Uncharted developer Naughty Dog says that its goal with its latest project, The Last Of Us, is to "change the fucking industry" and improve videogame storytelling.
Speaking to us as part of an in-depth preview of the studios' new survival adventure - which tells the story of Joel, a fortysomething man, and his 14-year-old companion Ellie, after a virus has decimated the population - game director Bruce Straley and creative director Neil Druckmann tell us that development is once again being driven by the studio's signature flair for characterisation and storytelling.
"With the casting process, we're trying to get humour," Druckmann tells us. "With this music, we're trying to get emotion. We're not going for horror. There's going to be horrific things happening in this game, but that's not the focus of it. The monsters aren't the focus of it. It's the relationship between Joel and Ellie.
"We're trying to say something about human beings and how they exist. Not necessarily just in this setting, but in every setting."
Naughty Dog is renowned for its non-hierarchical, collaborative structure, and this is again on show in The Last Of Us. Straley nominally heads up gameplay mechanics and technology, with Druckmann overseeing performances and story, but as the former explains, "There's a lot of overlap. There has to be the marriage between the story, the gameplay and the aesthetics. That triangle needs to work together."
Druckmann agrees: "We're constantly pushing and challenging each other to make sure I'm not here just making a movie, and he's not here just creating fun for the sake of it. It's like, 'how do these two work in concert?'"
While the characters remain the focus, Druckmann reveals that staff at Naughty Dog are often disappointed when the praise lavished on the studio's output focuses on its cinematic flair.
"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," he says, "but to read in reviews that they have an amazing story is disheartening to us because we work so hard at it. We really hope we can raise the bar."
The full, eight-page preview is the cover story of our new issue, E237, which should be with subscribers in the coming days and will be with all good newsagents on January 17.