A 2012 interview conducted before the original release of The Last of Us has recently garnered renewed attention. In the interview, the two creators reflected on the origins of the project: an attempt to bring the character-driven narrative experience accumulated from Uncharted into the gameplay framework of a survival action game.
Game Director Bruce Straley stated that the team felt there was a lack of character-focused survival action games on the market. Since Naughty Dog.exe itself enjoyed this genre, they wanted to test whether this creative approach could work.
Neil Druckmann, then writer and creative director, believed that films and comics often use apocalyptic settings and survival pressure to force characters into making difficult decisions, thereby exploring human nature. However, he felt that games at the time had not fully advanced similar themes from this perspective. The interview also referenced Resident Evil; in Druckmann's view, that series' approach was more exaggerated and campy, differing from the character perspective he envisioned.
However, the claim that "no one was making this type of game" was merely the creators' judgment at the time, not an uncontested industry fact. The article also points out that The Last of Us indeed had a significant impact later on, listing titles such as A Plague Tale, Dying Light, Days Gone, as well as the newer Tomb Raider and God of War entries as subsequent comparisons. This content is a retrospective of a historical interview and does not indicate Naughty Dog.exe announcing a new project.