The two top men leading development on Naughty Dog's The Last of Us have spoken of the pressure they felt being responsible for creating another hit franchise from the Uncharted developer.

"Um... what?" was the initial reaction of Neil Druckmann (creative director), and Bruce Straley (game director), after being told to design a project that could equal the popularity of Uncharted, Crash Bandicoot and Jak and Daxter.

"We had to create something that attempted to match that level of quality - in gameplay, story and art," the pair wrote in a preface for The Last of Us' artbook. "No pressure right? Where the hell do we even start?

"It took us roughly three and a half years to make The Last of Us, and during that time we got to work with some of the most talented artists in entertainment."

Below lies new artwork depicting the origins of gruff manly character Joel and early environments from the story.

These pages - from The Last of Us' artbook - are available with special editions of the game.

Just make the graphics pretty. Western people love pretty graphics.

They've been working on this game for a good 4 years.

Honestly The Last of Us looks awesome that is all I'm going to say.

Well this is Naughty Dog so you can expect both amazing graphics and a superb story. Best of both worlds, something most games nowadays lack.

Haha well, that can't be no easy task! They got plenty to live up to!!

ND has always made great games. But Uncharted 2 really put them in another league.

ND are amazing and I'm sure this will be great! its taken 3-4 year to create this game so I'm sure it will be as good as there other games! day1

I'd say it is a lot of pressure to keep being a success. Kind of like Christopher Nolan in the movie industry. After movies like the Prestige, Inception, Dark Knight Trilogy he is expected to continue this type of success.

Just like Christopher Nolan i trust Naughty Dog XD

Oh man the Prestige is so underrated. One of his best films in my opinion.