Last week the first season of the The Last of Us series began to air and this Sunday the second episode arrives, which was directed by Neil Druckmann. Druckmann is the creator of the franchise and was the co-director of the first game, but his other co-director seems to have been forgotten and is Bruce Straley.
Bruce Straley was the co-director of the first The Last of Us game but left Naughty Dog in 2016, shortly after the release of Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, which he also directed. However, it is not possible to find Bruce in the series credits of The Last of Us for HBO and the director is sorry.
In addition to being the creator, writer, and director of The Last of Us video games, Neil Druckmann is the co-creator of the series alongside Craig Mazin, the showrunner of HBO’s Chernobyl. There’s been a lot of talk about them in recent months, and Bruce Straley regrets not unionizing when he was still working for Naughty Dog.
It’s an argument for unionization that someone who was part of the co-creation of that world and those characters is not getting credit or a dime for the work they put into it,” says Bruce Straley. “Maybe we need unions in the game industry to be able to protect creators.”
Although The Last of Us video games have been considered very realistic stories that reflect human nature in a post-apocalyptic environment, the events of the last few years have led Bruce Straley to believe that the game could have been even darker. “We weren’t real enough with the level of anxiety and tension that every character in that world would have had.”, said Straley, comparing what we have experienced in recent years with the covid-19 pandemic.
This Sunday the second episode of The Last of Us series premieres on HBO Max, which will be directed by Neil Druckmann and is expected to attract even more viewers than last Sunday’s season premiere. Meanwhile Naughty Dog reminds us of the release date of The Last of Us Part I on PC, as the remake that came to PS5 last year will be available on Steam before the end of the first season of the series.
Font: Los Angeles Times.
