It's been confirmed by Naughty Dog that the player will take control of Joel, while Ellie will be controlled by the AI. The game will involve both gunfighting and melee combat and it will also have a cover system. Unlike Uncharted, the players will have to find health packs to recover health. In the first two trailers two types of enemies can be seen: The Infected - former humans who were infected by the fungus - and The Survivors - other humans that are not infected but are still hostile towards Joel and Ellie for reasons unknown.
At Sony’s Press Conference at E3 2012 the first game play of the game was shown, receiving huge praise from spectators. The gameplay shows you playing as Joel trying to get to a bridge. The player brings Joel and Ellie into a flooded hotel where they hear other people. When the other people are heard Joel’s ammo and health finally appear showing four bullets in his revolver, and he and Ellie quickly go into cover mode. A violent fight soon ensues taking the player through several areas of the hotel - showing the different styles of fighting and weaponry in the game. The fighting gameplay shows Joel putting a man in a rear naked choke, some hand-to-hand combat, and the aiming system for a pistol and shotgun. The AI in the game was shown for the human survivors, with several enemies using cover and one enemy recognizing the sound of an empty revolver. An inventory system was also demonstrated, in which Joel creates a Molotov cocktail. Joel's limited number of rounds also suggests that supplies will be limited, a typical mechanic in the end-of-the-world genre of games.
For Ellie, it shows her assisting Joel when needed such as distracting a man by yelling at him and throwing a brick at him when Joel’s out of rounds. In another scene, Ellie stabs a man in the back when he jumps Joel, allowing Joel to free himself. Ellie’s health was not shown or noted in the demo, so it is unknown as to whether or not she will need to be healed when she is injured.
[edit]Development
The concept for The Last of Us arose after watching BBC nature documentary Planet Earth, which showed the cordyceps fungus-infected ants, resulting in taking over its brain and producing growths from its head; the idea that the fungus could infect humans became the initial idea for the game. Major artistic inspirations included the movies No Country for Old Men and The Road, comic The Walking Dead, historical novel City of Thieves, Richard Matheson's 1954 novel I Am Legend and the films it inspired.[6]
While the fungus epidemic is the main backdrop of the game, The Last of Us is not a "zombie game", but "a love story about a father-daughter-like relationship", influenced in part by the sequence between Nathan Drake and Victor Sullivan, his mentor and adoptive father, in the Uncharted series. Joel is a survivor and anti-hero, and Ellie is a 14 year-old girl with no experience of the world pre-apocalypse.[6] The composer for the game will be Gustavo Santaolalla. The team wanted to focus on emotion with the soundtrack rather than horror.[6]
On release of the initial trailer for the game Dead Island, the team was concerned that the two games would be largely similar, both exploring the human or emotional side to an apocalyptic event. However, on release of the aforementioned game, the team realised that the gameplay did not match up to that showed by the trailer; by contrast, lead designer Neil Druckmann feels that the trailer for The Last of Us is "very representative of what we're going for".[6] Druckmann also stated that he wants the story in The Last of Us to raise the bar for other video game developers, as he feels the standard of story-telling is not as good as it should be within the industry.[15][16]
The developer showcased an extended length gameplay video at Sony's press conference during the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2012.
For me this looks Epic,
I think i will defo get this, Graphics and everything look epic.
Just hope it plays and is good as it looks and sounds.
