FEATURE GAME SOUND
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The Last Of Us
“Sound design-wise, we wanted to do something very grounded and connected with the characters and their world.” Phil Kovats
Naughty Dog
John Broomhall talks with Naughty Dog’s audio lead, Phil Kovats, and senior sound designer, Derrick Espino, about audio for an epic videogame title reported to have sold 3.4 million copies in its first week of release.
NEARLY THREE and a half million copies is a big sales number by anyone’s standards. In just seven days, it’s huge, especially for a new IP at the end of the so-called ‘console cycle’. Six weeks at number one in the UK is also extremely impressive. Although when you’re talking about the latest, hotly anticipated blockbuster from the now-legendary game development studio behind the respected and highly acclaimed Uncharted franchise, it’s not so surprising. Naughty Dog is clearly stuffed to the gills with extraordinary gamedev talent (who are affectionately known as ‘dawgs’). According to Phil Kovats, audio lead for the studio’s latest release, The Last Of Us, there is a clear unifying characteristic that
32 September 2013
marks out each and every staffer: “First and foremost we’re storytellers. That’s why we get hired and get to work on these amazing projects. We understand that we’re part of a greater whole – not just individuals saying ‘Okay I’m going to make the coolest sound in the world and get it in there’. We’re a team working together to tell the story, champion the game characters, and refine the experience we want to deliver to our fans – plus we want to attract new fans. It’s a very different expectation from the ‘here’s an Excel sheet with the sounds we need – just get them done and throw them over the wall…’ – and it’s a lot tougher.” The Last of Us is a post- pandemic survival action game. A deadly fungus has become so populous and
prolific that it has spread to the human race infecting and mutating all in its path. At the game’s outset, we see the grim reality of social collapse around the initial outbreak and then cut 20 years later to the story of Joel, a complex character who has to live with the awful things he’s done to survive. We follow him on a literal and figurative journey of redemption as he guides young Ellie from Boston, all the way across the United States.
CHOICES, CHOICES
Kovats describes the game- play as ‘stealth action with some resource management’ (i.e. you can avoid enemies, take them out quietly, or make a big fuss). Meanwhile, you could use your limited resources offensively or defensively (for example, you
can use the same items to make either a Molotov cocktail or a health pack). For Kovats, it’s been a journey that began with a pitch from Game Director, Bruce Straley and Creative Director, Neil Druckmann. Kovats says: “I was blown away. It seemed like something really different. Naturally, it evolved over time but the general ideas and principles of the game – the story arc of redemption and growth were right there. It was quite a process – probably the most collaborative of any game I’ve ever worked on. The pitch kind of set off a nuclear explosion of ideas in my head about how we could influence this type of game-play and how we could make people feel with the use of sound. “How could we touch
players as if they were viewers in a movie but in this interactive setting? The first things that came to mind were to have lots of dynamic range and a big use of silence – which doesn’t normally happen in games – so I looked at the sound design in a very reductive way and wondered, what can we get away with? It was clear from the outset that we weren’t going to have much music. Sound design-wise, we wanted to do something very grounded and connected with the characters and their world. We wanted to help reflect where those characters are at emotionally too. It was incredibly important to me that the sounds evoke emotion – a sense of fear, or of desperation or of tranquillity – whatever was called for in the story.”
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