**Neil Druckmann's pattern of conflict at Naughty Dog — Transcript & Summary | SozAI**
Source: https://sozai.app/transcript/neil-druckmann-pattern-conflict-naughty-dog/

Explores Neil Druckmann's rise and controversies at Naughty Dog, highlighting conflicts, credit disputes, and studio dynamics.

## Key Takeaways

- Naughty Dog’s success is shadowed by internal conflicts and controversies often hidden behind its acclaimed games.
- Neil Druckmann’s rise involved leveraging reputation, sometimes at the expense of collaborators like Bruce Straley.
- Credit disputes reveal broader issues about creative recognition and protections in the video game industry.
- The Last of Us is a landmark game shaped by multiple key figures, not a single visionary.
- Corporate ownership and studio culture heavily influence creative dynamics and conflicts.

## What the video covers

- Naughty Dog has a legendary history of pioneering gaming innovations across decades, from platformers to cinematic narratives.
- The studio has faced significant controversies including stolen credits, harassment allegations, crunch culture, and developer walkouts.
- Neil Druckmann rose from relative obscurity to a cult visionary after The Last of Us (2013), becoming a prominent figure in gaming and Hollywood.
- The video examines the disputed authorship between Druckmann and Bruce Straley, co-creators of The Last of Us, and the erasure of Straley's contributions.
- Straley publicly voiced his disappointment over credit issues and the lack of guild protections for game creatives compared to film and TV.
- Druckmann’s reputation and control at Naughty Dog have been central to both his rise and the internal conflicts within the studio.
- The HBO adaptation of The Last of Us further cemented Druckmann’s public image while sidelining Straley, sparking fan backlash.
- The video discusses the complex dynamics of creative collaboration, credit, and power struggles in big-budget game development.
- It also touches on Naughty Dog’s early history, the evolution of its games, and the impact of corporate ownership by Sony.
- The narrative highlights how reputation functions as currency in the gaming industry and the personal and professional consequences of its misuse.

## Chapters

1. 00:00 Naughty Dog's Legendary History and Controversies
2. 02:50 Neil Druckmann's Rise with The Last of Us
3. 05:28 HBO Adaptation and Credit Controversies
4. 08:10 Early Career and Studio Background
5. 10:51 Bruce Straley's Response and Industry Issues
6. 13:14 PlayStation 3 Era and Studio Challenges
7. 18:53 Narrative Development and Creative Collaboration
8. 23:46 Game's Moral Complexity and Final Reflections

Answers

## Questions about this video

What controversies surround Neil Druckmann at Naughty Dog?

Neil Druckmann has been involved in disputes over credit and authorship, with allegations of overshadowing collaborators and contributing to a toxic studio environment.

How did The Last of Us impact Neil Druckmann's career?

The Last of Us transformed Druckmann from a relatively unknown developer into a widely recognized visionary, elevating his status in both gaming and Hollywood.

Why is Bruce Straley's contribution to The Last of Us significant?

Bruce Straley co-directed The Last of Us and played a crucial role in its creation, but his contributions have often been overshadowed or minimized in public credit.

## Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

00:02

Speaker A

Naughty Dog has a rare claim to fame. Beginning with platforming in the nineties, then narratives in the naughties, and then cinematic immersion in the 2010s, pretty much since the dawn of 3D gaming, every single decade, the studio has produced a game or series that has singlehandedly raised the entire medium to new heights. So, their lineage is legendary.

00:21

Speaker A

series that has singlehandedly raised the entire medium to new heights. So, their lineage is legendary.

00:27

Speaker A

But what is not discussed nearly as much are the controversies that lay beneath the award-winning veneer.

00:33

Speaker A

I mean, we are talking about stolen credits, expelled creatives, unresolved harassment allegations, decades of gruelling crunch culture, and repeated documented cases of developers walking out mid-project, sometimes up to a dozen at a time.

00:49

Speaker A

I mean, we are talking about stolen credits, expelled creatives, unresolved harassment allegations, decades of gruelling crunch culture, and repeated documented cases of developers walking out mid-project, sometimes up to a dozen at a time.

00:56

Speaker A

Now, following the money can often get you to the heart of these stories, but like a lot of prestigious studios, Naughty Dog is not actually independent.

01:03

Speaker A

And amidst all that friction, one developer in particular would thrive in that chaos and use it to climb all the way to the top.

01:17

Speaker A

And this leaves just one asset that can be leveraged from the production for them all to fight over.

01:23

Speaker A

Now, following the money can often get you to the heart of these stories, but like a lot of prestigious studios, Naughty Dog is not actually independent.

01:32

Speaker A

But the phrase "struggling artist" exists for a reason. Because creatives have fundamentally different life goals.

01:39

Speaker A

Sony absorbed them in 2001, which means that despite having complete creative control over an intellectual property that is worth literally billions of dollars, the people in charge are just salaried employees like everybody else.

01:46

Speaker A

However, in the wrong hands, as we all know, a towering reputation can be used to crush people, such as your colleagues, and even steal their work.

01:55

Speaker A

And this leaves just one asset that can be leveraged from the production for them all to fight over.

02:08

Speaker A

You could cut the tension in that room with a knife." Speaking of currency, YouTube uses LIKES and SUBSCRIBES, so of course I would be massively grateful for either.

02:16

Speaker A

Reputation, a powerful currency in big-budget productions. In most jobs, a good reputation is something you just cash in for a promotion or a bigger pay cheque.

02:24

Speaker A

But if you want to lead a studio, or more specifically pull an established, beloved studio in a radical new direction, then it is reputation that channels the wind into your sails.

02:35

Speaker A

But the phrase "struggling artist" exists for a reason. Because creatives have fundamentally different life goals.

02:50

Speaker A

In 2013, the release of The Last of Us transformed Neil Druckmann, the game's creative director, from a relatively unknown industry player into a cult visionary almost overnight.

03:01

Speaker A

And for those few who think really big, reputation paves the way to ownership over something that will get you into the history books.

03:11

Speaker A

This put his name on the lips of mainstream critics far outside the niche bubble of gaming, and elevated his public profile from a talented game-maker to that of a prestigious Hollywood showrunner.

03:23

Speaker A

However, in the wrong hands, as we all know, a towering reputation can be used to crush people, such as your colleagues, and even steal their work.

03:32

Speaker A

But this sweeping credit is not entirely fair. Nor is it historically accurate. Because pretty much since the game's inception, those of us who followed the development of The Last of Us had absolutely no doubts that the bleak and beautiful

03:43

Speaker A

"And that director walked into the room full of all these people. He picked up the controller and he said to everyone, 'This game sucks.'" "It… it… it got personal.

03:50

Speaker A

And this shared authorship was something that the two of them discussed openly many times over the years, often sitting side by side in interviews.

03:57

Speaker A

You could cut the tension in that room with a knife." Speaking of currency, YouTube uses LIKES and SUBSCRIBES, so of course I would be massively grateful for either.

04:06

Speaker A

And his written-by credit appears hours later after you have completed the game. This was not a random formatting error.

04:14

Speaker A

Thank you very much. All right, plug over. Back to the video. Point is, different people use reputation in different ways, and therefore it means more to some than others.

04:25

Speaker A

A front-facing writing credit would have misrepresented the true collaborative authorship of the project. And furthermore, consider this undeniable fact.

04:34

Speaker A

But if you want to lead a studio, or more specifically pull an established, beloved studio in a radical new direction, then it is reputation that channels the wind into your sails.

04:42

Speaker A

"What did we… uh… Action Adventure… Story. Story. STORY... "Audio... Best Game." And the submission would have been made along with Sony by Naughty Dog's directors, who witnessed the gruelling production from start to finish.

04:56

Speaker A

And we will come to see over the course of this story that Neil Druckmann's deep preoccupation with steering the ship his own way is ultimately at the heart of this story.

05:02

Speaker A

Following this, and the production of Uncharted 4, Straley would actually take a sabbatical that he never returned from.

05:07

Speaker A

In 2013, the release of The Last of Us transformed Neil Druckmann, the game's creative director, from a relatively unknown industry player into a cult visionary almost overnight.

05:16

Speaker A

And so naturally, after he left, Druckmann continued to champion The Last of Us. And Straley's significance would slowly but surely get buried beneath this mythos of a singular visionary that evolved around Druckmann.

05:28

Speaker A

Then exactly ten years later, in 2023, he was credited on the blockbuster HBO television adaptation as a writer and an executive producer.

05:44

Speaker A

Sweet fk all. Not even a passing special thanks in the final crawl. I mean, this was despite holding a literal BAFTA that legally and artistically stated otherwise.

05:57

Speaker A

This put his name on the lips of mainstream critics far outside the niche bubble of gaming, and elevated his public profile from a talented game-maker to that of a prestigious Hollywood showrunner.

06:09

Speaker A

this kind of historical erasure. Naturally, the internet responded with absolute vitriol. Hundreds of dedicated fans leapt to defend Druckmann against this perceived slight, actively calling Straley out as a bitter credit stealer.

06:23

Speaker A

And this extensive mainstream exposure was what would cement him in the public consciousness as the sole creative pioneer behind the source material.

06:29

Speaker A

He was only the technical director, which is gameplay and level design." And this is actually pretty notable because it is one of the few occasions that Straley braved poking his head above the parapet to directly respond.

06:41

Speaker A

But this sweeping credit is not entirely fair. Nor is it historically accurate. Because pretty much since the game's inception, those of us who followed the development of The Last of Us had absolutely no doubts that the bleak and beautiful world was constructed by two men: creative director Neil Druckmann and game director Bruce Straley.

06:46

Speaker A

No offence, but you don't." But to truly grasp the tragedy of this fractured partnership, we are getting a little bit ahead of ourselves, because we need proper context.

06:56

Speaker A

And this shared authorship was something that the two of them discussed openly many times over the years, often sitting side by side in interviews.

07:08

Speaker A

"Push the start button." "I knew that." "All right, I got it." "It is impossible to talk about forty years of Naughty Dog without talking about where it all started." In the late 1980s, two friends founded a scrappy little software

07:21

Speaker A

And if you look closely at the original PlayStation 3 game's credits, Bruce Straley's director credit actually comes first, followed by Neil's.

07:29

Speaker A

The 1990s rolled in, and they made gaming history when they scored a massive hit on the original PlayStation with a spinning, attitude-filled bandicoot named Crash.

07:38

Speaker A

And his written-by credit appears hours later after you have completed the game. This was not a random formatting error.

07:41

Speaker A

And this would be an issue for Sony, because they desperately needed a mascot that could rival Nintendo's Mario and Sega's Sonic.

07:47

Speaker A

Corporate credits on hundred-million-dollar projects do not work that way. The co-presidents of Naughty Dog at the time, Evan Wells and Christophe Balestra, meticulously signed off on everything.

07:52

Speaker A

And yet, whenever Sony wanted to so much as place a cardboard cut-out of him in their foyer, it meant writing out a royalty cheque to Universal.

07:59

Speaker A

A front-facing writing credit would have misrepresented the true collaborative authorship of the project. And furthermore, consider this undeniable fact.

08:10

Speaker A

a new iconic character to be the undisputed face of PlayStation. But a few years before that, while Crash was still making waves globally, a young Neil Druckmann was moving through school and eventually on to college, where a lucky break

08:23

Speaker A

When the game won the prestigious BAFTA Award for Story, the award went to Druckmann and Straley together.

08:30

Speaker A

Druckmann envisioned a journey across a bleak and zombie-filled landscape with a young girl who would be escorted by an uncompromising ex-cop, who was heavily conceived with Sin City's Hartigan in mind, who was popular at the time because the Sin

08:43

Speaker A

"What did we… uh… Action Adventure… Story. Story. STORY... "Audio... Best Game." And the submission would have been made along with Sony by Naughty Dog's directors, who witnessed the gruelling production from start to finish.

08:50

Speaker A

Where's the… this has almost nothing to do with Night of the Living Dead.'" Following this rejection, Druckmann joined Naughty Dog as a humble programmer.

08:57

Speaker A

So if they believed that Straley was partly responsible for the story, it is because he was.

09:05

Speaker A

And this is when he reworked the protagonist into a hardened career criminal, seeking atonement for his daughter's tragic death.

09:12

Speaker A

Following this, and the production of Uncharted 4, Straley would actually take a sabbatical that he never returned from.

09:17

Speaker A

Druckmann even produced a six-issue conceptual arc that he drew himself. And while he would one day successfully produce a comic called A Second Chance at Sarah, when it came to his post-apocalyptic journey, he never really found an indie

09:30

Speaker A

And he cited profound burnout, and that he found the studio environment a pressure cooker, and it was severely straining his working relationships and mental health by the time he walked away.

09:39

Speaker A

And it would be on the later games in this series that a young Druckmann would then go on to hone his programming skills.

09:45

Speaker A

And so naturally, after he left, Druckmann continued to champion The Last of Us. And Straley's significance would slowly but surely get buried beneath this mythos of a singular visionary that evolved around Druckmann.

10:03

Speaker A

Amy Hennig's success in the gaming industry is widely documented, and she is pretty revered too, stretching back as far as the Legacy of Kain series.

10:11

Speaker A

"Our guest today is arguably the greatest video game creator of all time." And so sometime later, when the acclaimed HBO series launched to millions of viewers, how much credit did Bruce Straley receive for creating the characters, the tone, and the world?

10:22

Speaker A

As resident writer, she and the team were bringing the Jak and Daxter story to a close, and at this exact stage, Sony had a serious hardware problem.

10:30

Speaker A

Sweet f\*\*\* all. Not even a passing special thanks in the final crawl. I mean, this was despite holding a literal BAFTA that legally and artistically stated otherwise.

10:42

Speaker A

And then Microsoft probably twisted the knife when they went ahead with a tactical release of the Xbox 360, a full year before the PlayStation 3 released.

10:51

Speaker A

So understandably hurt, Straley spoke up, and he used his disappointment to highlight the severe lack of guilds protecting creatives in the video gaming space, pointing out that the Writers Guild of America protects writers in film and television from exactly this kind of historical erasure. Naturally, the internet responded with absolute vitriol. Hundreds of dedicated fans leapt to defend Druckmann against this perceived slight, actively calling Straley out as a bitter credit stealer.

10:57

Speaker A

Naughty Dog was just one of about a dozen studios that Sony had in their exclusive wheelhouse at this point.

11:03

Speaker A

And in one public debate, a Twitter user claimed: "Bruce was never in the narrative department.

11:18

Speaker A

decided that they would bite. "We had no idea how we could achieve any of what we wanted to do." And they turned to their best writer, Amy Hennig, to mastermind the project.

11:29

Speaker A

He was only the technical director, which is gameplay and level design." And this is actually pretty notable because it is one of the few occasions that Straley braved poking his head above the parapet to directly respond.

11:35

Speaker A

Once the swashbuckling concept was established, she and the team settled on a name, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune.

11:43

Speaker A

"You speak with an authority as if you know what happened day in and day out in the studio.

11:49

Speaker A

However, she would rely heavily on the technical input that came from a pair of co-directors, or co-art directors to be specific, Bob Rafei and Bruce Straley.

12:00

Speaker A

No offence, but you don't." But to truly grasp the tragedy of this fractured partnership, we are getting a little bit ahead of ourselves, because we need proper context.

12:14

Speaker A

And this was before Sony's acquisition, which made him a Naughty Dog lifer, and one of the longest-serving employees.

12:20

Speaker A

And honestly, it is a fascinating story worth knowing. And the story starts, as all great stories do, at the very beginning with the humble birth of Naughty Dog.

12:23

Speaker A

And this is where he gained immense technical exposure under the seemingly generic pool of creators and developers, which is a distinct testament to Naughty Dog's long-established and highly intentional practice of trying to keep their team structure as flat and ego-free as possible.

12:41

Speaker A

"Push the start button." "I knew that." "All right, I got it." "It is impossible to talk about forty years of Naughty Dog without talking about where it all started." In the late 1980s, two friends founded a scrappy little software company called Jam Software, before eventually rebranding as Naughty Dog, and then signing up with Universal Interactive for essential funding.

12:50

Speaker A

And so when Hennig's massive new production ramped up, Bruce stepped up and joined Rafei in directing the game's visuals, and Neil was brought in as one of four game designers.

12:58

Speaker A

The 1990s rolled in, and they made gaming history when they scored a massive hit on the original PlayStation with a spinning, attitude-filled bandicoot named Crash.

13:02

Speaker A

Instead, all the designers would input story ideas to Hennig. And according to the game's lead designer, arguably Neil more than most.

13:09

Speaker A

"What do you think about that?" Problem was, they did not actually own the character.

13:14

Speaker A

When the PS3 initially released, it was ridiculously expensive, and so famously suffered a slow start.

13:20

Speaker A

And this would be an issue for Sony, because they desperately needed a mascot that could rival Nintendo's Mario and Sega's Sonic.

13:29

Speaker A

And importantly, it outsold Jak and Daxter. And that was all the justification that Sony was going to need to green-light a bigger, bolder sequel.

13:38

Speaker A

And Crash was such a popular fan favourite that he did not really leave room for anyone else.

13:55

Speaker A

Hennig, who continued to steer the ship as creative director. And for Druckmann, his input into the first game earned him one of the sequel's two lead game designer roles.

14:05

Speaker A

And yet, whenever Sony wanted

14:14

Speaker A

"What's going on?" Such as the brilliant choice to use the latter train crash scene for an unforgettable start.

14:26

Speaker A

The game's new art director, Robh Ruppel, summed up the team dynamic pretty well when he said: "Bruce was the right guy for the job in perfecting the play experience.

14:35

Speaker A

Amy was fantastic for guiding the story, and Neil was crucial for implementing both these pillars into the design." Uncharted 2 would then go on to be released to massive, massive, paradigm-shifting success.

14:50

Speaker A

And this cannot be understated. It critically scored even higher than The Last of Us did at its peak.

14:56

Speaker A

And it elevated Naughty Dog and the entire team to the status of industry rock stars.

15:02

Speaker A

And during most press interviews of that era, Bruce and Neil can be seen joined at the hip.

15:06

Speaker A

And privately, they would meet up for dinner and brainstorm new characters, cool gameplay scenarios, and narrative arcs.

15:12

Speaker A

"Bruce and I would have these dinners where we'd just kind of discuss blue-sky ideas." They even hit the road sometimes to deliver lectures together, such as the fascinating 2010 GDC talk, where they went into granular detail about how Uncharted

15:25

Speaker A

pushed them to invent entirely new storytelling methods, like using interactive set pieces to trigger emotional character beats.

15:32

Speaker A

"Our goal is to create a seamless narrative experience." As director, Bruce would filter Neil's ambitious ideas and his seniority and deep understanding of gameplay flow allowed him to steer his younger, and perhaps arguably more ambitious, creative partner clear of pitfalls

15:46

Speaker A

that he felt would negatively impact the pacing of the game. After Uncharted 2's monumental success, Sony agreed to not just a third game, but another game made simultaneously.

15:57

Speaker A

And this was no small task, as the studio's relatively small size would mean stretching thin across two massive projects.

16:04

Speaker A

And that second game that Sony agreed to was originally meant to be a gritty reboot of Jak and Daxter.

16:10

Speaker A

So Hennig would continue to lead Uncharted, while Straley and Druckmann, with their highly complementary strengths, having both worked as artists and technical at one point in their careers, were the ideal choice to handle the reboot.

16:22

Speaker A

And so they quickly fell back into their comfortable rhythm of bouncing ideas off one another.

16:27

Speaker A

But their shared, increasingly mature vision proved far too gritty and too grounded for the cartoonish world of Jak and Daxter.

16:35

Speaker A

"We found that the ideas were kind of getting away from what Jak and Daxter was." "So we went to our boss and said, 'Do we have to do this?'" "Uh, and he said, 'No.

16:44

Speaker A

I thought it would just be easier for you guys if you started with something.'" "'Uh, but if you want to do something else, come up with something else.'" And so began a period of intense brainstorming that would evolve

16:54

Speaker A

into something else entirely. Their brainstorming sessions heavily drew on two shared obsessions. The first was Ico, a brilliant minimalist game where the player leads a fragile princess through a scenic castle, solving puzzles, protecting her, and forming a silent

17:13

Speaker A

bond through the shared journey. "While working on Uncharted 2, Bruce and I would have these dinners where we'd just kind of discuss story ideas or just gameplay concepts." "And we both loved Ico a lot." The second thing they were very

17:25

Speaker A

fond of was a mute girl character that they conceived together, but never quite managed to slot into the chaotic pacing of Uncharted.

17:32

Speaker A

This character concept eventually evolved into Drake's non-English-speaking ally, Tenzin. But before Tenzin, they envisioned a young villager from the Tibetan mountains who would beckon Drake away from the camp, and lead him on a playful climb, creating a natural

17:47

Speaker A

bonding process for the player, not through expositional dialogue, but by sharing a real-time experience with a fictional character.

17:54

Speaker A

"And the idea to make her mute was that everything that happens between you is all based on gameplay mechanics." "And you follow her climbing pipes all the way to the top, and then she shares with you this view of the city that

18:04

Speaker A

she calls home." "For Bruce and I, in our minds, it was a really beautiful moment of how you can bond with someone through gameplay." And when asked on the AMA Reddit forum whether, when conceiving The Last of Us, they developed

18:15

Speaker A

the characters or the world first, they said, "We started with the idea of building a bond between two characters over the course of an entire game." "And then a confluence of events happened that just fell into place for us, that made the

18:28

Speaker A

survival world a perfect backdrop to create the tension we needed." And so he and Straley brushed the dust off their mute girl concept, which served as the basis for Ellie, and then combined that with the protector mechanic that they

18:39

Speaker A

loved from Ico, which gave them the foundational basis for Joel. And so, with the two directors having established a rough character dynamic, in Druckmann's own words, his long-shelved zombie story concept finally had a chance to come back into play, and it would

18:53

Speaker A

provide an ideal narrative backdrop. However, a key idea that lifted the game above contemporary zombie thrillers of the time actually came from a BBC documentary about the Cordyceps fungus.

19:04

Speaker A

"The other thing that happened is we watched BBC…" It is worth noting that in the earliest keynote, Neil explicitly says, "we watched BBC," acknowledging the fact that despite the Cordyceps infection being the absolute core of the game's identity, the

19:18

Speaker A

initial idea was actually not his. "We're feeding each other books and watching movies together, and saying like, 'Have you seen this?

19:25

Speaker A

What do you… you know?'" "And one of those things was the Planet Earth BBC documentary." And this brings us on to one of the most revealing moments of the game's early development.

19:34

Speaker A

The team's collaborative shaping of Druckmann's narrative was an absolute necessity, because left to his own devices, Druckmann's creative instincts did not only lean towards the uncomfortably bleak, but arguably the tone-deaf too, or at least they certainly used to.

19:49

Speaker A

In his early concept, dubbed Mankind, Druckmann envisioned a cynical world where only females would get infected by the virus, and the player, stepping into the shoes of the proverbial alpha male, would then navigate a world entirely populated by ugly, monstrous, crazy

20:03

Speaker A

women, and violently beat them all to death, while also gunning down any male survivors along the way.

20:09

Speaker A

When Druckmann pitched this idea to the studio, the female staff members understandably pushed back a little bit.

20:14

Speaker A

A lot, actually. And they rightfully pointed out the disturbing undertones of domestic violence. I mean, that literally sounds like something Andrew Tate would have pitched.

20:21

Speaker A

Yet, Druckmann initially refused to budge. He defended the concept aggressively, despite the severe flaws being clearly laid at his feet.

20:28

Speaker A

And this shows a spectacular lack of self-awareness. But the real takeaway here is a stark admission of his overly stubborn, possessive attachment to his own ideas.

20:38

Speaker A

He confesses holding on to these concepts for far too long, stating, "And why we held on to them, why I held on to them for so long." He admits that he does not always believe his ideas are better, but

20:47

Speaker A

his driving passion is, and always has been, to be the storyteller. And as is so common with singular writers, this results in a precious attachment to ideas that began life in his mind.

20:59

Speaker A

He is constantly torn between telling the best story and telling his story. Neil's love of bleak scenarios leads to powerful storytelling, but dark content becomes mentally exhausting if it is not meticulously balanced.

21:13

Speaker A

And again, when he was asked how they managed to stay in such a dark place while making the game, Druckmann admitted, "I'm pretty dark." "I wanted to kill Elena in Uncharted 2." "Bruce is the one that would balance me and push for

21:28

Speaker A

more levity." His words. By prioritising emotional reward and pacing, Straley actively pushed back on Druckmann's relentlessly dark story beats.

21:39

Speaker A

He demanded moments of levity, the giraffes, the jokes, the subtle moments of beauty there.

21:46

Speaker A

— "If he doesn't know about it, he can't take it away." —and ensuring that the emotional roller coaster experienced by the player remained balanced, which is something that lighting artist Gabriel Beitone comments on when discussing the shift in company dynamic on Part II,

22:00

Speaker A

following Bruce's departure. "I don't know that I would take the same creative risks as Neil does," "but I do acknowledge that as a creator, you do want to err on the side of something that makes people feel more rather than less."

22:16

Speaker A

"But I also think that it needs to be done carefully and with tact." "And I know that that was absolutely true in the first game, where I think there was more balance in the input of the whole project, including story

22:30

Speaker A

and character development." "But by The Last of Us Part II, the room to be able to have the conversations, to either push back, balance out…" "…you know, if Neil wanted to serve this hardcore cocktail, and all it needed was a little lime

22:47

Speaker A

in The Last of Us Part I, somebody would have been able to put in the lime." "And in Part II, I don't know that there was a space for that as much any more." So between building the pitch together, hashing out

22:59

Speaker A

concepts together, and Straley's constant pacing adjustments, his unmistakable fingerprint was baked into the DNA of The Last of Us.

23:07

Speaker A

And then he left. And with that, the key mouthpiece for the depths, unable to get a moment with Druckmann, resulting in a narrative that leaned heavily into darkness without the more frequent and sustained moments of humour and warmth.

23:21

Speaker A

"Hey, that ain't for kids." "Whoa." Which provided levity throughout the journey and helped define the first game.

23:28

Speaker A

And this is what makes Straley's eventual erasure from the HBO adaptation so egregious. Had the game been subject to the Writers Guild of America guidance, Straley's name would have legally appeared alongside Druckmann as a co-writer or co-creator.

23:42

Speaker A

The WGA recognises shared authorship in all of its forms, protecting those who shape the narrative structurally, not just those who type the dialogue.

23:51

Speaker A

And we know the authorship was shared, because for many years this is what Neil told everybody.

23:56

Speaker A

"Then over the next several months, Bruce and I kind of holed ourselves in a room… and like, picked bits and pieces of the story that we liked.

24:05

Speaker A

Kind of came up with environments that were interesting to us. And we put this thing together this pitch that's now going to be much closer to what you saw in the game." Now, the original pitch that Druckmann and Straley brought to

24:20

Speaker A

management would end up being notably different in some key aspects from the masterpiece that we received.

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Speaker A

It featured the same opening: Joel losing his daughter, and a twenty-year time jump. However, in this version, Tess is a hard case, and she leads a crew that includes Joel.

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Speaker A

Marlene hires them to escort a girl across country. Tess's brother is the one who tries to sneak them out, but they are spotted, and Joel starts a firefight.

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Speaker A

When the dust settles, Tess's brother is dead, and Tess vows to get her revenge against Joel.

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Speaker A

So, he flees with Marlene and Ellie. But Marlene gets bitten, and so pleads with Joel to take Ellie the rest of the way.

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Speaker A

And with his daughter's memory in his mind, he agrees, leading to a cross-country journey, with Tess and her crew pursuing them out of vengeance.

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Speaker A

They then reach the lab, and Ellie is sedated, and Joel is told that operating on Ellie will be complicated.

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Speaker A

Slam to black. She wakes in the back of a car driven by Joel, and he tells her she is safe.

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Speaker A

But seconds later—bam! Tess's crew ram them off the road. Joel gets Ellie to safety, but he is captured, and then he gets viciously tortured by Tess.

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Speaker A

Joel tells her there is nothing she can do to him. He has already sold his soul for the girl.

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Speaker A

And so she levels her gun, and—bang. Slam to black. With a time jump, we now find ourselves back at the lab, with a scientist revealing to Joel that saving humanity means killing Ellie.

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Speaker A

And Joel's response would be the same as it ever was. Back to the present, as Ellie sneaks away, she realises that Joel saved her life.

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Speaker A

And so, now controlled by the player, she sneaks back to find Tess levelling her gun at Joel's head.

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Speaker A

And it is a dramatic reversal of the protector dynamic, because Ellie, who has retained her innocence up until this point, and has not killed anybody, is forced to fire the shot we heard earlier, killing Tess and thus saving Joel's life.

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Speaker A

I mean, that really is a good story. Druckmann had always envisioned bookending his story with these emotional heartbeats.

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Speaker A

First, Joel losing a child, and then a child taking a life to save his, thus reaching adulthood in his eyes.

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Speaker A

So when the pitch received heavy scrutiny from his fellow creatives, it is no surprise that Druckmann fiercely struggled to let that vision go.

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Speaker A

"I didn't want to let go of that ending. That ending in my mind was so cool." The team, led by Straley's focus on grounded believability, cited that Joel's transformation into Ellie's protector lacked sincerity, because it happened too quickly.

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Speaker A

And furthermore, Straley strongly argued that having Tess pursue them across a deadly, infected country purely for revenge completely undermined the perilous reality of the world that they were building.

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Speaker A

Straley told Empire magazine, "It was really hard to keep somebody motivated by just anger to get… what is it?

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Speaker A

Revenge." "You just don't buy into it when the stakes are so high." "How is she suddenly then getting away with it just for the story's sake?" By making Tess the one who gets bitten, and having her dying wish

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Speaker A

obligate Joel to accompany Ellie, that provided the organic time frame needed for Joel to then believably form a lasting bond with Ellie.

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Speaker A

And furthermore, Druckmann's Sin City-fuelled inspiration of Hartigan left the early version of Joel feeling overly stoic, to the point of actually being pretty emotionless and boring.

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Speaker A

And it was only when voice actor Troy Baker joined the cast that the character found his soul.

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Speaker A

"I've always imagined this Joel doesn't really care for Tess." "And Troy treated it differently." And Druckmann again was initially so attached to his flat, stoic concept that he genuinely considered firing Baker.

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Speaker A

Fortunately, Baker's iconic and emotionally layered performance won him round, leading to retroactive changes to the script.

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Speaker A

And this further proves how fluid and collaborative the writing truly was. "The entire process is collaborative, but really it's led by Neil's willingness to change, and decide something doesn't work, you know, fix it right there in the moment."

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Speaker A

Druckmann wrote the specific dialogue, but the narrative structure, the thematic balance, and the pacing were a Naughty Dog group effort, and championed by the only person who could fully put his foot down, Bruce Straley.

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Speaker A

About two years before The Last of Us would release, Amy Hennig's team unveiled Uncharted 3.

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Speaker A

And the first game had amassed five million sales, the second almost six million, and the third would reach an impressive eight million.

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Speaker A

And so Sony willingly signed off on Hennig and her team to start working on a fourth, and what they all agreed would be the final game.

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Speaker A

Eighteen months pass, and then The Last of Us drops, and it grows into a cultural juggernaut, and boasts sales that eventually would leave Uncharted in the dust, along with most other games out at the time.

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Speaker A

And Sony executives couldn't not see which franchise, and more importantly which directors, were the bigger source of cash.

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Speaker A

Over the space of about nine months, Druckmann and Straley witnessed Uncharted 4 evolving under Hennig, while they promoted The Last of Us, which importantly would cement the duo as a creative powerhouse.

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Speaker A

At this time, there are parallel stories about Druckmann's candour, suggesting that he began taking liberties with a lax atmosphere.

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Speaker A

Remember what I said about reputation? While it is powerful, at this point it was freaking peaking for Druckmann.

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Speaker A

And so, seemingly, he got away with it. "That director walked in... in the room full of all these people. He picked up the controller, and he said to everyone: 'This game sucks.' Like, I'm surprised he had the gall.

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Speaker A

He was disrespectful in that he was so adamant and insulting the work itself. And in the meeting, people walked out of there really upset. They decided they were going to push forward anyway.

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Speaker A

They were going to ignore the naysayer. But here's what happened. Corporate looked at it and they said, 'You guys are in trouble.

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Speaker A

We're going to pull funding from this if you guys don't fix this.' And as a result, the director of that project was pulled away... even though they'd been successful...

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Speaker A

and the naysayer, along with two others, were put in to help fix it. And then the game had to be redone.

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Speaker A

But then two and a half, three years later, the game became a success." From the public's perspective, the news came out of nowhere, with Sony thanking Hennig for her time, and announcing her departure to IGN.

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Speaker A

Bruce was handed back his reins as game director, a role we know he did not want, because it broke him, and he was pretty vocal about it afterwards.

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Speaker A

And Druckmann stepped into her former shoes, finally becoming the lead writer and creative director of Uncharted 4.

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Speaker A

And so, if the two of them were involved in Hennig's departure, being honest, behind the scenes, which of those two men do you think is more likely to have been pushing that agenda?

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Speaker A

And Sony promised her departure was amicable, and that the timeline would be unaffected. But IGN dug deeper, and they published a bombshell report claiming that sources close to the studio stated that Druckmann and Straley forced her out.

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Speaker A

Co-presidents Wells and Balestra fired back publicly, which is unusual for them, calling the report hurtful and unprofessional, insisting that Bruce and Neil were not involved, and followed this with a supposedly candid interview, which was comically evasive at anything but candid.

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Speaker A

And then there is the man behind The Game Awards, journalist Geoff Keighley, who makes a habit of cosying up to industry titans.

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Speaker A

And so, you can never really trust him to be impartial. But for context, he said that after the BAFTA awards after-party, he felt sorry for the two men, because despite having won the prestigious Best Game award, they ended up

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Speaker A

walking around nervously, wondering what everybody was saying about their supposed villainous ways. Drake's actor, Nolan North, remained pretty diplomatic, only saying, "We'd shot eight months of Amy Hennig's story, and it was all thrown away." Hennig also cast Alan Tudyk as the

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Speaker A

villain in her version— "And he gave me a hug, and in my ear said, 'Fuck you.'" He managed to use a clause in his contract to get out.

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Speaker A

"I know you were briefly attached to Uncharted 4, and then…" And when asked about working for Druckmann, he plays with his words, but ultimately has this to say.

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Speaker A

"I made some friends, not with Naughty Dog, but I made some friends with the people that left." But from the entire Uncharted team, it would actually be Sully's voice actor, Richard McGonagle, who laid it out the clearest.

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Speaker A

"It was very upsetting. We got a call one day that Amy had been replaced. That was not her choice." "I'd love to know why, because she'd done such a fantastic job on the first three." "I don't really know. There was

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Speaker A

some sort of internal machinations going on behind the scenes." "It was upsetting for you and the entire crew?" "Heartbreaking?" "Or, you know—" "Angry! I mean, it hurt, but there was anger on top of it. We actually all got together and talked about

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Speaker A

just walking away." Naughty Dog would go on to accuse him, not of lying or of spreading false rumours, but specifically of being loose-lipped, which literally means, "Stop telling everyone the truth." And that is not even the worst of it.

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Speaker A

The most damning commentary of all would come from Hollywood writer-director Joe Carnahan, who was working in parallel to the games on an official film script with Ryan Reynolds at the time, and he openly expressed his frustration with the

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Speaker A

regime change, stating, "Ultimately, I wanted to make Amy happy. It was her creation. I think… what's his face? I'm not a fan. The guy that kind of stole credit for it." When asked if the person he was describing was Neil

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Speaker A

Druckmann, he responded by saying: "Yeah, that jerk-off. There was a bit of saboteuring there going on with Naughty Dog. Amy created that world, and she was the one I really wanted to please.

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Speaker A

That other guy, whatever the hell his name is, he's a hitchhiker." No matter how bitter Carnahan might sound, he worked his way to the top of Hollywood, he has worked with them all, and will know all too well that the industry forces

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Speaker A

cut-throat decisions on creatives. And yet, he still chose to single Druckmann out with palpable contempt.

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Speaker A

And when you consider that almost everybody who knows the truth of Naughty Dog would lack the clout to criticise an industry icon, even if they wanted to, that is assuming they are not bound to silence by contract, which they

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Speaker A

probably are, then Carnahan's outburst, jaded or not, is a pretty rare glimpse behind the curtain.

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Speaker A

At the end of the day, evidence is just evidence, so you really will have to draw your own conclusions.

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Speaker A

But personally, I cannot help but see the pattern of a creative who is willing to fight for what he wants.

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Speaker A

So, having taken control of Uncharted and dialling it up to eleven, the version of Uncharted 4 that Straley and Druckmann eventually released turned out to be an exceptional piece of media.

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Speaker A

It expertly blended the high-octane set pieces of Uncharted with the character-driven maturity that they had honed on The Last of Us.

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Speaker A

The game is filled with warmth, from the cosy nostalgia of exploring Drake's attic, to the heartwarming sequence of playing Crash Bandicoot on the sofa with Elena.

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Speaker A

None of this would have been possible if Straley had let Druckmann kill off Elena in Uncharted 2.

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Speaker A

And it was a massive hit, second only to Uncharted 2 in critical ratings. But whether driven by lingering guilt over the unceremonious ousting of Hennig, or the sheer, crushing pressure of maintaining momentum, Bruce Straley finally succumbed to profound exhaustion.

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Speaker A

He announced his sabbatical, and gently that transitioned into a permanent departure. His public announcement was respectful, but noticeably vague, noting that the work had begun to feel less personal, and the corporate formula no longer aligned with his creative interests.

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Speaker A

And so, despite achieving industry-defining success together, and despite once describing their partnership as being like a marriage, their words— "You would not. I'll answer for Neil.

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Speaker A

He would not be okay with that." In the decades since Bruce left, neither man has spoken a single word about the other.

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Speaker A

So, no drama, but not even a whiff of warmth, either. Naughty Dog's Benson Russell reflected on his time with the men, in the office and out.

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Speaker A

"Neil's good to work with. We got along okay. We were co-workers, and we hung out a little bit outside of work.

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Speaker A

I remember once coming out of a meeting with... I think it was Amy and Bruce in there. We were walking back and he's real mad and I was like, 'Hey, what's the matter?' And he was just like, 'I really wish you

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Speaker A

would just get on board with what we're trying to do here.' And I'm like, 'I'm sorry. I don't agree with the decision you're pushing.

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Speaker A

I.. I don't.' There was definitely some other times during crunch. I mean, it's like 9 o'clock on a Sunday night. Morale was really low. I think it was Neil that said: 'Well call the programmer. Get him back in here.

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Speaker A

He needs to fix it.' At that point, I was like, 'Or we could just let it go. It's Sunday, guys.' And I get it.

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Speaker A

He was under a lot of pressure, as was Bruce. And a shouting match ensued of just like, 'What the f\*\*k do you know about it?' There's been moments like that that I'm sure have sullied my relationship with Neil.

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Speaker A

Bruce... I still keep in contact with him. Neil I don't. It seems that one of them was not there to make friends.

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Speaker A

The Last of Us Part II entered full production, and every directorial decision, narrative beat, and thematic choice would now go through him.

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Speaker A

The sheer scale of his ambitious project meant a layer of middle management would become necessary to meet deadlines, turning their industry-defying flat structure into something more akin to a pyramid, which would conveniently form a peak upon which Druckmann

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Speaker A

would sit, and insulate him from the open-floor debates that had previously constrained his vision.

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Speaker A

Hennig was ousted because Druckmann convinced management that he could do her job, and objectively, he would actually prove them right.

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Speaker A

Straley then dropped out, and the newly promoted co-directors, Anthony Newman and Kurt Margenau, would now be beholden to Druckmann's vision, who was now all but established at the top of the pyramid.

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Speaker A

But by finally shaking loose the last external influence, he would also lose his counterbalance.

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Speaker A

And as for the co-presidents, their job ultimately was to keep Sony satisfied. And Druckmann was no longer a hungry developer who needed steering, but a director with an established reputation.

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Speaker A

One that saw him reliably producing high-grossing fan-favourite games, and so they were not going to challenge his vision.

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Speaker A

Druckmann also brought in co-writer Halley Gross, whose dark, gripping story arcs in Westworld caught his attention.

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Speaker A

And while her cheeky nicknames for him, like "sadistic bastard" and "pretentious prick," show she did have grit, ultimately, he chose her specifically to channel his darkness, not to oppose it.

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Speaker A

"And when he was like, 'And then Ellie actually kills Abby,' I was like, 'What?

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Speaker A

"You're gonna?"... "Yeah, let's f\*\*kin' do it!'" And so she wasn't going to derail him either.

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Speaker A

So, there really was no one left who could dig their heels in and tell him no.

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Speaker A

And so, what did he do with his unchecked creative freedom? He chose to resurrect the exact same cross-country revenge plot that his colleagues had explicitly talked him out of years prior.

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Speaker A

And by doing this, he would be choosing a path that would permanently fracture his fan base.

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Speaker A

Because to lay out the necessary groundwork for a story driven entirely by revenge, he would need to retcon the brilliance of the first game.

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Speaker A

See, in Part I, if you ignore the infected, a minimum of 21 human kills is required to complete the game.

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Speaker A

But it can be closer to 300 if you kill every FEDRA agent, wanderer, and Firefly who gets in your way.

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Speaker A

The thing is, FEDRA may well be oppressors, but the empty outposts you uncover, where the Fireflies overthrew them, are devoid of human life.

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Speaker A

"With that kind of thinking, no one wins." Proving them to be a tragic necessity for large-scale survival in the city.

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Speaker A

The Fireflies are terrorists by all accounts. "Get out of here." But they're also freedom fighters, and the wandering gangs might act hostile, but they're also starving and scared and this included Joel once.

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Speaker A

"Name's David, from a larger group." "Women children… they're all very, very hungry." And in most cases, you sneak up and murder them first anyway, just in case.

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Speaker A

So, after a harrowing showdown with David, it will begin to dawn on you that every enemy in the game is just another person, like you, trying to survive in this awful world, each a hero of their own story.

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Speaker A

"They didn't give us a choice." "And you think we have a choice?" And with every shiv to the neck, with every savage Molotov, you have to come to terms with the question of who the violent killer really is.

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Speaker A

Is it Joel, or is it you? And as you chew on that question, you approach the finale, along with a promise of a cure that might help wash away some of the sins that you have accrued on your journey.

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Speaker A

And with that, the game masterfully unveils its final mind-bending moral conundrum. Because the Firefly hospital, that's bathed in a sickly green colour palette of horror cinema— "Sweet Jesus." —transpired to be grimy and forlorn, and an uncovered memo from

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Speaker A

the surgeon would reveal the cure as no sure thing. "The cause of her immunity is uncertain.

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Speaker A

We must find a way to replicate this state under laboratory conditions." And the surgeon himself, a dark-skinned man who was gaunt and pretty unconvincing in his dirty hiking boots, were all signs that the Fireflies were grasping at straws, and that taking Ellie's

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Speaker A

life was a gamble that they hadn't really been honest about. This made Joel's violent rescue of Ellie morally ambiguous, but also highly justifiable.

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Speaker A

And how much it left you reeling might reflect your own life perspective, and also your gameplay experience, such as how trigger-happy you had been with combat already, or what damning evidence you had uncovered.

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Speaker A

But this fuelled debates the likes of which gamers have rarely known. And this question, about how you felt about the finale once you had completed it, would drive players to ask one another if they played the game, just so

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Speaker A

they could talk about it, which played a crucial part in making the game a word-of-mouth phenomenon.

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Speaker A

"Let me go!" "Please!" "You'd just come after her." [Bell] In Part II, in order to ensure this new narrative worked, Druckmann would take the bold step of reframing Joel's actions as not just being ruthless, but selfish, in order

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Speaker A

to place him beyond redemption. And he did this through the use of a few different clever tricks.

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Speaker A

The first being to use flashbacks at the start of Part II to reframe the finale just enough, so the ambiguity of Joel's actions would tip over into morally unforgivable.

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Speaker A

"Because of her, they were actually going to make a cure." The hospital was visually sanitised and cleanly lit to reveal a competent medical facility.

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Speaker A

The surgeon now wore clean trainers, and was swapped out for a Caucasian man, because, God forbid, audiences have to sympathise with Abby and her father if they are not white.

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Speaker A

And gameplay sequences, like the heart-wrenching scene of Joel failing to save Ellie. "No!" "Let go of her!" "Let go of her!" "Nooo!" Would be replaced by menacing close-ups of Joel's emotionless face.

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Speaker A

And his claim that he saved Ellie is now spliced with footage of bullet-ridden corpses lining a bloodstained corridor.

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Speaker A

"Jesus Christ, Joel, what did you do?" "I saved her." This visual retcon forced the player to accept that Joel had denied Ellie of a choice, and denied humanity of a viable cure, destroying the delicate ambiguity that made the

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Speaker A

original ending such a masterpiece. Furthermore, without Straley there to champion positivity, Druckmann pulled Ellie's character off in a dark direction that was really at odds with her younger outlook.

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Speaker A

"Think about what he did." "It's your last chance." "I'm not giving up, my friend." Effectively trading her humanity for a gruelling, yet gripping, quest of murder and spite.

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Speaker A

[Screaming] Where Joel's rampage at the end of the first game leaves you conflicted between condemning him and cheering him on, Ellie's only makes you want her to stop.

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Speaker A

"Didn't think I'd ever see you again." It is a premeditated campaign of revenge for somebody she herself had openly condemned.

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Speaker A

"I can never forgive you for that." And her final decision to spare Abby was too little and too late.

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Speaker A

"I don't want to die." And yet, the first game's emotional pinnacle of what is arguably one of gaming's greatest immersive experiences was not only sacrificed to make way for its sequel's far less emotionally intelligent conclusion, because by remastering

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Speaker A

the original— "Sweet Jesus." —and renaming it to Part I, then folding in the retconned material to better serve the sequel, and presenting it as a faithful reconstruction, thereby making it the definitive version for returning players and newcomers alike, "We

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Speaker A

want to be very faithful to the original experience, to be very true to what fans love about that game." Druckmann all but erased the original from the cultural landscape, reasserting control over what he seems to have regarded as his from the start.

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Speaker A

Bear in mind that the original released in 2013, and within seven years he had taken on Balestra's role of co-president, presiding with Wells for four years, until his retirement left Druckmann to convince Sony once more that he could do the job on his own, thereby

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Speaker A

establishing a new role of studio head, and finally reaching the top. But back to The Last of Us Part I, which was released two years after he achieved co-president.

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Speaker A

His apparently faithful, fleshed-out version of the game gained one other tweak worth noting. Here are the original credits.

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Speaker A

And here they are in Part I, once he had the authority to sign off his own changes.

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Speaker A

The game's written narrative remains fundamentally unchanged. And yet, his written-by credit has now climbed about 200 entries to become front-facing.

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Speaker A

And as they often say: after war, the victors write the history books. If you rely on forum debates for an impartial perspective, you risk coming across popular Reddit posts like this one, for those who claim Bruce Straley co-wrote

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Speaker A

the game with Neil Druckmann, but then use a screenshot of Druckmann's own remaster as proof that he wrote it alone.

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Speaker A

But the truth is, whether Straley was overreaching, or whether Druckmann is retroactively reframing, without an insider breaking ranks, for now, we can only speculate.

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Speaker A

"What's going on between you and your friend Owen?" "Oh my God, Lev, now?" Abby and Lev did provide some wonderful moments of warmth, and as natural enemies, plenty of narrative depth too, because they challenge one another's beliefs about their enemy, which was one

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Speaker A

of many metaphorical life lessons aimed at the player, in case you hand't picked it up.

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Speaker A

But this would also dilute the levity, because the complexity of their relationship would subsequently make it far less relatable for the average player, when compared to Ellie and Joel's far simpler parent-child bond.

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Speaker A

"Now watch your step as you're going up, because it's going to be a little…" With its touching segments scattered throughout, where Joel and Ellie bonded as they conquered obstacles and navigated a world that Ellie never knew.

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Speaker A

"Evacuate to where?" "Where 'd'ya think? Quarantine zone. See, some places got a heads-up before the infection showed up.

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Speaker A

Most didn't." And in place of these moments, we got one giant scene that was beautiful, but it sort of compressed all the feel-good into one bit...

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Speaker A

"Oh hello. Sorry, the dinosaurs are busy right now." "What are you doing?" "Oh wait.

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Speaker A

One of the dinosaurs is here." As well as a lot of heavy-handed cinematic symbolism.

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Speaker A

So many examples. But motifs like the moth on Ellie's guitar and the tattoo represent self-destruction through chasing her goals.

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Speaker A

Her indulgence in the violence she had learned from Joel cost her the ability to play the guitar, denying her something far more meaningful that she had learned from him, and thus the coveted memories that came with it.

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Speaker A

The blatant parallel of the zebra encounter, mirroring the iconic giraffe scene. All creative choices designed to wrap the player in metaphors about the cycle of violence.

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Speaker A

These metaphors were often beautifully integrated, and some really did cut deep. But in terms of raw immersion, a journey rife with symbolism is at odds with more simple one without, because many players would unconsciously register that added layer of design.

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Speaker A

But however bleak the game might have been when it came to fidelity and gameplay, it matched and trumped that boasting lush environments, and flawless animation, and incredible sound design, that all came together with a technical brilliance that flowed from

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Speaker A

one immersive effect to the next. And when you were in the thick of it, the immersion was simply breathtaking.

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Speaker A

And for those players that weren't interested in the minutiae of highbrow debates about the design philosophy, the game simply excelled, and still maintained its status as a must-play experience.

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Speaker A

But if held up against the nuanced warmth of the original— "Ellie?" "What?" "The ladder, come on." "Right." —if that is what you came back hoping for, then it felt to many players like it actively soiled the memory of the original, in order

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Speaker A

to make its heavy-handed point. Prior to the game's release, massive story leaks flooded the internet, revealing Joel's brutal early death.

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Speaker A

And this led to an immediate, fierce backlash from players questioning Druckmann's narrative choices. On the previous game, Straley's focus on fan experience might have signalled to him that something was fundamentally wrong with the messaging, and it needed fixing.

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Speaker A

But Druckmann did not want to hear that. He had total faith in his story.

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Speaker A

And if you want to play it, you can get in line, or you can f— "Language!" And so, in order to protect it, he authorised the release of a highly deceptive teaser trailer.

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Speaker A

"Oh, this is the scene that everybody hates us for." "The great mislead." "The great mislead." "Yep." "What the hell are you doing here?" "You think I'd let you do this on your own?" Taking a clip from later in the game, and swapping Jesse

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Speaker A

out for Joel, in order to, in his words, "throw them off the scent." "What the hell are you doing here?" "You think I'd let you do this on your own?" And when the game launched, and thousands of players

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Speaker A

realised that the protagonist they loved was brutally and unceremoniously killed off at the beginning, and they had been lied to about it, the backlash, of course, intensified, and Druckmann's extreme frustration became infamous.

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Speaker A

And he would later cite it as affecting his mental health. "I have mixed feelings about it in hindsight." "It got people excited about something that wasn't there." Then, following some positive critical reviews, he would send an emotional email to his team, which

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Speaker A

ended with a pretty unprofessional sign-off that said, "F\*\*k the haters." Later, during The Game Awards voting, he tweeted, "As a bonus, for every vote you cast for The Last of Us Part II, a hater loses their Caps Lock."

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Speaker A

He later deleted it and apologised, but the mask had slipped. Now, it has to be said that a portion of his defensiveness was absolutely justified, because an extreme subset of internet trolls rode the wave of this fan frustration

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Speaker A

and then, amongst that, would unleash horrific levels of toxic vitriol, from casual antisemitism to full-on death threats against the families of cast members.

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"Yeah, they were threatening my son, you know, who was born during all of it." "And yeah, it was rough.

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Speaker A

It was rough." The most notable being on account of the game's bold choice to include a trans character, on top of a pair of already progressive female leads, one of whom is gay, and the other being visually jacked up to an extent

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Speaker A

that some subjectively argued was improbable for a protein-deficient post-apocalyptic landscape. But the sheer toxicity of these attacks totally undermined the authenticity of the true fan backlash, because to the thousands of rational fans who simply felt alienated by the retcons and the

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gruelling narrative, Druckmann's approach seemed arrogant. It served as yet more public evidence of a persistent mean streak.

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Speaker A

A streak that has seen him humiliate colleagues, execute corporate PR assassinations against mentors like Hennig, deny credit to longtime collaborators like Straley, brazenly lie to his fans in marketing materials, and insult his critics.

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Speaker A

The game is undeniably a dark, and thrilling, and visually spectacular, genuinely powerful piece of media.

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Speaker A

It showcases the studio operating at the absolute peak of its technical prowess. But the distinctive, unavoidable difference between the sequel and its original, in its tone, in its grounded believability, is the missing thumbprint of Bruce Straley.

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Speaker A

Or inversely, the result of his absence. And failing to so much as whisper a special thanks in his direction, after the enormous success of the first season, it's not just unprofessional, it's... cruel.

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Speaker A

The first game sold upwards of 30 million copies, and the sequel is closer to 10 million.

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Speaker A

So it is a commercial success by any metric, but it still failed to capture the universal zeitgeist-defining love of the original.

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Speaker A

Harsh working environment or not, ex-Naughty Dog employees repeatedly speak fondly of the open-floor policy, where no voice is left unheard, even in unofficial interviews.

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And Druckmann's overt use of LGBTQ+ minorities might well be exaggerated, and so sour the immersion for some.

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"They want to kill a little boy because he shaved his head." "Do you want to ask me about it?" But pushing boundaries is wired into Naughty Dog's DNA, and it is why they have remained industry trailblazers for so long.

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Speaker A

And so, if Druckmann should be held accountable for anything, it should not be for trying to make the world a kinder place.

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Speaker A

And with every story, there is more to it than the ping-pong match of statements between forum warriors that you see online.

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Speaker A

And in this case, his supporters and his haters all have very loud voices. And those who hate on him are often frustrated for fair reasons, but they get carried away, riding a wave of whining teenagers, just upset that they did not get more

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Speaker A

of their favourite game, or toxic misogyny, which is actually pretty damn unpleasant once you dig into it.

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Speaker A

But then, that said, those who defend him religiously are almost always uneducated on the subject, blind to the evidence of a game-maker who produces his best work when forced to collaborate, not just with great creatives, but veteran game-makers too, and who, when

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Speaker A

left unchecked, prioritises his own vision over a balanced one. Druckmann remains a popular vehicle for debate, because jaded fans and online hate aren't the only fuel.

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Speaker A

But while his journey to the top of Naughty Dog, and his choices since, make him a polarising figure, that does not mean that your perspective needs to be polarised as well.

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Speaker A

It is possible to be an aggressive corporate climber, and still be a passionate and appealing game-maker, which he clearly is.

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Speaker A

And while Druckmann has, in my humble opinion, historically exhibited a lack of maturity or perspective at times, he also seems to have worked at countering this, and in doing so, demonstrates growth.

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Speaker A

He also appears to exhibit pride, and an unhealthy desire for creative recognition, having asserted control over Uncharted and The Last of Us, and then, in both cases, shaped the historical narrative so that the name on the lips of the masses would be his.

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Speaker A

That said, since taking the helm, and with his input no longer a matter of debate, controversial narrative or not, Naughty Dog has certainly not slowed its famed trajectory of innovation and technical brilliance.

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Speaker A

And for his part, Druckmann has gone on to demonstrate a fierce loyalty to those in his charge, as well as empathy towards minorities in his stories, by drawing on gay colleagues to help build authentic characters.

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Speaker A

And as demanding as he may be during crunch, by all accounts, he leads by example, calling people into the trenches, not sending them.

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Speaker A

It is actually possible to turn colleagues into collateral damage, and deny them their due recognition, while simultaneously making the best game possible for the most number of people.

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Speaker A

One action does not cancel out the other. And it is also possible to be so proud of the work that you have become associated with, and so focused on giving back to the army of fans cheering you on,

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that you become largely blind to the woes of anybody who risks shattering your success story.

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Whether those are colleagues under your feet, or gamers shouting from the sidelines. From global leaders right down to kids at school, this is a tale as old as time.

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Drowning in praise can deafen you to critical feedback all too easily. And it will either take a brave colleague to push aside the yes-men and speak up, or wisdom on the part of Druckmann to calmly and willingly set his ego aside,

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Speaker A

and accept that, while he may be an original, and independently brilliant creative, he is not beyond criticism, despite what his most passionate fans will tell him.

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Speaker A

And that we all fall, so that we can get back up. That we all learn through our mistakes.

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Speaker A

And that the haters aren't always haters, but sometimes just frustrated admirers lashing out, because they feel that they have been shut out in the cold.

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Speaker A

Naughty Dog's size means that there is no returning to the flat structure. But unlike studios that bloated under greedy producers, and lost their spark, Naughty Dog grew because of Druckmann's drive to turn it into his own vision machine.

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Speaker A

The best directors do not envision games to make money. Kojima wants to make the most layered.

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Speaker A

Schofield, the scariest. Vincke, the richest. Barlog, the most epic. And Druckmann wants to be remembered for the most immersive and memorable games.

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Speaker A

And as AAA investment grows riskier, maintaining his reputation as someone who can reliably deliver this can only be a good thing for gamers.

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Speaker A

So the question remains: Now he's established a Naughty Dog throne, and he gets to sit on it at Sony's discretion, will he continue to isolate himself from his colleagues, and shut down those who get too close to his throne?

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Speaker A

I, for one, cannot wait to see Naughty Dog's next original offering. Not just because I have faith in the team's brilliance, but also because it will tell us whether or not he intends to let levity, team input, and variety back into the mix

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Speaker A

or whether he still feels that he needs to go at it alone, and stamp his unique brand of bleak darkness into the history books.

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Speaker A

I hope you enjoyed this deep dive and so a LIKE or even a SUBSCRIBE would be massively appreciated as I do have more coming.

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Speaker A

In the meantime, take care of yourself, thanks for watching, and hopefully, see you next time.

Topics: Neil Druckmann Naughty Dog The Last of Us Bruce Straley game development credit disputes video game industry studio conflicts gaming controversies Sony

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