December 11, 2011 by Paul Curtin
There’s been a lot of speculation over the past few weeks as to which developer has been working on the upcoming mysterious PlayStation 3 exclusive The Last of Us. Naughty Dog instantly jumped to the top of the list of potential developers earlier last week when one clever gamer discovered a newspaper Easter egg in Uncharted 3‘s first pub level that stated “Scientists are still struggling to understand deadly fungus.” Turns out making mind-blowing Uncharted games is so 2011 and that Easter egg was in fact for The Last of Us, which Naughty Dog has been secretly working on for the past two years.
The Last of Us is a post-apocalyptic survival game that Naughty Dog is saying will be “an experience unlike anything else in the industry” and judging by the debut trailer shown tonight, which is rendered in real time on the PS3, they’re not lying. The lead protagonist strikes an uncanny resemblance to Uncharted‘s Nathan Drake ten years later with a daughter; however, The Last of Us‘ lead male is named Joel and is actually voiced by Troy Baker (Booker DeWitt from BioShock Infinite), not Nolan North. It would have been pretty ballsy for Naughty Dog to introduce such a drastic change to their award-winning Uncharted franchise, and The Last of Us will most likely not have much to do with Uncharted, but I’m still hoping for a late game twist that blows everyone’s minds by revealing Joel actually is Drake.
