{"id":378274,"date":"2026-09-18T02:48:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T09:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/?p=378274"},"modified":"2026-09-30T09:28:38","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T16:28:38","slug":"the-last-of-us-director-bruce-straley-now-says-aaa-games-are-boring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/the-last-of-us-director-bruce-straley-now-says-aaa-games-are-boring\/","title":{"rendered":"The Last of Us director Bruce Straley now says AAA games are \u201cboring\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bruce Straley, who directed <a href=\"https:\/\/uncharted-legacy-of-thieves-collection.en.softonic.com\/\" rel=\"noopener\">Uncharted<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/the-last-of-us.en.softonic.com\/\" rel=\"noopener\">The Last of Us<\/a>, has taken aim at AAA development, arguing that a lot of big-budget games have turned \u201cboring\u201d because the system has become too cautious to leave real space for new ideas. In his view, the problem isn&#8217;t a lack of talent. It&#8217;s that nobody wants to gamble when projects stretch to <strong>five years<\/strong> and 2026 budgets land anywhere from $150 million to well over $300 million. Call of Duty, once marketing and post-launch support are included, gets close to $700 million. At that scale, publishers fall back on formulas.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He pointed to <a href=\"https:\/\/god-of-war.en.softonic.com\/\" rel=\"noopener\">God of War Laufey<\/a> as an example. Straley called its visuals and tech \u201cmindblowing,\u201d but said the gameplay doesn&#8217;t do much for him. He wasn&#8217;t taking a shot at one studio or one specific project so much as the broader model behind them. There&#8217;s some irony there, since he helped build that model with Uncharted and The Last of Us. He left Naughty Dog in <strong>2017<\/strong> after <a href=\"https:\/\/uncharted-4-a-thiefs-end-remastered.en.softonic.com\/\" rel=\"noopener\">Uncharted 4<\/a>, citing burnout, and still received a credit on The Last of Us Part 2, though what he actually did on that game remains unclear.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now he runs the much smaller Wildflower Interactive. Its <a href=\"https:\/\/coven-of-the-chicken-foot.en.softonic.com\/\" rel=\"noopener\">Coven of the Chicken Foot<\/a>, revealed at The Game Awards <strong>2025<\/strong>, looks like a pretty clear break from the old template and still doesn&#8217;t have a release date. Ken Levine and former BioWare producer Mark Darrah have said similar things, fans are split between polish and familiarity, and neither Sony nor Santa Monica Studio has responded.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bruce Straley, who directed Uncharted and The Last of Us, has taken aim at AAA development, arguing that a lot of big-budget games have turned \u201cboring\u201d because the system has become too cautious to leave real space for new ideas. In his view, the problem isn&#8217;t a lack of talent. It&#8217;s that nobody wants to &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/the-last-of-us-director-bruce-straley-now-says-aaa-games-are-boring\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The Last of Us director Bruce Straley now says AAA games are \u201cboring\u201d&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9351,"featured_media":378273,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wpcf-pageviews":0},"categories":[1015],"tags":[],"usertag":[],"vertical":[],"content-category":[6823],"class_list":["post-378274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","content-category-games"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9351"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378274"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":378275,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378274\/revisions\/378275"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378274"},{"taxonomy":"usertag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/usertag?post=378274"},{"taxonomy":"vertical","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vertical?post=378274"},{"taxonomy":"content-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content-category?post=378274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}