Updated - Naughty Dog: Reviews that say other games have amazing stories are disheartening to us

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SpartenOmega117 said:
you guys need to read the full article

"And that's because he'd rather talk about story. And not just any old story, but one Druckmann wants to "change the f***ing industry" with - "because we feel like storytelling is so poor right now". Aside from the all too few likes of Valve, Irrational and Rockstar, it's hard to disagree.

He continues: "We try so hard at Naughty Dog to push things and then games come out that are fun and exciting and get visceral things right, but to read in reviews that they have an amazing story is disheartening to us because we work so hard at it."

Take the majority of games with a post-apocalyptic setting. "In any other medium it's all about the characters. [We want you to] care so when horrible things happen you feel something. That's what Naughty Dog can bring to the genre and really own it: every decision we make is about the characters and their relationship".

That explains the choice of composer, two-time Oscar winner Gustavo Santaolalla, whose credits include Brokeback Mountain and Babel. "With this music we're trying to get emotion - we're not going for horror," says Druckmann.

"We approached this genre because we felt no-one is getting to the heart of it. [The Last of Us] tells you something about the human condition - that's what you want to do as a storyteller."

With that in mind, imagine the shockwaves that reverberated around the Naughty Dog office when they saw that Dead Island trailer.

"We saw it and we thought, wait a minute, someone else is doing this - it's really moving, there's this family that's been torn apart," says Druckmann. But, as we now know, it bore little relation to the finished article.

"You saw the game and it wasn't that," he adds. "I'm not saying whether it was a good or bad game, but it wasn't that. And we feel our trailer is very representative of what we're going for." Not least because the footage is all in-engine.

With a bloody corpse, a brutal murder, a bullet to the face and a knife to the back of an infected human in the trailer alone, The Last of Us is set to be Naughty Dog's most violent game yet. But Druckmann insists it will not be "gratuitous - the monsters are not the focus. It's the relationship between Joel and Ellie."

So if not a horror game, what is it? "This is going to sound corny and it might not appeal to gamers, but I would say it's a love story," he says. "It's not a romantic love story, it's a love story about a father-daughter-like relationship."


People are interpreting this in a way far from what ND is saying.

Thank you for doing what the OP would not. Selectively taking quotes out of context is highly misleading. The meaning behind their words changes with the context. 

This undoubtedly makes by far the most sense, gramatically and logically.

"And that's because he'd rather talk about story. And not just any old story, but one Druckmann wants to "change the f***ing industry" with - "because we feel like storytelling is so poor right now". Aside from the all too few likes of Valve, Irrational and Rockstar, it's hard to disagree.

He continues: "We try so hard at Naughty Dog to push things and then [the] games come out that are fun and exciting and get visceral things right, but to read in reviews that they have [DONT] an amazing story is disheartening to us because we work so hard at it."

 

They wouldnt just jump to saying the storytelling in games is so poor all of a sudden to say they are disheartened that there are games with amazing stories.

EDIT: Everything seems to be telling me that this is a typo.