it doesn’t fit with how you morally see the world I hope you will still play the game and this is a way for us to normalise something that reflects the world that we live in.

Absolutely. And surely video games should be beyond this now.

Well I think all media should be.

What can you tell us about the other characters we saw in the church? There’s [Westworld star] Shannon Woodward’s character Dina..?

Right… I’ll, um, fill in some backstory. I don’t know if I’m supposed to say it but whatever, it’s fine. So since the end of the first game - spoiler! - Ellie and Joel have settled in Jackson, the town where his brother lives. And pretty soon thereafter Ellie hits it off with this girl Dina, They just become best friends, they have the same quirky humour. Dina is dating this guy Jesse but now the three of them are kind of friends, they’re part of this patrol of Jackson and Jesse is the leader of this group - a much larger group than just those three. And we come in for this demo on the night a few days after Dina and Jesse have broken up. And then we see that maybe there’s more than just a friendship there for these two.

The internet went crazy for the kiss between Ellie and Dina Credit: Sony/Naughty Dog/Sony/Naughty Dog

Last time round you described the making of The Last if Us as a very theatrical experience with actors semi-improvising scenes as you went along. Was it the same this time around?

Absolutely. Shannon especially very much digests the material and makes it her own. She even likes changing lines - which I love. If anyone can make the writing better for me then I’ll take it. It is very much a collaboration. The whole process is I try to send the scripts - and I have a co-writer Halle, we work on the scenes together - I try to send the scenes to the actors as early as possible so they can digest the material. Sometimes they’ll call me and we’ll talk on the phone and maybe change some stuff.

We have a whole day where we’ll just rehearse. Half of it is sitting around a table going through the scenes, going through the words, workshopping them, talking about any backstory we might have to fill in, any ideas they want to bring to the table. Then we’ll shoot it - but even while we shoot it, we’ll keep it flexible. We’re lucky that we have the luxury of time. Nothing feels rushed, we’re going to stay with a scene and I don’t mind doing 20 or 30 takes if need be. We’ll just explore options. If somebody has an idea and they want to do another take I’ll always give it to them. We might find a nugget in there.

You don’t have that preciousness that it’s my story, my lines?

Well to me it’s like the story is the message, the thing it’s trying to tell and if somebody’s going to bring a better idea to the table that’s what important. I’ll just say it’s mine at the end.

We have to talk about the violence in the demo: it’s extremely sickening. Lots of neck slicing, entrails falling out, hammer blows to the face… What are you trying to achieve with this?

Realism. We’re telling a story that’s a conversation about the cycle of violence. We’re telling a story that we’re saying there’s a cost of pursuing justice at any cost, both personal and around us. And we don’t want to sanitise it.

Our research is actually way more disturbing than what you see in the game. We watch real life violence. Stuff that’s hard for us to watch but we feel if this is a story we chose to tell we have to do it as honestly as we can. And therefore the violence needs to be as grounded as it can. Often a lot of the iteration process is minimising it and making it more realistic and that’s something our co-art director John Sweeney is really pushing hard: ‘no, no - look at this reference, this is how it should be’. And we know it’s going to be at times disturbing and at times uncomfortable and that’s ok, that’s part of art. As long as it’s engaging and ultimately there’s a reason for all of it and it causes you to reflect on it then that’s why it needs to be in there.

Having said all that, how do you feel when people at a press conference are loudly cheering every hammer blow. That made me feel really uncomfortable at Sony’s showcase.

I guess I don’t make the assumption that I know why they’re cheering. We had something similar with the E3 demo for the first Last of Us [in 2012] and some people said, ‘oh they’re cheering the shotgun blast [when Joel kills a human assailant at point blank range at the end of the clip]’. That’s not how I read it. To me, it’s like there’s tension. So when Ellie’s getting hit you’re not hearing cheering, so clearly they’re not cheering purely violence. But there’s something about the realise of tension that makes people make like an auditory sound.

But I think if we were to show them videos of violence in isolation you’re not going to get that cheering. It’s something about how the narrative is constructed, how invested people are, how they’re empathising with Ellie that when she comes out of the situation she’s in, that’s what they’re cheering.

The problem for me is you talk very eloquently about the violence not being gratuitous but the reaction in the room felt very gratuitous.

Did you cheer that way? Did you feel a sense of relief when Ellie gets out of that situation?

Yes, but I was squirming. It was quite oppressive to watch. The Paris Games Week trailer was also very brutal. The Last of Us One was also a violent game but personally my abiding memories are of the giraffe, the deer, the photo booth in Left Behind.

You remember all that after you’ve played the entire game.

Are we still going to get those quiet moments in Part II?

Absolutely. I think without it it would feel relentless. I remember with the first game we were talking there was obvious inspiration for us from [Cormac McCarthy’s novel] The Road. And I said, I don’t think The Road would work as a long-form game because that book, as beautiful as it is, is just relentless. So for us you need those moments of reprieve, you need to see those moments of happiness, of dancing, of humour… but again we’re telling the story about the pursuit of justice and all the suffering and pain that can come with it and we’re not going to shy away from what that means and the kind of experience we want the player to experience. But we want the full emotional experience for you to feel the full impact of that journey.