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 Rooster Foot is about to be the debut sport from his 16-person studio, Wildflower Interactive, kicking off the following 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 you then’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 almost twenty years constructing Naughty Canine into the juggernaut online game studio it’s at this time. 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 the sudden left the corporate in 2017 — three years earlier than The Final of Us Half 2 helped rework the sequence 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 stop almost a decade in the past. There have been a number of causes, however the crux of it got here all the way down to a form 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 function in constructing that model up and people titles, and I had a very superb expertise with these groups. However I felt like I used to be answering the identical questions over and over. We had been form of on this paradigm of this fashion 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 kind of repetition. I want new issues to unravel, I want new artistic shops. 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.”
Straley’s must attempt new issues has all the time been inseparable from his success. Whereas the fashion of cinematic motion sport he helped pioneer at Naughty Canine has change into an trade normal 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 form of pondering that might ultimately set the stage for his exit.
“For Uncharted 2, it was like, may I create the playable motion summer season blockbuster?” Straley says. “On the time in 2007, each massive 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 wished 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 massive setpiece. There’s all the time this query I’m asking, which is how will 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 massive questions. The mid- to late-2000s had been a turning level for big-budget video games, as creators had been desirous 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 Conflict as an particularly pivotal sport that pulled off the form of feat he hoped to perform again then.
“One of the best level of Gears of Conflict is once you struggle this uphill stairs battle in Marcus Phoenix’s outdated home. They usually’re in cowl and so they’re like ‘I don’t know if I can fucking do that.’ That was one of the best half, when it turned emotional and private. Fuck yeah! Let’s get actual! Conflict’s onerous! These creatures hold coming out of in every single 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 special angle and create a recent 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 might make much more cash if I did!”
It would fail miserably, however I assumed that it was not less than my failure primarily based on my selection.
Whereas Naughty Canine was a spot the place Straley may ask these questions for almost 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 mode of action-adventure sport that labored and was dedicated to creating extra video games in that vein, main the trade 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 am going?” Straley says. “Naughty Canine is actually the top of a mode of sport, and I actually loved making and enjoying that fashion 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 take care of 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.”
Straley got here to just accept that he needed to make a transfer. He felt that he had mentioned what he wished to say in AAA video games and was at peace along 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 stage, he was nonetheless only a piece of a big IP machine that was finally owned by Sony.
“It actually comes all the way down to: Do you wish 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 could possibly be constructed out of?” he says. “I received paid very properly there, I received some appreciation there, nevertheless it felt prefer it was time to interrupt out and take a look at it by myself. It felt prefer it was time to evolve my ideas and construct a brand new group. It would fail miserably, however I assumed that it was not less than my failure primarily based on my selection.”
After taking a break following Uncharted 4’s launch in 2016, Straley parted methods with Naughty Canine in 2017. He printed a weblog entry on the studio’s web site on the time explaining his choice, and noting that he had “discovered my power focusing in different instructions.” He didn’t converse to the press on the time and appeared to quietly exit the trade virtually fully.
Although he’d spend the following 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 thought for a sport that saved following him. He was interested by the revolutionary approach 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 concerning the thought that he started prototyping an thought in 2020, regardless that he nonetheless wasn’t certain what he wished his subsequent artistic transfer to be.
“I began with one man who wished to learn to design, and I didn’t know if I wished to make a sport once more,” he says. “So I assumed that it was an ideal thought. Perhaps I may also help him find out about design, after which he may also 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 quite a bit 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’s essential to 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 Rooster Foot, Straley’s first challenge 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, nevertheless it’s nonetheless very a lot an evolution of what they do on a technical stage.
To carry the concept to life, Straley created his personal unbiased studio: Wildflower Interactive, a small group made up of 16 individuals in complete, 12 of whom are builders. Straley anticipated that it will be a scrappy outfit that might work sooner than the normal AAA system. As an alternative, he rapidly discovered that it will nonetheless take time to construct the appropriate artistic tradition to hold out his imaginative and prescient. Straley credit Journey designer Jenova Chen for serving to him steer Wildflower in the appropriate path by asking him an essential query: “Do you wish to make a sport or do you wish to construct a group?”
For the previous few years, Straley hasn’t simply been engaged on Coven of the Rooster 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 group member has absolutely dedicated to the imaginative and prescient as a result of they imagine in evolving the trade. After 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: “All the things.”
“There’s no room for slop,” Straley says. “Each choice you make goes to make or break the scope of the sport and what our runway is for maintaining this group alive. All the things that goes into both the corporate or the sport takes from one thing else… All the things 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 worked up about what Wildflower is constructing with Coven of the Rooster Foot. He believes within the challenge, 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 quite a bit driving on this for me. Name it ego, fame, 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 snigger and also you get excited, I simply can’t look ahead to individuals to play this. It’s one thing distinctive that’s going to final the check of time. It’s not one thing that it’s essential to 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 presently at work on one thing fully new with the Neil Druckmann-led Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, it has spent the previous eight years circling the identical concepts — the very form 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, because of its inclusion within the Legacy of Thieves Assortment. Straley continues to be hyper conscious of his legacy — in fact 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 study that not all the pieces is useful,” Straley says. “It seems like an evolution, in that you need to shed a pores and skin. There’s dust and dirt, and I’ve outgrown it in such a approach that it has to get peeled off and you need to change into a brand new snake. And the human expertise for me is displaying up and never getting caught up in my head, or projecting what you’re going to consider this sport. That’s concern! 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 lure, and it’s going to have an effect on all the pieces I do and say. It’s the worst place any individual could possibly be in, actually.”
