Seen people still confused why this remake was made, and by who.
It wasn’t a Naughty Dog project. It was Michael Mumbauer’s game at PS Visual Arts.
He hoped to create his own studio at Sony. Mumbauer didn't want to just keep doing support work, he had his own ideas and ambitions. He started with an idea to make animated TV shows about PlayStation games using the game engines and the same characters. Create animated shows about PlayStation IPs and have it all look the same as the games. Issue was its not a proven idea, too risky. Didn't get the green light.
He had built up a new bigger team in San Diego. Visual Arts were also working on Amy Hennig's Star Wars game, but then that game got cancelled by EA, so he had to pivot the team to keep them working and not lose people. The pivot was to do remakes. Shawn Layden, head of WWS, was interested in remakes. So Mumbauer pitched a remake. This was green lit. They began work on TLOU Part 1, while also working on Part 2, around 2018.
First info on this came from an interview he did with David Jaffe, in December 2020.
https://youtu.be/jgq_rhZwDh
Jaffe - "So you guys were doing a remake?"
Mumbauer - "I... can't really say that, but I'm just telling you that's what I was chasing. I can't necessarily tell you that's... what I can tell you is that.. that team certainly worked The Last of Us Part II, they're credited on that right? You saw that. So the thing is, what I can tell you is that's what I was chasing because I believe that there was value in doing something like a remake of God of War at the visual fidelity of today, or like a remake of Uncharted 1 at the visual fidelity of today."
Obviously more info later came from Schreier’s article at Bloomberg that first revealed the game. Go read that.
Quick info on Michael Mumbauer
And here’s him today adding some new info on the game.
It wasn’t a Naughty Dog project. It was Michael Mumbauer’s game at PS Visual Arts.
He hoped to create his own studio at Sony. Mumbauer didn't want to just keep doing support work, he had his own ideas and ambitions. He started with an idea to make animated TV shows about PlayStation games using the game engines and the same characters. Create animated shows about PlayStation IPs and have it all look the same as the games. Issue was its not a proven idea, too risky. Didn't get the green light.
He had built up a new bigger team in San Diego. Visual Arts were also working on Amy Hennig's Star Wars game, but then that game got cancelled by EA, so he had to pivot the team to keep them working and not lose people. The pivot was to do remakes. Shawn Layden, head of WWS, was interested in remakes. So Mumbauer pitched a remake. This was green lit. They began work on TLOU Part 1, while also working on Part 2, around 2018.
First info on this came from an interview he did with David Jaffe, in December 2020.
https://youtu.be/jgq_rhZwDh
Jaffe - "So you guys were doing a remake?"
Mumbauer - "I... can't really say that, but I'm just telling you that's what I was chasing. I can't necessarily tell you that's... what I can tell you is that.. that team certainly worked The Last of Us Part II, they're credited on that right? You saw that. So the thing is, what I can tell you is that's what I was chasing because I believe that there was value in doing something like a remake of God of War at the visual fidelity of today, or like a remake of Uncharted 1 at the visual fidelity of today."
Obviously more info later came from Schreier’s article at Bloomberg that first revealed the game. Go read that.
Quick info on Michael Mumbauer
- had worked in film vfx at Sony Pictures Imageworks
- worked on films like Beowulf, I Am Legend, Polar Express, etc
- head of PlayStation’s Visual Arts team, 2007 - 2020
- began on Uncharted 2, Resistance 2, etc.. onward
- worked on most big 1st party games (Uncharted, God of War, TLOU, etc)
- worked on some 3rd party games (Titanfall, Jedi Fallen Order, RE8, etc)
- 200+ dev team at peak, working in San Diego
- called "the ILM of the games industry"
- does art, animation, mo-cap, character models, cinematics, etc
- primarily a support studio, under the SIE PD support umbrella
- Visual Arts took some workloads off of the Naughty Dog devs
- co-development, heavily intertwined with Naughty Dog
- character models, animation, rigging, facial capture, cinematics, mo-cap, coding
- animators & artists at both ND & VA worked on same stuff, collaboration
- Visual Arts did a lot of work on this game, over 100 devs helped
And here’s him today adding some new info on the game.
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