The Last of Us: Part II Writer Will Appear in the Game; Animator Teases Impressive Achievement

While most of The Last of Us: Part II is being closely guarded behind an iron curtain of mystery, some interesting teases are filtering through the grapevine.

Animator Jonathan Cooper‏ posted on Twitter to celebrate a mysterious achievement by his colleague Michal Mach, explaining that while he is rather hard to impress, something has been done that he has wanted to see in games for a while. Apparently, it looks even better than he imagined.

Sorry for the vague-post but as an old person that’s been doing this for a while now I’m kinda hard to impress, but today @gameplayAnim made something I’ve been wanting to see in games for years and it looks better than I ever imagined. pic.twitter.com/Kfgb46XEma

— Jonathan Cooper (@GameAnim) January 11, 2019

Considering Cooper’s resume, which includes fourteen years of work on animation from BioWare to Ubisoft and Naughty Dog, if he’s impressed there certainly is reason to be excited. Mach himself has worked at Naughty Dog since 2011, and his work dates all the way back to Mafia II.

That’s not all since we also learn from Writer Halley Gross that she will make an appearance of the game. We don’t know if she will play a relevant character of just a cameo, but she posted a couple of images of the performance capture session on her Instagram account.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

Guys, I’m in a video game! (I was super cool about it.)

A post shared by Halley Gross (@grosstastic) on Jan 10, 2019 at 6:29pm PST

A little while ago, Creative Director Neil Druckmann shared another tease about “one of the most complicated and heart-wrenching scenes” Naughty Dog has ever worked on. We also heard how friendly competition between Sony’s first-party studios helps the folks at Naughty Dog improve their own games.

Unfortunately, we haven’t seen much of the game since the latest reveal at E3 2018, but a week or so ago Sony Interactive Entertainment released a brand new dynamic theme dedicated to the game and a two-hour-long video showing the same scene with a burning car. That’s Naughty Dog’s humorous (and fairly dark) take on a Yule Log for the Holidays.

The Last of Us Part II is coming for PS4 but doesn’t yet have an official release window as of this writing.

About the author

Giuseppe Nelva

Proud weeb hailing from sunny (not as much as people think) Italy and long-standing gamer since the age of Mattel Intellivision and Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Definitely a multi-platform gamer, he still holds the old dear PC nearest to his heart, while not disregarding any console on the market. RPGs (of any nationality), MMORPGs, and visual novels are his daily bread, but he enjoys almost every other genre, prominently racing simulators, action and sandbox games. He is also one of the few surviving fans on Earth of the flight simulator genre.

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