The Last of Us was one of those games to come out at the tail-end of a console generation and convince everyone to hold onto their old hardware. It was more than just a zombie game — the tale of Joel and Ellie's cross-country tour is one of the best stories in gaming, and Naughty Dog's absolutely ridiculous attention to detail helped craft a world that felt real, even with ravenous hordes of fungi-infected humans roaming about.

That's why it's such a surprise that Naughty Dog didn't think the game would be a success. No, really: during development, the team working on the game thought it might not come together... in fact, according to co-director Bruce Straley, he thought it was "going to tank."

As part of PlayStation's Conversations with Creators, some of the people behind The Last of Us discussed how the studio felt about the game in the months before its release and the so-called "Downfall of Naughty Dog."

"A big part of it was on the mechanical side. I thought, 'We'll be lucky to scrape by with an 85 Metacritic'... Just because it wasn't gelling, it wasn't coming together. It was a set of really lucky breaks in terms of gameplay decisions we made that really kind of made everything fall into place and turn into a fun game."

Game development isn't easy: hundreds of man-hours are poured into just getting a game to play properly, much less create a story and world as deep as The Last of Us. Add in the emotional stress of not thinking your game would actually work, and it sounds like development was a lot less smooth than the finished product would indicate.

Thankfully, morale started to turn around when the team behind The Last of Us started showing it off to other Naughty Dog employees:

"And we also had Teagan [Morrison, Lead Technical Artist at Naughty Dog], who was on Uncharted 3, and he had a similar reaction — 'Guys, I don't know what you did, but it's one of the most intense, emotional games I've ever played.' And that's the first time we were like, 'Ok, maybe we're ok, maybe we'll be alright.'"

Two years later, it's easy to see that Naughty Dog was onto something special. Considering just how good the game turned out to be, it's amazing that there was ever any doubt in the developer's minds — thankfully, their doubts didn't hold them back, or gamers might have missed out on a truly amazing game.

Naughty Dog's next game, Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, is set for release early next year.

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