During E3 2018, on Sony’s big stage, I saw something I never thought I’d see in a massive blockbuster game: something that looked like realistic, happy queer romance.
We talked about it a bit during our E3 podcast, but the demo for The Last of Us Part II starts off with a scene where Ellie—the protagonist of the new game, after her turn in the first—shares a sweet, sexy, realistically bumbling dance and kiss with Dina, another major character in the story.
In the scene, we cut from a cinematic featuring the best kiss I’ve ever seen in a game to a gameplay segment that is everything the cutscene is not: a grimy, brutal sequence with plenty of intense stealth and nasty killings, as Ellie makes her way through a stage of bad guys who all want her dead.
Then, as the demo ends, it cuts in on the end of the kiss, with a blushing, smiling couple, and a smash cut to the game’s logo.
Listen to our thoughts on the Last of Us Part II demo on Waypoint Radio right here. Article continues below.
I had the opportunity to speak with the game’s creative director, Neil Druckmann, and co-writer Halley Gross, on creating that scene—including all the new tech that went into making that kiss play so well—and their decision to place a romantic scene and a brutally violent one so close together in the demo.
Naughty Dog has had a very busy couple of years, with the release of Uncharted 4, Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, and now, the sequel to one of the most highly regarded Playstation games when The Last of Us Part II lands.
I'd like to note, as with all things we write about the studio, we don't condone the company's mishandling of sexual misconduct allegations. Briefly, an employee claimed that he was routinely sexually harassed by a lead at Naughty Dog, and was fired for speaking up to HR about his harassment. Sony and Naughty Dog followed up with a statement that left a great deal to be desired, as Patrick wrote last October when the story broke: "Naughty Dog's response hardly seemed like an lengthy investigation into the accusations, which would have taken more than a weekend to properly vet. Whether a full investigation will take place is unclear." So far as we know, no such investigation has taken place.
I didn't speak to the team about those allegations in this sitting.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Waypoint: How was the response from the trailer?
Neil Druckmann, creative director: I didn’t get to dive in too deep, and I’m trying not to dive too deep [Gross laughs], but it seems to be positive, it seems to be a really good reaction. There’s some weird homophobic stuff that I don’t care for.
Halley Gross, co-writer: It’s exciting to have it out there!
So, I’m outwardly queer, I got excited about the trailer, tweeted about it, etc. It’s a really big deal, to be at E3, to have queer women kissing be the first thing Sony shows at its big press event, and this feels like planting a flag in a way. What went into that decision to really make this part of her character and the decision to make this part of the demo itself?
Druckmann: When E3 comes up, we try to figure out which slice of the game—what would be an interesting thing for people to come away with? We’re trying, in a very short amount of time, to convey all these different things. The aesthetics of the game, how it plays, the emotional tone that we’re after.
As far as owning who Ellie is, that was a no brainer. In Left Behind, we established that she’s gay. And it felt like, if she’s going to be 19, and lives in a somewhat safe community, of course she would pursue romance. So, we’ve always wanted to explore that. And then, juxtaposing those two elements of seeing Ellie—awkward and hopeful and shy and happy! The happiest we’ve ever seen her.
Contrasted against her being desperate, a survivalist, maybe even a little sadistic in what she’s committing, and say, ‘that’s the same character.’ So that felt like a nice kind of juxtaposition, with the themes of The Last of Us, contrasting beauty with darkness in the world and how that trickles down through people.
And then once we’ve made that decision, and we had our transition how we go from the cinematic to gameplay, also we realized ‘oh, we’re going to show this kiss in a Sony press conference!’ It might be a big deal!
[Both laugh]
And then we just like, it was like this rallying thing! Like, ‘yeah, lets fucking own it! Let’s make this the best kiss ever in any video game!’ and lets put all the resources into that, because it is so important to the story.
Once we realized certain things, like ‘this is really important to the story,’ whether its this really tender moment, or an uncomfortable violent moment, we lean into that and we put the appropriate resources into it.
Can you talk a bit about those resources, because, it was the best kiss I've seen in a game.
[Both laugh]
Oh! I could try! [laughs] I’m sure I’ll miss certain technical things!
There’s things called soft mods which [affects] the way skin can move especially when colliding with another person’s skin so you don’t just get things inter-penetrating. There’s extra joints in the nose for when Ellie puts her face against Dina’s and pushes to the side. There’s new tech so that when Ellie pulls back she blushes, so her face actually, in real time, turns red.
Because we’re closer, we have new shaders for the teeth, the teeth get shadows appropriately for the lips.
Because if any one of those things go wrong, you’re pulled out of the experience. So all these things have to come together and even the sound of kissing—we had like—[Gross laughs]
What we had recorded on the stage wasn’t quite right, so we actually had a whole foley session of recording kissing sounds.
Ellie’s lips are wet, so there was a pass that was done after. So when they seperate there’s a little bit of like wetness on the lips. It’s all these subtle things you might not even pick up, but any one of them missing, you’re like ‘something was off…I can’t tell you what exactly but something was off about it.’
The hair! So that had to go through physics, to joints that had to be hand-animated, and going from hand to hair!
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/article/j5k388/the-last-of-us-2-kissing-fridging-interview
