Last of Us 2 Director Reveals New Post-Launch Message to Naughty Dog Team, Response to Haters

The Last of Us 2 finally released a month ago, after nearly 7 years in the making. While the first game was a huge success and loved by nearly everyone who played it, the second game struck a different chord. Before the game's official release, it had been getting thousands of positive reviews, but also had quite a few negative ones. Fans thought that these might just be traditional review bombers, flooding the review sites with incorrect information. But once the game hit the shelves, fans began to really fight over the new game. 

In arguments similar to Star Wars: The Last Jedi, there was a clear divide between players who truly enjoyed the game, and those who thought that it was the worst thing that they had ever played. Soon after the release, Druckmann as well as some of the actors from the game received death threats because of how badly certain fans had disliked the game. As may be expected, the news of these threats spread like wildfire, and fans are coming to the defense of Naughty Dog, in favor of the new game. 

In a recent report, Druckmann and other members of the Last of Us 2 team revealed a message that Druckmann had sent them, post-launch. It was a very emotional letter, as the team had been working very hard on an emotional game for nearly a decade. Originally, Druckmann had wanted to send each member of the team a congratulatory email, though there were too many people on this team to even begin to do something like that. Even one of the art directors, who Druckmann didn't always agree with, got an emotional message.
 

 

Druckmann recalled the message, saying: "When the reviews hit, he (John Sweeney) was one of the first people I thought of to text personally. I'm starting to writing this text to him, 'Dude, I know we didn't always see eye to eye...' As I'm writing this text, I'm starting to cry, and I couldn't even understand why I'm crying. I realize I can't text everybody on the team--there's just too many people on the team. I just have to write the whole team an email, and I'm not very good at that stuff." Druckmann understood how much work had gone into his brainchild, and he couldn't be more happy with how it turned out. 

As a consequence of working in the gaming industry, the director was expecting players to dislike the game; many players believing that there was no need for a sequel. But he was ready for these players, though he had no idea he would be receiving death threats.

Druckmann was ecstatic about the work that his team had done, despite the inevitable hate that it would receive. To prepare his team, he sent this message: "I forget how I ended it [the message], but it was something to the effect of, 'Review scores are cool, but seeing your guys' pride is what I live for.' "The reviews were awesome, and it's great to hear people love the game and how much it resonates with them, but nothing comes close to hearing you, or Laura, or John, or any member of the team that has sent me an email since the game has come out to say this is the best game I've ever worked on. F**k the haters. Nothing makes me prouder that I've worked on in my life than this game."

Druckmann mentioned that he was overjoyed about the positive reviews the game was getting, and that he wasn't even focused on the game's profits. "Our job is not to maximize profits or sales," he said. "The game is selling well, and I don't care. Just to talk about sales for a second, I just want to sell enough so we can do it again. So Sony will keep trusting us and giving us the creative freedom to do whatever we need to do. And anything beyond that is just gravy." 
 

 

Despite the mixed reviews that the Last of Us 2 is getting, it seems that Druckmann is more focused on giving players an in-depth, quality story, and ignores the haters in favor of making a better game. Naughty Dog's latest installment sold more than 4 million copies in just 3 days, setting new PlayStation records. The team is hard at work developing a multiplayer/online game mode for the game, and they are also looking ahead in the game's storyline, which could include a new DLC for their game, or even the Last of Us 3.

The Last of Us 2 is available now, exclusively for PlayStation 4.
 

Kieran Mouritsen
Editor, NoobFeed