Uncharted 3 had a The Last of Us Easter Egg accidentally left in.
You may be asking, “What’s an Easter Egg and why is it relevant in a video game?” An Easter Egg is much like it is in the real world. On Easter Sunday, we hide colored eggs for the kids to find, and it makes the holiday fun for them. In a video game, it’s about the same, in that the developers leave fun little items in the game that really serve no purpose but are interesting nonetheless. In BioShock , there was a place later in the game where you would find a wheel of cheese with drops of something white next to it, and with a wedge cut out of the cheese, it looked like an homage to Pac-Man .
In Uncharted 3 , the Easter Egg was left in supposedly by mistake, and almost gave away The Last of Us before it had been announced. The Last of Us had been planned for reveal in June 2011, but was postponed until December 2011, causing it to be announced after the release of Uncharted 3 in November 2011. This means that for a month, early gamers might have seen an ad for a game that hadn’t even been announced yet, and Naughty Dog admits they left it in by mistake.
The Easter Egg was a newspaper called The Overseer, and its headline reads, “Scientists are still struggling to understand deadly fungus.” Below the headline is a picture of Joel from The Last of Us . Even though the game’s title wasn’t mentioned, it was still a teaser of things to come for the month before the game was announced.
Game director Bruce Straley commented on the Easter Egg, “These games are so big, right? They’re several hours long. Every single pixel has to be touched. Every animation is created from hand. It’s overwhelming. You can’t look over every detail. So this one little thing in the background, nobody’s thinking about that.”
Do you think Naughty Dog may have left the The Last of Us Easter Egg in Uncharted 3 on purpose and feigned ignorance? Or did they actually forget to take it out during playtesting?