10 Recently Confirmed Truths You Didn't Know About Famous Video Games
5. The Zombies Had To Be Changed Because Of The Last Of Us - State Of Decay
There's no denying that The Last of Us is one of the most influential video games of the last decade, redefining story-driven action and delivering one of the most visceral survival horror experiences in the medium's history.
It also created a bit of a headache for other developers working on games featuring zombies or zombie-adjacent enemies, for fear they would be compared unfavourably to Naughty Dog's Clickers.
This was especially true of Undead Labs, whose own survival horror zombie game State of Decay was in development at the same time, and ended up releasing just eight days before The Last of Us.
In a Reddit post last year, the series' art director Brant Fitzgerald confirmed that the game had to undergo an artistic overhaul mid-development after The Last of Us was unveiled.
According to Fitzgerald, State of Decay's co-creator Doug Williams had been kicking around the idea of a fungus-infected zombie as early as 2005, even creating concept art featuring cordyceps-afflicted undead. Fitzgerald added:
"When TLOU's zombies were revealed, it was a pretty crushing hit to our plans. We applaud their success, loved their games but had to scramble a bit to shift our plans."
This clearly wasn't anyone's fault and nothing more than two companies independently utilising a concept found in nature for their game, but the frustration is nevertheless understandable.
Still, it all worked out in the end - State of Decay may not be a pop-culture phenom like The Last of Us, but it's a well-respected franchise with a third entry currently in development.