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The Last of Us

The Last of Us: Introducing Tess

We talked to Naughty Dog's Neil Druckmann and actress Annie Wesching about the story of The Last of Us and the introduction of Joel's business partner Tess.

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Naughty Dog have established a reputation for great storytelling with the Uncharted series, but The Last of Us is something else. It's a brave new direction towards something that may be more difficult for gamers to digest - less of fantastic adventure and more of an emotionally draining experience. A harsh game world, populated by survivors who while they're still human may have lost some and in some cases most of their humanity.

The Last of Us

We've already gotten to know Joel and Ellie in previous trailers and gameplay clips, the unlikely pair who journey through America as he tries to guide her to safety and away from the military in the quarantine zones. Joel's business partner Tess was introduced in the recently released story trailer, and we were invited to a conference call with Naughty Dog's creative director Neil Druckmann and actress Annie Wersching (best known for playing Renee Walker in the last two seasons of 24), who plays the role of Tess.

"Tess is a character that is sort of Joel's partner in this world. At the beginning of this story Joel lives in this quarantine zone. He operates in the black market, where there's a lot of contraband that's illegal in the quarantine zone. And he and Tess handle guns, weapons, drugs, , deal with extra ration cards, and Tess is in many ways a mirror of Joel, someone who's willing to go to any lengths to survive in this world," said Neil Druckmann when asked to introduced the character.

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While Druckmann didn't feel that any of the characters were created with other fictional works or characters in mind he did point to No Country for Old Men and the World War II survivor novel City of Thieves as sources of inspiration.

Naughty Dog have purposely remained kind of vague about the specifics of the story up until now, but in the recent trailer we got to see some additional characters and the beginning on Joel and Ellie's adventure.

"There's a theme that we're kind of starting to show in this trailer, which is - you're trying to keep your distance, caring for people in this world can have consequences to it. When you're not just looking out for yourself you're putting yourself at risk. And you see that start to play out when Ellie gets introduced as a mission that she needs to get smuggled out of the city and you're seeing some of that tension play out in the trailer between Joel and Tess," Druckmann explains.

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The Last of Us
Tess is a black market dealer and Joel's partner. But in this world, everyone is in it for themselves and words like partner and friend are used loosely.

Annie Wersching, admitted to being fairly unfamiliar with gaming (she had no idea who Lara Croft was), and this was the first time she was part of a video game production. When asked what attracted her to the role of Tess, Wersching said:

"The combination of working with Naughty Dog, who are so esteemed, and the material, being somewhat familiar in that it is a strong, tough woman, combined with it just being a genre that was new to me. All of that was extremely, extremely, interesting."

Ahead of the conference call we were given some background by the PR department, who seemed intent to have us ask about the inclusion of strong female characters such as Ellie and Tess. Obviously this is a subject that has been getting some attention as of late with the controversial "rape incident" Lara Croft suffers in the upcoming Tomb Raider, and the recent twitter trend of highlighting women's role in the industry (#1reasonwhy). However, Neil Druckmann didn't really feel they were purposely creating strong female characters.

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The relationship between Joel and Tess is going to be one of the focal points of the story.

"The goal with all the characters in this is to try and have interesting contradiction and complex characters that have different dimensions to them, and the thing with this world is it's 20 years after the infection, most if not all the characters you run into are very strong willed, very much survivors in this world and it's no different with Tess, she's kind of this strong survivor - just as strong and tough, and stronger in some ways than Joel is in this world," said Druckmann.

"It's interesting cause the stake are so high in this particular scenario, in their everyday life. Every turn around the corner is life or death," said Annie Wersching. "It was a little bit like that in 24, in that the stakes were very high as they were trying to save the world from ending. But this particular one is really, really immediate. The immediacy of life and death raises the stakes and makes everything that much more intense and interesting."

The Last of Us
Ellie looks capable of looking after herself.

"For whatever reason I think she sees herself in Ellie a little bit. In her younger times and she knows what Ellie's life is going to be like in this world. So there's definitely a connection in that sense. That's what makes these characters so interesting, and the exact same time there may be a little bit of maternal instincts there. And she does want to sort of protect and take care of her, but she is also absolutely all for herself," Wersching concluded.

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"Naughty Dog have brought together these different elements and made them their own to create a masterclass in survival horror."



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