Naughty Dog’s Max Dyckhoff (Programmer), Doug Holder (Visual Effects Artist), and Reuben Shah (Environment Artist) conducted an IAmA on Reddit today where they shared some intriguing details about the highly praised, The Last of Us, as well as their thoughts about the PS4, the chances that we’ll see Nathan Drake in the future and Polygon.com’s critical review of The Last of Us.
Ahead of the release of The Last of Us reviews have been extremely glowing. Programmer Max Dyckhoff stated that he was up until the wee hours of the morning refreshing this Neogaf review thread anticipating any leaked reviews. Among the dozens of critiques The Last of Us has received this week, Polygon’s 7.5 score may be the most talked about.
When the question was raised about the review during the IAmA, Doug Holder and Reuben Shah’s response to the opinions expressed by Polygon were pretty classy:
Holder: “I like what was said in the text. The reviewer seemed to be emotionally impacted by the experience of the game and the result was that it was not fun for them. By “not fun” I took that to mean it was difficult to experience some of the things in the game and it left a big impact on them emotionally and that wasn’t their cup of tea.”
“They maybe expected something more uplifting and the reality of our vision in this post pandemic world is just not so. Human nature is a scary thing. The reality of such a world would “not be fun”. A perfect score would have been lovely but everyone is entitled to their own opinion and that’s important to us.”
Shah: “Everyone is entitled to their view… even if it’s not what we want to hear/read.”
On the subject of the PS4, Max Dyckhoff had this to say:
“I think the PS4 is pretty awesome. I actually know very little about it, been too busy working on TLOU, but what I saw at the announce makes me excited.”
“I am super excited about the PS4,” he added in a separate response.”The announce back in February was new to me as everyone else. The hardware is bad ass, the games they showed look beautiful, and I have a lot of confidence in what will be shown at E3.”
Lastly, even though The Last of Us is just over the horizon, the Uncharted trilogy remains on the minds of many fans. A Reddit user asked, “Will we see Nathan Drake any more?” Dyckhoff responded.
Max Dyckhoff: To be determined!
