The Last Of Us Director Finally Reveals Why He Quit

The director behind The Last Of Us has finally revealed why he quit his role.

Bruce Straley and Neil Druckmann worked as a duo to lead development The Last of Us back in 2013. They then continued with Uncharted 4. However Bruce left soon after the game’s release.

He spoke on Kotaku’s Splitscreen podcast, explaining that he left because of the stress and pressure of Uncharted 4’s development. He said: “Uncharted 4 showed up and it was like, I guess there’s a difference between doing something for yourself which feels passionate, and I had my own theories that I was trying to expand upon between Uncharted 1, 2 and The Last of Us, and then Uncharted 4 became more like, ‘How do I do this for the team and for the company?'”

Gamespot reports that Uncharted 4’s timeframe was particularly short which may have added to Bruce feeling as though he couldn’t carry on at the company. They had two years to work on the game. However, their work on The Last Of Us went on for four years.

Credit: Naughty Dog

He added: “We needed to get the game out the door, and we needed it to be something good, so that it didn’t put a mark on the Naughty Dog name,

“I felt like, I guess in hindsight I took on that role more for the team than for me personally… two years to create that beast, that then became the hardest project [I’d ever worked on].”

He was keen to explain that him leaving had “nothing to do with Naughty Dog, nothing to do with games.” But actually he was thinking: “‘Oh my god, it’s time to take a break. It’s just time to step away.'”

Neil Druckmann is still at Naughty Dog and is leading up development on The Last of Us: Part II.