Neil Druckmann Talks Creating The Last Of Us Horror Nights Event

gameranx.com:

One of the things that made The Last Of Us such a great video game, and then an excellent TV adaptation, is that its world was both familiar and yet terrifying. It was set on our Earth, and in modern times, and the reason everything went wrong wasn’t because of some “experiment we shouldn’t have done,” but because of something within nature evolving to a terrifying degree and infecting humanity. The result rocked the world, and it became something no one would want to live in. But that doesn’t mean people wouldn’t want to go to Universal Studios to be a part of it for a night!

If you didn’t see the announcements by now, Universal Studios Horror Nights brought in Naughty Dog and Neil Druckmann to make a special “entry” into their Horror Nights event, and Druckmann was happy to deliver. In a special interview with IGN, Neil Druckmann sat down alongside Universal Orlando Senior Director Mike Aiello to discuss what it was like bringing this “haunted house” to life and wanting it to be like the game while also scaring those who came through it.

One of the things the two discussed was how they needed it to both feel like a Horror Nights event but also feel like you’re a part of the game. That’s one of the reasons Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson were brought back to play Joel and Ellie, as the characters sometimes appear virtually to interact with those in the event. For Druckmann, he also wanted to ensure there were “layers” to the event that would show the visceral nature of the world:

“There’s a moment we do a projection gag where there’s a Runner really going to town on a victim, and the audio for that is the notion of they’re doing this horrific act and they know it. So, it’s this cross between the savagery of that action