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Former PlayStation boss Shuhei Yoshida has revealed he was surprised when Naughty Dog wanted to move away from the Uncharted series for The Last of Us.
Naughty Dog's PS1 and PS2 output had the studio making three main series games, then a racing game. Crash Bandicoot did this (with one of the best racing games ever made, at that), then Jak and Daxter followed, but on the PS3, after three Uncharted games, Naughty Dog went in a vastly different direction.
Instead of making the safe choice and continuing its successful series (or making the really good choice to create Unkarted), Naughty Dog went on to create its fourth PS3 game an apocalyptic survival horror game: The Last of Us.
Speaking to GameSpot, former PlayStation boss Shuhei Yoshida said, "It was a bit surprising that Naughty Dog wanted to move on from Uncharted, but also that they were going to create something really mature."
While Uncharted had mature themes and featured protagonist Nathan Drake mowing down hundreds of men at any given moment, Yoshida described it as "a summer blockbuster movie for a very broad audience."
Even though The Last of Us shares the vast amount of killing you'd find in Uncharted, it pairs it with a depressing and oppressive atmosphere where the brutality of that violence is amped up, leading to a far more mature story. Yoshida explained that at the time he "was a little concerned that we may be going too niche by going so mature."
Yoshida said, "In the end, their craft produced such an amazing game that they established an IP even bigger than Uncharted" with it spawning two hugely successful award-winning games and a critically acclaimed TV series based on it. While Yoshida is no longer at PlayStation and is not involved in the development, he added that he is "so excited that they are working on a new IP again with Intergalactic."
