We took a look at the Infected in our first video in The Last of Us Development series. We then explored the game world and nature’s reclamation of civilization as we know it in our second video, Wasteland Beautiful. Our third video, Death and Choices, investigates what it means to be a survivor in the world of The Last of Us and how Joel and Ellie cope with the harsh realities of post-pandemic society. Watch it now:

Survival is moment to moment in the world of The Last of Us. There are stark consequences to every decision that’s made and if Joel and Ellie want to survive they’ll need to scavenge the environment for every possible advantage. Learning to craft more potent weapons from makeshift materials or take defensive precautions using found objects will be critical to their continued survival.

Up next, our penultimate video in the series will spotlight the combat mechanics and the intimate nature of conflict in The Last of Us. The in-depth documentary we have been creating grew so large that we are currently seeking a unique way to distribute it. We’ll have details about how you can get the feature-length documentary of the making of The Last of Us in the coming months. The Last of Us will be available 14th June 2013.

We are honored to have Gustavo’s music and talents in our game. The texture of Gustavo’s musical score serves the game’s narrative and the music is rife with poignant, descriptive and intimate sounds. His work is unlike anything heard in a video game before. It’s a beautiful, haunting, sonic landscape that makes the game’s themes more emotionally resonant and emphasizes thoughtfully how Joel, Ellie, and all the characters in the game perceive the world around them. It’s a masterful musical score.

Want a sampling of the sonic delight Gustavo crafted for The Last of Us? Visit the Sony Music Soundtracks SoundCloud set. If you pre-order the game, via the Sights & Sounds DLC pack, you’ll get full access to the official digital soundtrack. The soundtrack is also available for purchase as a CD via the Sony Masterworks label. The Last of Us arrives June 14th, 2013.

A pencil holder! A birdhouse! An entire environment in a game engine! There’s so much talent and incredible work here, right? We want to thank everyone who took time to enter and congratulate all winners. If you’re wondering about the third contest, the eight winners of our Cosplay contest can be found over on IGN. Watch the video and pick out your favorite Joel, Ellie, Hunter or Infected.

To find all the newly appointed Fireflies and their respective pendants in the game it’ll take some serious scavenging. If you’re looking for a way to help you to find these pendants or just some helpful tips and tricks for your journey you’ll want to purchase one of the official The Last of Us strategy guides. You’ll be able to choose between the Signature Series guide and the sleek Limited Edition guide. If you didn’t happen to win or couldn’t enter one of our Firefly pendant contests every purchase of the Limited Edition guide comes with an exclusive Fireflies key chain pendant of your very own.

Both guides can now be pre-ordered at the Brady Games website. The Signature Series guide is available in the USA, Canada, UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, and Australia while the Limited Edition guide is offered for sale in the USA, Canada, UK, and Australia. The guides will be coming out when The Last of Us launches June 14th, 2013. Congratulations once again to all our new Fireflies!

The key word for the development of every aspect in The Last of Us is contrast. There’s a counterpoint to nearly every detail in the game and we strive to show as much beauty as the ugly, brutal realities of the world allow. We think you’ll find our wasteland beautiful once you get into the game world in just a couple months.

Our next video in the series will explore the crafting and scavenging gameplay mechanics. An in-depth documentary on the game disc will contain an expanded look at all the content in these videos. The Last of Us will be available June 14th, 2013.

April is Prevention of Cruelty to Animals month and we’re honoring this with some animal themed items for your UNCHARTED 3 multiplayer characters. First off, we have some very special and limited DLC available for purchase this month. Pogo and Trumpet, our resident Naughty Dogs, are now immortalized on custom t-shirts and weapons. All proceeds from the sales of these items will go to the SPCALA, a charity that supports the prevention of cruelty to animals. These items are currently available now in North America individually and as a bundle, and will go on sale later in the month in all other regions. These items are only available for the month of April, so grab them before they’re gone.

We will be launching all our Animal themed character parts DLC globally this month. The full list of all the Animal theme parts on sale is outlined over on our UNCHARTED 3 Multiplayer Free-to-Play page. We’ll also have a bundle for all the animal themed parts that includes the exclusive T-Rex Head for Talbot. Additionally, we are posting up a bundle of our Oddball themed parts with an exclusive bonus item – the Fireball T-Shirt – as well this month. Check out the in-game store or the PlayStation Store to see when these bundles are available for purchase.

One of the coolest things about the Animal theme will be the new Tournament rewards that can be earned. You can earn the Croc Gun and Mr. Croc Shirt as Tournament rewards. If you hit the gold tier you can earn the unique Snake Eyes T-shirt. The Shade Raptor Mask for Drake and Shade Dive Helmet for Talbot are achieved by reaching Platinum status. Buy tickets to enter into the weekly Tournament and unlock these items as a testament to your outstanding gameplay ability.

The Lab Playlist will remain as it is until mid-May as we’re in the process of testing new Block Mesh Lab Maps and working on finishing The Last of Us. We will update you once we have new Labs rolling out again.

For those of you who are curious here’s some further info on the charity. All proceeds on the sales of these Pogo and Trumpet DLC items will go to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Los Angeles (spcaLA), 5026 W Jefferson Blvd Los Angeles, CA 90016, 1-888-772-2521, info@spcaLA.com. spcaLA is a 501(c)(3) organization, Tax ID: 95-1738153, mission statement: http://spcala.com/aboutUs/index.php. This promotion begins on April 2, 2013 and ends May 1, 2013. Purchases of items are not tax-deductible.

If you haven’t read it yet, be sure to check out our UNCHARTED 3 Multiplayer Free-to-Play FAQ for answers to almost of your questions about the newly available UNCHARTED 3 Multiplayer Free-to-Play.

Show your support for the animals! See you online!

To keep that momentum going, as promised, we’re making new DLC available for purchase every month until June 2013. This month we’re recognizing Extraterrestrial Abductions Day – or a day around it anyway – by unveiling our Oddball themed character parts for your UNCHARTED 3 Multiplayer characters. Why Oddball? Well, these character parts defy classification as they don’t quite fit among the numerous other parts we’ll have coming out over the next few months, and Extraterrestrial Abductions Day is a bit of an odd holiday anyway. Here’s a glimpse at some of the Oddball parts available now:

There are many other Oddball parts available for purchase as well. Check out the in-game store or the PlayStation Store after PSN updates today to see what’s available.

Our Oddball theme means that new Tournament rewards can be earned. You can earn the Gas Mask Gun and Gas Mask Shirt as Tournament rewards. If you hit the gold tier you can earn the rare British Guard Hat for Cutter as well as Raptor Mask for Drake and Dive Helmet for Talbot by achieving Platinum status. Use your tickets to enter into the weekly Tournament and unlock these items as a testament to your skills.

A full rundown of everything that’s available with our Oddball theme is over on our UNCHARTED 3 Multiplayer Free-to-Play page. We’ll have a bundle of all Oddball parts with an exclusive bonus item available for purchase in early April. Check it out and be sure to read our UNCHARTED 3 Multiplayer Free-to-Play FAQ for answers to most of your questions about the newly available UNCHARTED 3 Multiplayer Free-to-Play.

Log in and let’s all get a little odd! See you online!

Visit the UNCHARTED 3 Multiplayer General Forum in the PlayStation Community forums to learn about exciting community events, find new party members, talk with the developers and discuss the latest news.

We just launched our Uncharted 3 Multiplayer Free-To-Play and the community has never been more active. We’re looking forward to the new players from the Free-To-Play joining in the community and our forums. We are constantly looking for ways to make our multiplayer game even deeper and grow our community even larger. Our community is an active force and has helped influence some great, intelligent tweaks to our game.

Around the launch of the retail game Luxis launched a campaign to get more colors into the multiplayer on the forums. There was overwhelming support from the community as the months rolled along so, after some internal deliberation and feasibility testing, we did it. There are now more colors for multiplayer characters in the game as of the patch we pushed this Monday. We took the opportunity to celebrate our longtime supporters via our Colorful theme this month. In our Uncharted 3 Tournament you can earn Rainbow Guns and the Rainbow Shirt. More importantly you can giggle at our Nyan Drake er, game, in your favorite browser.

The community has been very active in creating their own tournaments and events. One of the most unique ideas to seed itself into our game has been the B2K Summer Olympics, which lead to DrakeShepard and his Winter Olympics. Now the Community World Championship will be held in March. We are providing some very cool prizing that only the Top 5 winners of this championship will receive and be able to use in-game:

Pretty cool, right? We’ll be offering these same prizes to community for other championships, events, and competitions that the community runs and organizes in the future. So check our forums and stay active to learn what those events are if you want to earn these very rare in-game items.

One of the most unwavering and awesome events in our community is the Naughty Paws event. Naughty Paws are Community Game Nights that are run by Naughty Dog community member SweetPoison13. They are typically held every Saturday or at least one Saturday a month. They are very fun and very well run. Please visit Naughty Paws event thread to learn more.

We’re excited to see what cool ideas you have brewing and look forward to continuing to make the UNCHARTED community grow and thrive. See you online!

Chat with fellow PS gamers in our Forums! There’s plenty to talk about, with different sections including:

PlayStation Plus
PlayStation Home
PS Trophy Leaderboard
Whatever you want (aka Off-Topic area)

Win PlayStation games and products Wednesdays on Twitter! Next week we are giving away MLB 13 THE SHOW. As a special bonus, we will also be celebrating PS Vita’s one year birthday this weekend by giving one away, as well as a bunch of games! Follow @HeyPlayStation on Twitter for more details.

Friday, March 1st

PlayStation Campus Tour – Eastern New Mexico University
PlayStation Campus Tour – University of Southern California
Game Dev Night – Guardians of Middle Earth

Monday, March 4th

PlayStation Campus Tour – University of New Mexico

Tuesday, March 5th

PlayStation Campus Tour – UC Berkeley

Thursday, March 7th

PlayStation Campus Tour – Arizona State University

Friday, March 8th

PlayStation Campus Tour – CSU Chico

Starting with this video we’re kicking off a series that will pull back the curtain on our design, our technology, and our ideas that shape The Last of Us. We want to give you a straightforward look at our development process and the work we do here at Naughty Dog. We invited Area 5 to visit the studio and capture the development process. Along the way we’ll be unpacking the many different aspects of the game and its development with a documentarian’s approach.

This first video is just a taste of what’s upcoming. Extended cuts of these videos will be available via the game disc. We’ll have more behind-the-scenes access and content as we march toward June 14th and the launch of The Last of Us.

To date, more than 3.5 million people have played in over 37 million matches of UNCHARTED 3: Drake’s Deception Multiplayer. All Free-to-Play players will become a part of this same player pool of over a half a million passionate players actively playing our game every month. So if you haven’t tried yet, you have no excuse to not be playing one of the most exciting multiplayer experiences on the PS3 — it’s free! Join the adventure starting today.

Once you download the Free-to-Play game from the PS Store you can hop online and play for as long as you want, as much as you want, up to Level 15. Upon reaching Level 15, you’re welcome to continue to play as long as you want without paying a penny more. We’ll continue to track your earned experience points as you play, although you won’t be able to unlock or access them. However should you choose to unlock the level cap, we’ll retroactively apply those achievements to your profile and we’ll continue to allow you to build up your profile right from where the Level 15 cap stops you. Although if you choose not unlock the level cap or purchase anything you’ll be missing out on a slew of cool in-game items and downloadable content we have made for the game to date. Here’s a rundown of what you can unlock:

• UNCHARTED 3: Multiplayer Co-op Adventure Add On – Unlocks Co-Op Adventure mode including the Fort Adventure DLC
• UNCHARTED 3: Multiplayer Co-op Arena Add On – Unlocks to gain access to the Co-Op Arena Playlist including the Co-Op Shade Survival Mode DLC for UNCHARTED 3: Multiplayer Free to Play
• UNCHARTED 3: Multiplayer Competitive MP (No Level Limit) – Removes the level cap for UNCHARTED 3: Multiplayer Free to Play
• UNCHARTED 3: Multiplayer Competitive MP (Level 25 Limit) – Removes the Level 15 cap and allows you to play UNCHARTED 3: Multiplayer Free to Play up to Level 25
• UNCHARTED 3: Multiplayer Split Screen Add On – Unlocks Co-Op Adventure mode including the Fort Adventure DLC
• UNCHARTED 3: Multiplayer DLC Map Packs – Unlocks all three DLC map packs released for UNCHARTED 3: Drake’s Deception. Includes Flashback Map Pack 1, Flashback Map Pack 2, and Drake’s Deception Map Pack
• UNCHARTED 3: Drake’s Deception Single Player Experience – Uncover the Truth. Unlock the Single Player campaign

If you really enjoy UNCHARTED 3: Multiplayer Free to Play and are looking for the full UNCHARTED 3: Drake’s Deception experience, the best deal is to pick up the UNCHARTED 3: Drake’s Deception Game of the Year Edition from the in-game store, which also launches today for $39.99. This digital version of the UNCHARTED 3: Drake’s Deception Game of the Year Edition includes all 12 DLC maps, all Co-Op multiplayer modes, and over 40 character skins. Purchase the digital version of the UNCHARTED 3: Drake’s Deception Game of the Year and essentially you’re getting the single-player game for free!

If you already own UNCHARTED 3: Drake’s Deception and you are a long time multiplayer participant, we gave you some very special gifts as a way of saying thank you. Next time you log in online you’ll see a custom Naughty Dog Paw on your rank icon and you’ll receive the Naughty Dog Paw shirt for your custom characters.

Also, to celebrate the launch of UNCHARTED 3: Drake’s Deception Multiplayer Free-to-Play we’re getting more colorful. Every character item and every character skin in multiplayer will now have more color options. These new color options are completely free.

During the coming months, more than 40 additional DLC items will be made available. Every DLC drop will have a theme and we’ll be unveiling that content here on PlayStation.Blog, over on the Naughty Dog Blog, and on our Free-to-Play webpage.

Patch 1.17 was also released recently. It includes some big changes you can read about over on the Naughty Dog Blog. For instance, we’ve added another tier to our Tournament. It’s the Platinum level and we have some very cool permanent Platinum level prizes for people who achieve this prestigious level.

We can’t wait to welcome all the new players into our community. Happy Fortune hunting! See you online!

In just a few short months, The Last of Us will launch and put the fate of Joel and Ellie into your hands, as they embark on a brutal journey across a post-pandemic United States.

May 7th, 2013 might seem like a long way away, so to help assuage the excruciating wait we’re announcing today that players who pick up God of War: Ascension will be able to get their hands on a demo of The Last of Us when it becomes available at a later date.

We teamed up with the development crew at Santa Monica Studio to include access to a chapter of The Last of Us in every copy of God of War: Ascension, so you won’t have to wait too long to get your hands on two of the biggest games of the year. Just load the God of War: Ascension disc into your PS3 and find The Last of Us listing on the main menu. There, you’ll find details on how you can obtain The Last of Us demo for free as soon as it becomes available.

We hope you’re as excited about this news as we are, and we know what’s likely on your mind now — what will you be able to play? We’ll have more news about what’s in store for you after God of War: Ascension launches in March. We hope your wait just got a little easier!