Fans of The Last of Us: Part 2 finally got to see some gameplay yesterday when it was shown off during Sony’s E3 2018 conference, and everyone seemed to agree that the game is looking beautiful. In fact, Head of Eidos Montreal Studio David Anfossi seemed to think it was a bit too beautiful, and took to Twitter to accuse some of the animations shown off as being fake.

Eidos Montreal is the studio responsible for Shadow of the Tomb Raider, who also showed off some gameplay at E3 this year during Square Enix’s press conference. Like Naughty Dog’s reveal, the gameplay focused on stealth combat gameplay in a forest at night, providing an instant reference point for comparisons between the two games.

Anfossi made his disparaging comments about The Last of Us: Part 2’s animations in response to an individual on Twitter who praised Naughty Dog’s gameplay reveal as being “Top of the animation game”. In response, Anfossi added “and fake”, clearly accusing the animations shown by Naughty Dog as not being actual gameplay running on a real PS4 console.

The tweets caused a backlash from users on Twitter, with some choosing to view the tweet as evidence that David Anfossi is intimidated by the impressiveness of The Last of Us: Part 2. After deleting the tweet in question, Anfossi issued an apology to Naughty Dog fans.

Here, Anfossi claims that his accusation that Naughty Dog has faked their animations was simply “bad wording”, and that the true intent of his words was lost in translation. He then goes on to express his own praise of Naughty Dog’s past work, saying that the Uncharted and The Last of Us games are actually somewhat of an inspiration for his own work.

This does, of course, beg the question of just how lost in translation the simple word “fake” could get. It’s possible that Anfossi could have meant that the animations shown by Naughty Dog were so good that they merely looked fake, but this explanation has been received with more than a touch of skepticism on Twitter.

David Anfossi’s haste in withdrawing the comment may go some way to excusing him in the eyes of Naughty Dog fans. However, regardless of his intentions, the comment will surely be taken as the utmost of compliments by those working on The Last of Us 2’s animations.

The Last of Us: Part 2 is in development for PlayStation 4, with no release date announced.

Source: ResetEra