The game’s Creative Director Neil Druckmann explained to Eurogamer:
If the game was about the monsters, we would have not showed them. The story’s not about them, so [we thought] let’s get it out of the way.
He continued:
In any other medium it’s all about the characters. [We want you to] care so when horrible things happen you feel something. That’s what Naughty Dog can bring to the genre and really own it: every decision we make is about the characters and their relationship.
Adding:
We approached this genre because we felt no-one is getting to the heart of it. [The Last of Us] tells you something about the human condition – that’s what you want to do as a storyteller.
In fact, Naughty Dog were worried when they saw the Dead Island trailer, which they thought would be a similar game: We saw it and we thought, wait a minute, someone else is doing this – it’s really moving, there’s this family that’s been torn apart. You saw the game and it wasn’t that, I’m not saying whether it was a good or bad game, but it wasn’t that. And we feel our trailer is very representative of what we’re going for.
He also said:
This is going to sound corny and it might not appeal to gamers, but I would say it’s a love story. It’s not a romantic love story, it’s a love story about a father-daughter-like relationship