We’re proud to share the news that the first issue of The Last of Us: American Dreams – a comic book series published by Dark Horse Comics and jointly written by Naughty Dog Creative Director Neil Druckmann and the talented Faith Erin Hicks – is in stores now. The series art is also by Faith, with colors by Rachelle Rosenberg, lettering by Clem Robins, and the stunning covers by Julián Totino Tedesco.

Trust us when we say that American Dreams doesn’t spoil any of the story found in The Last of Us game, and instead gives you a great introduction to Ellie and her life as told through events inside the quarantine zone taking place prior to the game. I have to say, even though I’ve been able to watch the American Dreams series take shape over the past several months as we worked on it with Dark Horse Comics, it was still no less awesome to finally see it in front of me and read Issue #1 as an actual, real comic book.

Brendan Wright, Editor of The Last of Us: American Dreams, has a great blog post over on the Dark Horse website that introduces the series far better and with more eloquence than I ever can.

The digital version of The Last of Us: American Dreams Issue #1 will launch next Wednesday, April 10, on Dark Horse Digital – which is available on your iPhone, iPad, and Android devices, or on the web. You can get links to the apps or access Dark Horse Digital here.

While the physical comic book is only available in North America for the time being, the good news is that the English-only digital version will be available worldwide. Keep an eye on @PlayStation on Twitter as we will be giving away 50 codes for the digital edition.

Also on Twitter, be sure to join Neil and Faith for a Dark Horse Twitter chat on @DarkHorsecomics on the same day the digital version of American Dreams Issue #1 drops – Wednesday, April 10 at 11:30 AM PDT. [What time is this in my city?]

We’re planning a one-hour Twitter chat, so keep an eye on @DarkHorsecomics on Twitter and the #TheLastofUsAD hashtag. Dark Horse has let us know they’re looking to do some giveaways during the Twitter chat, so this is one you won’t want to miss.

We’re thrilled to see that the comic series has started already – hopefully making the wait until The Last of Us releases worldwide on June 14, 2013, just a little bit easier.

If you’ve already picked up the comic – tell us what you think in the comments!

See the first six pages of American Dreams Issue #1 at Dark Horse’s website. If you decide to pick it up – and I suggest you do! – you can find your local comic book store here.

It has been a big weekend for us here at Naughty Dog. We revealed a brand new trailer for The Last of Us at the Spike Video Game Awards on Friday along with the most important news for any fan – that The Last of Us will be released on May 7th, 2013!

This is our second trailer release and our first since announcing The Last of Us at least year’s VGA show. If you didn’t catch the show when it aired live or the Spike video stream, you can watch the full, uncensored trailer at the top of this post. We’ve tried to keep the trailer as spoiler-free as possible, while giving you some hints at the tense, emotional narrative the development team has crafted for The Last of Us.

That’s not all – we are also excited to announce details on the bonus content you can get for pre-ordering your copy of The Last of Us. Participating retailers will offer the Sights and Sounds Pack, which includes:

We’ve also worked with GameStop to provide exclusive bonus content in addition to the Sights and Sounds Pack. Pre-ordering at GameStop also nets you the Survival Pack, which includes:

Multiplayer, wha? We’re not quite ready to talk about it yet, but stay tuned as we’ll be revealing more details on multiplayer before The Last of Us is released on May 7th, 2013.

The team here is pumped to head into the home stretch to finish The Last of Us. We can’t wait to show you more in the coming months!

In order to make everything Bruce and Neil discuss in the video a reality, the performances of Troy, Ashley, and every actor involved play a crucial role. Performance capture is a long, time-intensive process. It involves tight mocap suits, long hours, a ton of writing and often some fortuitous ad-lib. We called attention to these performances — one of the first steps to the game’s cinematic process — at our panel during San Diego Comic Con. At Gamescom, we went deeper into the process, and now you can watch the raw mocap for the cinematic that introduced Bill, played by W. Earl Brown.

High tech cameras record the tracking markers on the mocap suits to capture these performances. Raw mocap data is taken to our team, cleaned up, and then the next step in the cinematic process takes place.

Six steps in about a minute. Making game cinematics looks pretty easy, right? What you’ve seen is a time lapse showing over two years of planning, writing, performance, scripting, animation, lighting, and artistry. Then apply more tweaking, more adjusting, and more fine-tuning. And then some more before it ever goes out the door.

That’s where we ended up. One cinematic in the can. But there’s much more work to be done, and we can’t wait to share it with you.

Earlier today, we revealed a new trailer for The Last of Us, which we edited specifically for Gamescom. Set to a fitting and haunting track by Hank Williams, Sr., this new trailer mixes previously seen content along with some brand new cinematic and gameplay footage, to provide more detail of the beautiful environments and dangerous opposition Joel and Ellie will face on their journey across the United States. Take a look.

I’ll be here for a couple days with Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson, who play Joel and Ellie in The Last of Us, as they reveal more about the acting process to press from all over Europe. If you’re at Gamescom, be sure to hit the convention floor to get your eyes on our E3 demo.

Check out all the news coming out of Gamescom 2012 on PlayStation.Blog

Media Molecule’s New Project Revealed: Tearaway for PS Vita

See the First Trailer for Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified on PS Vita

PlayStation All-Stars Gamescom Reveal: Dante, Sackboy, Spike, Ratchet and Clank

Watch the GamesCom Trailer for Killzone: Mercenary

PSone Classics Coming to PS Vita via the latest System Software Update (v1.80)

Until Dawn — New PS Move Horror Game — Announced for PS3

The Curtain is Raised on Puppeteer, a New PS3 Adventure

PlayStation Plus Coming to PS Vita, Online Game Save Storage Getting Upgraded

Are You Ready for the God of War: Ascension Multiplayer Beta?

The most important part of their visit, to me, was that we were able to show a well-polished, nearly fifteen minute game demo of The Last of Us. The gameplay demo starts with Joel and Ellie driving down a highway congested with abandoned vehicles, eventually encountering another survivor who looks hurt and is limping towards their pickup truck. Surprisingly, Joel hits the accelerator and just before he barrels into the survivor, he pulls out a gun and shoots at Joel – missing Joel and only breaking the windshield. With this immediate threat behind them, Joel doesn’t have time to react as another survivor in the group rolls a bus downhill towards Joel and Ellie, broad siding them and sending the truck careening into a long-abandoned convenience store.

This is where the gameplay begins – a very tense, deliberate overview of the unique AI for The Last of Us, how the balance of power between weapons creates an atmosphere of extreme tension in combat, exploring the environment and scavenging, and the relationship between Joel and Ellie – both in-combat and out of combat.

Joel and Ellie are immediately besieged by the group of survivors, leading to a brutal melee sequence with Joel before other survivors reveal that they have a gun and start shooting at Joel. This tips the balance of power until Joel can draw his own gun and then both sides are taking cover and moving around to try to get a good shot off. When Joel’s pistol clicks, revealing he has no ammunition, the remaining survivor thinks he’s got the upper hand and moves much more aggressively since he still has a gun with ammo. Just when he thinks he’s got Joel, Ellie whips a brick at him, stunning him long enough for Joel to take him out via melee attacks.

But this was only the first wave of this group of survivors after Joel and Ellie. A new pack arrive in the convenience store, carrying a variety of weapons and Joel and Ellie duck out a broken window to reassess the situation and figure out how they can get out of here alive. What ensues are several minutes of cat and mouse and Joel and Ellie diligently work to take out each of the survivors one-by-one until none remain.

With the combat behind them, Joel and Ellie banter back and forth while they thoroughly explore the environment for anything that they can scavenge that may be useful to them. The exploration takes them through an abandoned building where the survivors apparently were camped out (and killing innocent people) to another roadway choked with abandoned vehicles – strangely beautiful as nature has really overgrown everything – as they head towards the bridge that is their only way out of this city, and any other survivors with less than noble intentions.

ALL of the screenshots were taken directly from our gameplay demo – yes, actual gameplay. I think they do a great job of representing a decent slice of the beauty and destruction present in the environments, and of the exploration and brutal nature of conflict in the world of The Last of Us.

The team has been cranking away at building more to the game and story of The Last of Us since we last hosted visitors – we can’t wait to pull back the curtain just a little more when the time comes.

The full competitive multiplayer experience, which begins Saturday, October 1st, at 12:01am Pacific Time, will give you the chance to dive into the fun and get a head start on leveling up your profile while learning all of the new UNCHARTED 3 multiplayer maps before the full game is released on Tuesday, November 1st.

Along with access to the competitive multiplayer experience, keep your eyes open for exclusive Subway items hidden throughout the maps to unlock additional content.

We know you’ve been waiting patiently for all the nitty-gritty details, so get the full download on the multiplayer experience you’ve been waiting for, right now!

We’ll have members from the Naughty Dog team on hand for a meet-and-greet where we’ll reveal brand-new content, and Naughty Dog will also walk you through some of their favorite levels and features of UNCHARTED 3.

The event will be happening for 3 days only, and will include:

• Multiplayer tournaments
• 3D and big-screen gaming
• PlayStation and Sony prize giveaways all night
• Naughty Dog appearances
• and much more!

We’re going to be revealing more information as we get closer to the events, but in the meanwhile, stay in the know by heading to amctheatres.com/uncharted3.

Tickets are only available at the AMC theatres listed below while supplies last-and they are going fast, so get yours today. Just click on the theatre you want to attend, choose the date you want, and get ready to to “Play it First in 3D” with PlayStation and AMC Theatres.

• San Francisco: AMC Metreon 16
• Los Angeles: AMC Century City 15
• Washington D.C.: AMC Tyson’s Corner 16
• New York City: AMC Lincoln Square 13
• Dallas: AMC Northpark 15

We’re about two months away from the release of UNCHARTED 3: Drake’s Deception and what better way to get caught up with the series than to play Nathan Drake’s first two adventures – UNCHARTED: Drake’s Fortune and UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves. To help you do just that, we’re announcing the UNCHARTED Greatest Hits Dual Pack.

Launching in North America on September 6th (that’s less than a week away!), the pack includes the Greatest Hits versions of both UNCHARTED: Drake’s Fortune and UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves – Game of the Year Edition for only $39.99.

The Dual Pack is also packed to the brim with bonus content, including a “Super Voucher” containing all of the DLC content from the UNCHARTED 2 GOTY Edition, as well as two DLC items from UNCHARTED 3 – the UNCHARTED 3 Announcement Nathan Drake PSN Avatar and the UNCHARTED 3 Announcement Dynamic Theme!

To help formally announce the Dual Pack, check out the official UNCHARTED DualPack trailer above. If you haven’t played the first two UNCHARTED games, it will give you a taste of two epic adventures you won’t want to miss.

Here at Naughty Dog, we’re excited to bring these two critically acclaimed games together for the very first time. As we focus on finishing up UNCHARTED 3, we look back and are humbled by the accolades we received for Drake’s Fortune, our first game in the series, and we never could have imagined that our second entry, Among Thieves, would go on to become the 2nd highest-rated video game of all time, receiving over 200 GOTY awards and over 41 perfect review scores. We want to thank all of you again for your continued support!

So for all you who are new to the PlayStation community, or for those of you who just haven’t yet had the opportunity to join Drake, Sully, Elena, and Chloe – this is your chance! Grab your Dual Pack next week – get tons of loot with the included “Super Voucher” – and prepare to uncover the truth in UNCHARTED 3: Drake’s Deception on 11-1-11.

We’re really excited to be able to check out, in person, our first ever Collector’s Edition version of a Naughty Dog developed game. Watch the video below to see Nolan give you a firsthand account.

This UNCHARTED 3: Drake’s Deception Collector’s Edition will be released in North America on November 1 for $99.99. The entire Collector’s Edition will come housed in a very cool looking reproduction of a traveling chest – it’s got exclusive exterior artwork, comes with a lid that is held shut by a magnet and contains storage areas for all of the goodies that come with the Collector’s Edition.

As you can see in the video, inside the traveling chest are full size, wearable replicas of Nathan Drake’s belt buckle and his necklace with Sir Francis Drake’s ring. The UNCHARTED 3 Blu-ray disk will come in a collectible Steelbook with exclusive artwork for the Collector’s Edition – the outside has a great render of Sir Francis Drake’s ring, with the inscription debossed into the case. The interior of the Steelbook has been printed with the artwork of Drake under fire in the desert as a panoramic view across both covers. This is Sony Computer Entertainment America’s first ever Steelbook edition, and we couldn’t be more excited that it’s being debuted with UNCHARTED 3. The piece de resistance is a high-quality statue of Nathan Drake that we worked on with our friends at Sideshow Collectibles. And just like the exclusive wearable replicas, and the Steelbook, you won’t be able to get this Sideshow Collectibles statue at retail, it’s only available with the UNCHARTED 3: Drake’s Deception Collector’s Edition! Like Nolan mentioned, this edition is being made in a very limited quantity, so make sure to save yours by pre-ordering now.

It was awesome to see this in person this week – and if you want to check it out for yourself, the UNCHARTED 3: Drake’s Deception Collector’s Edition will be on display at the PlayStation booth at PAX Prime 2011 THIS WEEKEND! Be sure to drop by.

One of the our personal highlights from Comic-Con was being able to be in front of over 400 fans and talk about Uncharted 3 during our panel on Friday, July 22. Moderated by USA Today’s Mike Snider, the panel was called “Developing Interactive Entertainment: The Performance Capture Techniques of the UNCHARTED Franchise and Today’s Film Industry” and it gave Amy Hennig, Taylor Kurosaki, Josh Scherr, Nolan North, Emily Rose and Richard McGonagle the perfect setting to discuss everything that goes into creating the industry-leading cinematics in the Uncharted series. The panel also gave our fans their first look at an all-new cinematic scene, and some behind-the-scenes footage of the cast, that we prepared especially for Comic-Con.

If you weren’t able to get into the room, or weren’t able to attend Comic-Con this year, we’ve got you covered with the following highlight reel shot and edited by none other than the PlayStation.Blog team.

You can catch the video of the full panel – nearly 50 minutes long – courtesy of GameSpot.

We hope everyone had a great Comic-Con and a great weekend!