It’s 5 p.m. on a Wednesday night, and Bruce Straley is poised on the beginning line. In precisely 24 hours, the legendary director will take off working when his first sport since 2016’s Uncharted 4: A Thief’s Finish is revealed on the 2025 Recreation Awards. Coven of the Hen Foot is ready to be the debut sport from his 16-person studio, Wildflower Interactive, kicking off the subsequent leg of his lengthy profession. I’m with him the night earlier than the whistle blows, sitting collectively at a lodge bar as he tells me about all of the hurdles he needed to clear to get the studio up and working. It wasn’t straightforward.
“If you’re on the beginning line of a marathon, you’re like ‘That is superior! I’m going to race a marathon!’” Straley tells Polygon. “And then you definately’re a pair miles in and also you’re like ‘What the fuck did I do!?’” Straley isn’t any stranger to a marathon. Previous to founding Wildflower Interactive in 2021, he spent practically 20 years constructing Naughty Canine into the juggernaut online game studio it’s in the present day. Throughout that point, he served as a director on the corporate’s most pivotal video games, together with Uncharted 2: Amongst Thieves and The Final of Us (alongside Neil Druckmann). Simply as he was far forward in first place, Straley all of a sudden left the corporate in 2017 — three years earlier than The Final of Us Half 2 helped remodel the collection he co-created right into a mainstream pop-culture phenomenon. Why spend all that point chasing glory, solely to go away all of it behind and begin over? In his first interview since leaving Naughty Canine, Straley defined why he give up practically a decade in the past. There have been a number of causes, however the crux of it got here right down to a sort of artistic stagnation that was antithetical to his philosophy as a creator. “I had been there 18 years. That’s a very long time for anyone to be wherever,” Straley says. “I believe I performed a really integral position in constructing that model up and people titles, and I had a extremely superb expertise with these groups. However I felt like I used to be answering the identical questions over and over. We have been sort of on this paradigm of this type of sport — that I used to be a part of creating! However it felt like I’ve been on this place earlier than. My mind isn’t good with that sort of repetition. I would like new issues to unravel, I would like new artistic retailers. I’m not saying there wouldn’t be alternatives there, however couple that feeling with the concept I used to be working actually, actually onerous at one thing that wasn’t mine.”
Non-HDR clouds above Madagascar in Uncharted 4: A Thief’s Finish.Naughty Canine/Sony Interactive Leisure
Straley’s have to strive new issues has all the time been inseparable from his success. Whereas the type of cinematic motion sport he helped pioneer at Naughty Canine has grow to be an business commonplace now in 2025, that wasn’t all the time the case. The now-foundational action-adventure video games he directed there have been born from the identical sort of pondering that may ultimately set the stage for his exit. “For Uncharted 2, it was like, may I create the playable motion summer time blockbuster?” Straley says. “On the time in 2007, each huge epic setpiece was in a cutscene. And for me it was like, what the fuck are we doing? We’re known as an interactive medium! Why aren’t we making that playable? For Uncharted 2, we needed to push that. For The Final of Us, it was like, can we create extra character stakes and make it extra private? If we had a collapsing constructing, may we make it imply one thing to somebody? It didn’t actually imply something to Drake, it was only a huge setpiece. There’s all the time this query I’m asking, which is how can we do one thing completely different? Why are we doing it if it’s going to be the identical factor that you simply’ve already performed?” Straley was on the proper place on the proper time as somebody looking for solutions to these huge questions. The mid- to late-2000s have been a turning level for big-budget video games, as creators have been desperate to push boundaries of storytelling in blockbusters. Video games like Bioshock helped change the notion of what a online game narrative may accomplish by subverting the medium. Straley cites Gears of Warfare as an particularly pivotal sport that pulled off the sort of feat he hoped to perform again then. “The very best level of Gears of Warfare is once you struggle this uphill stairs battle in Marcus Phoenix’s outdated home. They usually’re in cowl they usually’re like ‘I don’t know if I can fucking do that.’ That was the very best half, when it turned emotional and private. Fuck yeah! Let’s get actual! Warfare’s onerous! These creatures hold coming out of all over the place, fuck!” Straley says. “So when it got here to The Final of Us, it wasn’t simply can we make it extra private. It was, can we take a horror story and make it really feel such as you care about these characters in a horrific survival setting? For me, it’s this evolution of: How can I simply take one thing from a distinct angle and create a contemporary perspective on a style that’s been well-trodden? And if I’m not doing that… I simply don’t have it in me. I’d make much more cash if I did!”
It’d fail miserably, however I assumed that it was not less than my failure based mostly on my alternative.
Whereas Naughty Canine was a spot the place Straley may ask these questions for practically 20 years, he ultimately hit a artistic wall. Between 2007 and 2016, he labored on three Uncharted video games, The Final of Us, and its Left Behind DLC. The studio had clearly discovered a method of action-adventure sport that labored and was dedicated to creating extra video games in that vein, main the business by instance. That locked Straley, a creator who thrives on evolution, in a stalemate. “When it got here time to consider both staying at Naughty Canine or leaving, it was like, the place else do I’m going?” Straley says. “Naughty Canine is actually the head of a method of sport, and I actually loved making and taking part in that type of sport. I wasn’t going to go to a different AAA studio to make a first-person shooter or puzzle-platformer. It simply didn’t really feel like I used to be going to go some place else. Then I must cope with an entire completely different bureaucratic or cultural system, in order that was already a solution for me. Okay, I can’t go some place else.”
Picture: Naughty Canine/Sony Interactive Leisure
Straley got here to just accept that he needed to make a transfer. He felt that he had stated what he needed to say in AAA video games and was at peace together with his accomplishments. There was additionally a enterprise consideration: Although he was in a spot the place he may push video video games ahead at a excessive degree, he was nonetheless only a piece of a huge IP machine that was in the end owned by Sony. “It actually comes right down to: Do you need to proceed working for another person and put in all the trouble to construct an IP, to construct characters, to construct issues {that a} franchise may very well be constructed out of?” he says. “I obtained paid very nicely there, I obtained some appreciation there, however it felt prefer it was time to interrupt out and check out it by myself. It felt prefer it was time to evolve my ideas and construct a brand new crew. It’d fail miserably, however I assumed that it was not less than my failure based mostly on my alternative.” After taking a break following Uncharted 4’s launch in 2016, Straley parted methods with Naughty Canine in 2017. He revealed a weblog entry on the studio’s web site on the time explaining his determination, and noting that he had “discovered my vitality focusing in different instructions.” He didn’t communicate to the press on the time and appeared to quietly exit the business nearly solely. Although he’d spend the subsequent three years out of gaming’s highlight — all whereas Naughty Canine was gearing as much as launch its largest sport but, The Final of Us Half 2 — Straley nonetheless had an concept for a sport that saved following him. He was interested by the revolutionary manner Uncharted and The Final of Us dealt with companion characters. What if he may make somebody like Ellie much more reactive? He was curious sufficient in regards to the thought that he started prototyping an concept in 2020, despite the fact that he nonetheless wasn’t certain what he needed his subsequent artistic transfer to be. “I began with one man who needed to discover ways to design, and I didn’t know if I needed to make a sport once more,” he says. “So I assumed that it was an ideal concept. Perhaps I might help him find out about design, after which he might help prototype and see if there’s any validity to this concept. And there was! We stood one thing up fairly rapidly, and fairly instantly it was like, there’s one thing right here. Now, there’s additionally the siren’s lure of the prototype. It’s rather a lot simpler to face it up and picture how cool it’s going to be than truly end it!”
It’s not one thing that it is advisable do a remaster of within the subsequent 4 years as a result of the tech has already outgrown it.
That prototype would ultimately set the stage for Coven of the Hen Foot, Straley’s first undertaking since 2016’s Uncharted 4. The sport stars an aged witch who enlists the assistance of a forest creature to assist her fulfill her oath to a coven. The open-ended expertise is constructed round a companion character who’s able to observing gamers’ actions, mimicking them, and ultimately studying the logic behind what they’re doing. Visually, it’s a far cry from the cinematic hyperrealism of Naughty Canine’s video games, however it’s nonetheless very a lot an evolution of what they do on a technical degree. To deliver the thought to life, Straley created his personal impartial studio: Wildflower Interactive, a small crew made up of 16 folks in complete, 12 of whom are builders. Straley anticipated that it will be a scrappy outfit that may work sooner than the standard AAA system. As an alternative, he rapidly discovered that it will nonetheless take time to construct the correct artistic tradition to hold out his imaginative and prescient. Straley credit Journey designer Jenova Chen for serving to him steer Wildflower in the correct route by asking him an essential query: “Do you need to make a sport or do you need to construct a crew?”
Picture: Wildflower Interactive
For the previous few years, Straley hasn’t simply been engaged on Coven of the Hen Foot, however coping with the challenges of making a brand new distant studio within the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. He describes it as a rollercoaster, however one by which each crew member has absolutely dedicated to the imaginative and prescient as a result of they imagine in evolving the business. Once I ask him what’s completely different about working in a studio of that scale versus Naughty Canine, he sums it up in a single phrase: “The whole lot.” “There’s no room for slop,” Straley says. “Each determination you make goes to make or break the scope of the sport and what our runway is for conserving this crew alive. The whole lot that goes into both the corporate or the sport takes from one thing else… The whole lot is completely different — and good! I just like the problem! I requested for this! However irrespective of what number of indie devs you hear from that say it’s actually onerous within the indie world, I’m telling you, it’s actually onerous within the indie world! As difficult because the change has been, Straley is happy about what Wildflower is constructing with Coven of the Hen Foot. He believes within the undertaking, although he’s nonetheless hyper-aware of the stakes. In any case, that is the man who directed among the most influential video video games of the trendy period. “I’m scared shitless!” he says. “There’s rather a lot driving on this for me. Name it ego, status, legacy bullshit, no matter it’s, however the truth that day-after-day we present up and there’s one thing new that makes us giggle and also you get excited, I simply can’t look forward to folks to play this. It’s one thing distinctive that’s going to final the check of time. It’s not one thing that it is advisable do a remaster of within the subsequent 4 years as a result of the tech has already outgrown it.”
It’s onerous to not learn that final half as a dig on his former employer, whether or not unconscious or not. Within the years since Straley left Naughty Canine, the studio has launched 4 video games: The Final of Us Half 2, a remake of The Final of Us, a remaster of The Final of Us Half 2, and a group of remastered Uncharted video games. Although the studio is now at the moment at work on one thing solely new with the Neil Druckmann-led Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, it has spent the previous eight years circling the identical concepts — the very sort of pondering that Straley wanted to interrupt out from in 2017. On the finish of our dialog, I come again to a phrase Straley used earlier: legacy. It’s one thing he can’t escape. Even Naughty Canine’s Uncharted 4 remaster places the label on him, due to its inclusion within the Legacy of Thieves Assortment. Straley continues to be hyper conscious of his legacy — after all he’s. However Wildflower Interactive is an opportunity for him to let go of his ego and proceed doing the factor he does greatest: pushing ahead. “The issues that I assumed I used to be bringing with me from Naughty Canine, I additionally needed to be taught that not every thing is useful,” Straley says. “It seems like an evolution, in that you need to shed a pores and skin. There’s grime and dirt, and I’ve outgrown it in such a manner that it has to get peeled off and you need to grow to be a brand new snake. And the human expertise for me is exhibiting up and never getting caught up in my head, or projecting what you’re going to consider this sport. That’s worry! And if I’m in a fear-based mindset, I can’t be artistic. “Legacy is bullshit. The idea that I care in any respect about what all people thinks about me is simply nothing however a entice, and it’s going to have an effect on every thing I do and say. It’s the worst place any individual may very well be in, actually.”
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