The Last of Us Part II – A more intense crunch since the postponement – News

In the video game world, crunch is more than a reality, and since the Rockstar Games affair in October 2018, this far too common practice has been constantly criticized by the public, developers or even some studios like the new Telltale Games. Unfortunately, this is not enough to make the entire industry react.

After Rockstar games, CD Projekt Red, NetherRealm Studios or more recently the developers of DOOM Eternal, it’s the Naughty Dog studio’s turn to face the crunch (trying period during which the developers realize many additional ones over several weeks) as the new interview of our colleagues shows us Kotaku. Indeed, some developers of The Last of Us Part II expressed themselves on this controversial subject and confided that since the postponement of the game from February to May 29, the crunch did not fade as expected, but was more intense again.

People who think that postponing is somehow to relieve stress or the workload of the team are wrong, the first thing they wanted to assure is that we are not slowing the pace. Anonymous developer from Naughty Dog

Another developer even specifies that the employees are selected according to their motivation. They are therefore trying to find out whether or not their future staff will be able to work a lot of overtime when production is approaching.

This is one of the reasons why crunch still happens here. People have the freedom to keep working longer, to push the boundaries of what they are working on, to make things better by only 10%. This is what the studio is looking for when hiring people. They are looking for people who have the motivation to devote these extra hours, for better or for worse. Anonymous developer from Naughty Dog

However, despite their exhaustion, the developers also insist that it would have been a waste to release The Last of Us Part II last February. Moreover, at the time of the announcement of the delay, Neil Druckmann, the creative director of the game, had declared that the title had been postponed since it was not up to the other productions of Naughty Dog.

While we are relieved that we did not have to compromise our vision, we are disappointed that we were unable to avoid this situation. We wish we could have predicted the amount of improvements we needed, but the size and scope of this game got the better of us. We hate to disappoint our fans and for that we are sorry. Neil Druckmann

Unfortunately, despite these numerous statements, it seems that the development of the game remains as intense until the release of the game. Hopefully for them that the next few days working on the title will not be too difficult. For our part, we are impatiently awaiting the release of The Last of Us Part II expected for May 29 exclusively on PlayStation 4.