The Last Of Us 2 Rat King

The making of a Rat King: How Naughty Domestic dog created its scariest foe in The Last of Us Part 2

The first known sighting of a Rat King dates back to 1576, when "servants in Antwerp, Belgium discovered seven rats with knotted tails tied together". Now an established phenomenon with multiple cases recorded across the earth, but no verified explanation for the cause, Rat Kings take become a staple of sociology horror, inspiring endless storytellers from Stephen King to Alan Moore.

It was thus only a matter of fourth dimension before Rat Kings started to show up in video games, as most recently exemplified by The Last of United states Function 2, where it became the basis for Naughty Dog's adjacent evolution of its Cordyceps virus. This eldritch abomination of synthesised infected encouraged the studio to push the limits of its body horror further than ever earlier and, co-ordinate to those most closely involved with its creation, marked the fruition of a dream (or nightmare) that had been years in the making.

Note: The following article contains major spoilers for The Last of Us 2 .

Origins

Early concept art for the Rat King (Image credit: Shaddy Safadi)

Naughty Canis familiaris had actually been in possession of its Rat King for some fourth dimension before The Final of United states 2. The problem was that it had nowhere to put it. "Even during development of the first game, nosotros were thinking nigh what two infected stuck together would look like," says Anthony Newman, co-managing director of The Last of Us 2. "Visually, information technology was simply a actually exciting idea."

A few pieces of concept art for the Rat King were sketched during development of The Last of Us, but the animal was eventually sent into dormancy equally Naughty Domestic dog struggled to detect information technology a suitable scene within Joel and Ellie's original journeying. The Rat Rex wouldn't re-emerge until several years later, when the studio found itself storyboarding a trial by fire sequence for Abby, The Concluding of United states of america two's 2nd protagonist.

"Nosotros wanted Abby to have this really intense thing that she overcomes, considering she'due south kind of on this redemption mission to go the supplies for Yara's arm," explains co-director Kurt Margenau, "and then it seemed like the perfect place for the Rat King. She's gone through all of these trials: Overcoming her fear of heights climbing to the sky bridge, fighting through hordes of infected on the way downwardly, and coming out the other side thinking the worst was over – only to be thrown right into this nightmare dominate fight."

Finally, the Rat King had constitute its home.

In one case the core artistic squad knew that it wanted to develop the encounter as a fully formed department of Abby'southward story, Naughty Dog'south other teams were looped in to bring it to life. That included audio designer Fellow Anthony Jimenez, who you tin give thanks for every roar, crackle, and howl that emanates from the serial' hordes of infected.

"The but information I had at first was concept art, pattern prototypes, blockmesh level art, and prototype motion-capture animations," says Jimenez. "It seemed like an exciting but daunting task, requiring a lot of high-level conceptual work and sound design. I knew that if I finished all the other infected sound pattern outset, I could use those avails as layers in my final song designs of the Rat King. It wasn't until quite belatedly in production where I went all-out on fleshing it out and finalizing its sound."

Similarly, animation director Jeremy Yates had to consider how such an unholy matrimony of flesh and fungus would behave, studying preserved Rat King specimens to conceptualise ane in motility: "While nosotros've never seen one alive, I imagine information technology's a coordinated anarchy of movements. Like to conjoined twins, they're contained but must larn to coordinate their movement and work together."

Prelude

"It needed to audio part of the universe, and role of the established infected family."

Beau Anthony Jimenez

With the bones of the Rat Male monarch encounter in identify, Naughty Dog could begin thinking about how it would introduce this new infected boss to the player, and the best way it could ramp up the fright factor while staying truthful to The Final of Us' firmly grounded sense of authenticity. That meant Abby's descent into Ground Aught needed to feel organic, not mechanical, and for Jimenez in item, information technology demanded a preamble that would continue to mess with player expectations right upwards to the Rat Male monarch's full reveal.

"Initially, the introduction was a jump scare," he says, reflecting on the primeval days of development. "That didn't excite me, because I felt it wasn't plenty time to tell the sonic story of the Rat Male monarch. I roughshod in love with this idea that you get-go to hear something coming in the distance, and that your preconceptions of infected sounds volition endeavour to fill in the gaps as to what exactly was budgeted."

"A lot of inspiration came from the mutant bear scene in Annihilation, which was why you hear the blood-curdling stalker cries initially. The player may recall a clicker or stalker is approaching... just a couple seconds in, the cries pitch downwardly into a rumble, which vibrate objects inside the ambulance with subsonic bellows. I felt that this approach raised the spook-factor to the nth degree."

Jimenez pitched the thought to creative director Neil Druckmann, who naturally approved, earlier taking it to Yates and his squad of grapheme animators, which now had the daunting task of rigging the Rat Rex's initial set on on Abby in the ambulance. The solution was to get physical, tying three actors together to capture the kinesthetics of the multi-limbed monster.

"To achieve the ultimate capture solution that we ended upwards using for the game assets, nosotros built a cage on big caster wheels," Yates recalls. "We knew our 2 actors would need to be incredibly strong and have a lot of endurance for this shoot, so we had [stunt role player] Chris Robbins play the bloater one-half and pro parkour athlete Jesse La Flair play our stalker."

"Jesse has incredible upper body strength from his parkour athleticism and was able to build in the ravaged domestic dog movement we were looking for. These 2 actors were joined at the hips again, just the cage held Jesse in somewhat of a hammock that kept most of his trunk weight off of his arm. This gave him explosive speed with his left arm and allowed Chris, and a number of administration, to motion and swing the cage around very quickly."

The gambit paid off, providing the animation team with the perfect reference point for detailing the creature's every motion. From in that location, all that was left was making sure this King looked the part for his small screen debut...

Revelation

"I think Resident Evil is probably the limit for united states of america in terms of how crazy we desire to go," says Margenau of Naughty Dog's approach to building its unique brand of post-apocalyptic horror. "The reason that we entertained the thought of these infected fused together is because there's history in our catechism of what happens to them when they sit effectually for a actually long time."

"I big reference signal for us was Neill Blomkamp's brusk film, Zygote. If y'all look at that video, you tin can run into that there's a lot of inspiration there. Inside is another one; the way the monster'southward arms touch a lot of stuff is only this inherently creepy thing. And then nosotros're aware of things like that, but we had to get in our own and do all the extra work that's needed to make it feel existent."

Yates also brings up Within as an inspiration for the Rat Rex's physicality, revealing that Naughty Dog's animators even added ragdoll physics to the fleshy growths on its back so as to emulate the gelled event that had players shuddering throughout Playdead's 2016 puzzle-platformer. He also points to another titan of pop culture, but not in the sense that you might expect.

"Ironically, Stranger Things Season 3 also dropped in the centre of evolution and featured a large creature formed from rats, which chased characters around a hospital. Nosotros were already pretty far forth in product, and so it didn't alter much, but it did take a very similar vibe," says Yates. "It was at least interesting to encounter what our finished version could wait like."

Jimenez's references, on the other hand, weren't and so much drawn from pop culture as they were the creature kingdom. Layering in distorted big true cat roars with avian squawks and snake hisses, the unholy mix was concocted to evoke the Medusa-similar nature of the Rat King's many infected parts.

What little remains of the Rat King's humanity is buried below layers of congealed infected protoplasm, and Jimenez made sure to reflect that in the monster's sound design, too: "I would layer in gargles, gags, and sloppy wet gore sounds to add together a sickening realism to the vocal effects. It needed to sound part of the universe, and part of the established infected family unit."

Battlegrounds

"The challenge was less nigh making the fight off-white and more about making it interesting."

Anthony Newman

Anyone who'southward had the misfortune of fighting the Rat King will tell you that its called arena is not a pleasant place to be. A series of dark, narrow corridors that make up just one department of Seattle'south 'Ground Nothing', the stage for Abby's face up-off represents the iterative culmination of a dozen ditched concepts.

"The beginning layout was essentially an arena where you're shooting a petty bit and and then running, and then shooting a little scrap and running... and information technology kind of concluded up having this very apartment interaction," says Newman, revealing that it wasn't until atomic number 82 designer Richard Cambier proposed "a Hail Mary last minute change that really elevated the quality of the fight from an eight to a ten."

"He had this idea of introducing these pseudo-dead ends, where you're kind of looking around for your exit in a much more than claustrophobic space which allows the Rat King to go towards you, and makes for these really narrow escapes," Newman continues. "I remember nosotros begged the surroundings squad at the concluding minute and I remember them saying 'Okay, you get this one, just only because you asked then nicely!'"

These "loops", as Naughty Canis familiaris refers to them, came in the grade of rooms made up of circumventable obstacles, such as a colonnade or medical table, that Abby could and so use to maintain some distance between herself and the monster.

With these established, in improver to several ecology "shortcuts" that allowed both Abby or the Rat King to slip around each other, Naughty Domestic dog realised it had an arena that felt intensely claustrophobic – encouraging players to retrieve on their feet with a heightened awareness of their own vulnerability.

"We were trying to make certain that the monster is always on screen as much as possible, and not having any dead ends that would impale you," adds Margenau, reflecting on the fragile balancing human activity Naughty Dog had to perform. "It's scary, and ever a shut shave, but you never experience like the environment cheated you when you die."

Severance

(Image credit: Naughty Canis familiaris)

"The challenge was less nearly making the fight fair and more than near making it interesting," admits Newman. "We accept all kinds of characters that volition fuck yous upwards if they affect y'all. One of our breadstuff and butter enemies, the clicker, kills you in one hit. So nosotros had to think about what would make this animate being something more than than simply a really tanky clicker that soaks upwards a lot of bullets?"

The answer, of course, was the divide. Halfway through the fight, a "super stalker" attached to the Rat King will splinter off from its host, in a subversive spin on the dominate fight trope of a 'second stage'.

After defeating the Rat King, Abby is then forced into a completely different kind of battle with the stalker; an intense game of cat and mouse that Margenau refers to as the sequence's free "dessert fight". Newman reveals that two other critically acclaimed PlayStation exclusives were the key source of inspiration for this progression of events.

"A large part of the separate gameplay was actually inspired by the Magni and Modi bossfight from God of War, where you had these two complimentary enemies – one with a fast weapon and one with a large slow weapon."

"The ending fight with the stalker itself was inspired by Eileen the Crow from Bloodborne. I loved how in a game with bosses that were twenty stories high, the nearly challenging and brutal fight of them all was this person who is the verbal same size every bit y'all. So that was something nosotros were really interested in: how can we brand an infected who isn't massive experience just as mortiferous?"

Thankfully, Yates' approach to mo-capping the Rat Male monarch with three stunt actors had allowed his team to give "each of the fused bodies their own motion", thus making it easier to animate one tearing apart from the other in a plausible fashion. Meanwhile, Jiminez characterised the super stalker'south screams with samples of "slowed downward falcon and vulture cries to give information technology a gritty, terrifying tone that sounded almost like a tortured human".

Aftermath

With both the Rat King and super stalker slain, Abby emerges from the other side of the hospital a changed person. She mentions the creature to no one, despite its potential importance for humanity's understanding of the infected. Perhaps she's shellshocked. Perhaps she's worried no ane would believe her. Or perchance she doesn't desire to consider the possibility that the Rat King she killed wasn't simply an anomalous exception to the rule.

When pressed for more pieces of Rat Rex lore, Margenau and Newman are hesitant to explain the minutiae across what'southward revealed in the game itself. "There was at some point gonna exist a note somewhere that would hint that at that place were actually more than elsewhere," Newman teases, "but that didn't get in in, which leaves information technology in this weird like pseudo-canon land."

"Even the name, 'Rat King', is not really canon," Margenau adds. "No ane ever refers to it as that in the game itself. We debated whether there should be something that names what it is…"

Information technology's here where Newman chimes in, grinning: "But don't you lot recollect, Kurt? In that location's that line that Abby was going to say as she first starts running away from information technology; 'Fuck this... Rat... Rex?!' We had to cut that one for time."

For more, here's all The Last of Us 2 Easter eggs you should look out for in the entrada, or why not picket our full review of the game in the video beneath?

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