During a panel today at DICE Summit 2018, Naughty Dog creative director Neil Druckmann discussed one of the inspirations for The Last of Us, Part II and shared some interesting information about the development of Uncharted 4.

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"There's a show on Netflix called The End of the F***ing World, which is so well written and acted and quirky, and has been totally inspiring for some of the stuff we're doing in [ The Last of Us 2 ]—more on the dialog stuff." He also noted how the studio drew a lot of inspiration from Children of Men when making the first game, as they sought to tell an intimate story in-genre that isn't about some massive alien invasion.Druckmann also touched on how his idea for The Last of Us originated when creating a zombie game pitch for George Romero while he was in grad school, something he's discussed in the past . The idea "took ICO and combined it with characters from Sin City," and put players in the shoes of a cop with a heart condition who is protecting a girl. When he has heart trouble, the player's control would shift to the girl, who would then need to protect the cop. While Romeo passed on the pitch, the idea stuck with Druckmann and inspired the creation of The Last of Us.Additionally, Druckmann offered some insight into the development of Uncharted 4 and how the Crash Bandicoot sequence ultimately came to be included in the game. Since he joined as a director partway through production, there were assets already there that he was trying to figure out how to use. There was a dance sequence they considered using in the home scene between Nate and Elena, but they couldn't figure out how to make it work.So instead they brainstormed and tried to think of something else they could do, and thought having the two play Crash together would be a good idea. Druckmann said it started as a joke, as the studio no longer owned the rights to Crash, but when it looked like Sony might actually regain the rights, Naughty Dog started building it into the game prior to the final approval. Then, when they got the official go-ahead pretty late into development, they were able to add it in.Druckmann also discussed a sequence that was cut from the game. As he's mentioned previously , the studio planned to have a sword fight in the manor during one of Nate's flashback sequences. The fight would have served as a sort of tutorial for the final boss encounter at the end of the game , but they ultimately had to cut it.

Alex Osborn is a freelance writer for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @alexcosborn