The Last of Us series debuted last Sunday (15) with several praises regarding the plot, interpretations and setting. Despite the good reception, one person in particular had mixed feelings about the production.

A lot of people may not know, but director Bruce Straley worked alongside Neil Druckmann in creating the Joel and Ellie franchise. He left Naughty Dog in 2016 shortly after the release of Uncharted 4 and currently works at a studio he created, Wildflower Interactive.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times this week, he took the opportunity to complain that he was not credited in the HBO adaptation and argued that this was a fact that made him think more strongly about the importance of unions.

“It makes an argument for syndication that someone who was a part of co-creating this world and these characters is not getting a credit or a nickel for the work they put into it.”

“Maybe we need unions in the video game industry to protect creators,” he added. Both HBO and Sony declined to comment on Straley’s speech.

The game could be different

Despite the fact that The Last of Us is a very sad story and the setting is quite violent, Bruce Straley believes that it could be even darker.

“We weren’t realistic enough about the level of anxiety and tension that all the characters would have in that world,” he said in the same interview with the LA Times.

He justified his opinion by citing the covid-19 pandemic in the real world. He said that going through a health crisis made him realize that it doesn’t even take infected people “breaking your window and chewing on your face” for there to be a great level of distress and agony.

According to the co-creator of The Last of Us, the game could better show that people’s fear of getting sick and dying transforms them psychologically.

“There is so much trauma from experiencing this, that I think the world of The Last of Us would have a lot more broken characters. I think people hold up pretty well in the world we put them in compared to what I know about living in the midst of a pandemic,” he said.