Naughty Dog has kicked off a new series of videos that will reveal several “behind-the-scenes” aspects for their upcoming survival-adventure game, The Last of Us. The first episode of the new development series, titled “Hush”, launched this past week and explains how the studio came up with the idea for (and the visual look of) the Infected.
The idea behind the infected humans in The Last of Us came from a slightly distributing episode of BBC Planet Earth that showed how the real-life cordyceps fungus is able to infect and kill entire ant colonies (this also happens to be the same video that was used in teasers before the game was announced). Naughty Dog used that BBC video as a jumping off point for the game’s Infected, and expanded the idea by asking “What if the fungus jumped to humans?”.
While Planet Earth gave them the basic idea for terrifying enemies, the team still had to come up with an original “not zombie” look for the Infected. Finding that unique character design proved to be quite difficult, as the team rejected several concepts before landing on the exploding fungus look that we all know and love.
Aside from covering the design of the Infected, this first episode of The Last of Us development series also gives us another look at some new gameplay footage. However, at this point seeing more of the game really feels like less of a treat and more like a form of mild torture we you consider that we still have a ways to go before we can actually get our hands on it.
Assuming we don’t experience another heartbreaking delay, The Last of Us is currently set to launch on June 14th. Check out the first episode of the new development series below, and make sure to let us know your thoughts on how the game is shaping up down in the comments.
