By now, you’ve probably heard the big news: The Last of Us Part II is coming. Developer Naughty Dog took to the stage at the PlayStation Experience (PSX) event in Anaheim, California on Saturday, confirming a sequel for its critically acclaimed post-apocalyptic adventure. We will return to the harrowing lives of Ellie and Joel as they seek to survive a nightmarish pandemic – and to take some sort of revenge.
Little else is known about the game, but it’s the manner of that announcement, and what else happened that night, that tells us a lot about where PlayStation – and the industry at large – is going.
PSX is unlike any other corporate event in the games industry – it is equal parts video game expo, marketing conference and fan convention. Building on the success of previous events in Las Vegas and San Francisco, thousands of gamers arrived at the Anaheim convention centre to worship at the cross – and circle, square and triangle – of Sony’s console and play some of the 150-odd titles on the show floor or attend panels starring industry heavyweights including Hideo Kojima and Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckmann.
Unlike, say, E3 or Gamescom, the vibe to these events is intimate, informal and almost relaxed. AAA attractions like Uncharted, Resident Evil and Destiny shared booth space with a battalion of indie games, all of whose developers were on hand to talk about their creations. Tellingly, the behind closed doors area where industry insiders could get priority access to games was tiny and understocked; PSX is intended as a gathering for what former Sony America President and CEO Jack Tretton termed “the PlayStation Nation” and within its walls everyone’s an equal.
This spirit of inclusivity extended to the keynote address that kicked things off on Saturday morning. Allowing several thousand fans to enter the sort of space usually reserved for media and marketeers transformed what could have been a staid presentation into something more resembling a pep rally. Game reveals are roared to the rafters and Sony execs are welcomed onto the stage like rock stars. Popular president of Sony’s Worldwide Studios Shuhei Yoshida is given a standing ovation, his opening gambit drowned out by a terrace chant: “YOSH-I-DA! YOSH-I-DA!”
“Presenting is nerve-wracking but when you just show up and people are like that, it just makes it so easy and exciting,” Yoshida says the following day, insisting it’s his favourite event of the year with only the mildest whiff of corporate obligation. “People plan a vacation in December around it. It’s not as crowded as Tokyo Gameshow or Gamescom, people don’t have to wait for hours to play games.”
People like Oscar Sanchez, who has travelled down from San Francisco for the weekend with his partner Shelby at a cost of around $500 on top of their $75 two-day ticket. “You pay for experiences like this,” he says. “I don’t eat a lot of take out every day. I put that money aside. I don’t go to Starbucks.”
Sanchez went to the PSX event in his hometown last year and “kind of fell in love with everything. I’m a pretty big Sony fanboy I guess,” he says.
This peculiar bond between player and platform did at times take on the feel of a religious or even political experience. When chairman of Sony’s Worldwide Studios Shawn Layden tells the crowd at the end of the keynote, “the PlayStation Nation is so powerful and we love you all”, a loud voice reflexively replies. ‘We love you too!’ It’s a sentiment reciprocated by hundreds of hyped-up attendees.
But what about the games? Sony has spent an inordinate amount of time this year talking about hardware, be it the two new PS4 consoles – Slim and Pro – released in the autumn, or the PSVR headset that finally hit shelves in October. But PSX was awash with software.
Over 50 titles were showcased in the opening keynote alone, culminating with the show-stopping teaser trailer for The Last of Us Part II – a long-denied but now finally confirmed sequel to one of the previous console generation’s very best games, masterfully revealed with a brooding clip in which a blood-soaked Ellie strums a murderous Shawn James revenge song, Through the Valley, and vows to kill every last one of her enemies.
“If the first game’s core theme was really about the love between these two characters and how we build that through the story, music, interaction and gameplay mechanics, this story is the counter of that. This story is about hate,” revealed game director Neil Druckmann in his standing room only panel on Saturday afternoon.
The game is set some years after the end of the first one and sees Joel replaced by Ellie as the main playable protagonist, but the biggest surprise was surely the game being revealed here at all.
“There was a big discussion between [developers] Naughty Dog and Sony about where should we show this Last of Us trailer,” explained Druckmann. “Some people were saying we should wait until E3 as E3 is bigger. But we’re such fans of PSX and being here with the fans that this was the venue for it. There’s no other option.”
Naughty Dog’s standalone Uncharted 4 expansion, The Lost Legacy, also opened the keynote, emphasising the Santa Monica-based developers’ position as the pre-eminent PlayStation studio. “People have choices of systems that they can play games on – more than just console games, there are games everywhere,” says Yoshida. “But people choose PlayStation to play games like Naughty Dog’s, which aren’t available anywhere else, and they associate Naughty Dog with the highest standards of quality and drama and gameplay they can enjoy. For lots of fans it’s very important that Naughty Dog games are available on PlayStation.”
It’s telling, though, that neither Naughty Dog title revealed at PSX represents a new IP. In fact almost all of the top tier AAA games showcased on stage have a number or similar spin-off signifier suffixed to the title. Destiny: The Dawning, Street Fighter V, Knack 2, Gran Turismo Sport, Ni No Kuni II, Ace Combat 7, Gravity Rush 2, Marvel vs Capcom Infinite. Only two are breaking new franchise ground: Horizon Zero Dawn and The Last Guardian – and the latter was first revealed almost a decade ago.
The reasons are manifold but the bottom line is that publishers of AAA games, who have always been risk averse, are becoming ever more so in the modern industry. The current generation of hardware makes the cost of developing lavish titles prohibitive to the point where funding one that doesn’t have a ready-made audience is a potentially ruinous gamble. The march towards 4K graphical fidelity only exacerbates the problem.
Although as the recent disappointing sales for the excellent shooter Titanfall 2 proved, even sequels are no longer a sure thing. Which is perhaps why so many publishers are now turning to remakes and remasters instead. Nostalgia might not be what it used to be, but old games can be a great way to generate new revenue streams.
Gamers love remasters because they know exactly what they’re getting – not least the chance to revisit and relive moments from simpler, perhaps even happier, times. Publishers love them because much of the creative heavy lifting has already been done, thus minimising much of the financial outlay and risk. And some developers see them as a chance to preserve important cultural artefacts from gaming’s physical storage-based past in the cloud for generations to come to enjoy,
The distinctive aroma of vintage gaming hung over PSX like a cloud of Brutaftershave. Early PlayStation mascot Crash Bandicoot returned in the N Sane Trilogy; Shawn Layden wore a Wipeout t-shirt on stage to celebrate the seminal racer’s Omega Collection update for PS4; and cult classics Parappa the Rapper, Patapon, LocoRoco and Windjammers all received the warmest of receptions from gamers barely old enough to remember them the first time round.
“Why is there such a wave of nostalgia at the moment? Because these games are fantastic!” exclaims Kara Massie, the producer of Activision’s Crash Bandicoot remake. “We can recreate these things from the ground up and make it look and feel and sound like any new game that’s being released in 2017 so why not? They’re really, really fantastic games and still completely compelling to play.”
Shuhei Yoshida echoes Massie’s sentiments when asked posed with a similar question about what’s driving this rampant retro dev scene.
“People asked us for it. You saw the reactions when we announced those titles. It’s amazing to look at Wipeout in 4K, or Parappa the Rapper on the big screen. The teams have completely redone the graphics, but the original game is intact … People have asked for it for the longest time, and we weren’t able to respond to that demand before. Judging from the reactions, I think that we’re doing the right thing.”
There’s still plenty of innovation to be found at PSX, though, thanks to the thriving indie scene. One of the event’s founding principles was to provide a platform for independent developers, and a significant chunk of the keynote was devoted to showcasing smaller games, from the epic space combat of Dreadnought to Supergiant’s party based RPG Pyre and haunting puzzler What Remains of Edith Finch.
Well over a dozen indie titles got their moment in the limelight on stage and dozens more were given valuable and prominent exposure to mainstream gamers on the show floor.
“Sony have been fantastic with indies for some time and it’s one of their biggest strengths that they put a lot of effort into getting indies on to their platform as well as the AAA games,” explained Ollie Purkiss from Guildford-based studio Wonderstruck. “We’re working with Sony on [massively multiplayer sandbox game] Boundless and they’ve been so supportive in all ways to bring this game to their platform, which is great.”
Purkiss and his colleagues have spent the weekend holding the hands of gamers curious to take their first steps in Boundless’ beautiful connected voxel worlds. And their prime position in the very centre of the conference hall means there have been plenty of people to chaperone.
But it’s an interesting admission from Sony, and one that has been reiterated over the last two or three E3 events: nostalgia and big brands are likely to dominate the triple A space going forward, while quirky, innovative and new experiences are effectively outsourced to the indie community. It’s how the movie industry works of course, and it’s interesting how PSX is coming to resemble the vast Comic Con events, where big name television and film properties fight for space with independent and cult titles, basking in that reflected fandom.
The Last of Us Part II is certainly the biggest story of the event, but its prominence – and the hundreds of smaller titles placed beneath and around it – tell us a lot more about where the console business is going than just how much everyone loves Ellie and Joel.
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