Greetings, PlayStation-ers! My name is Colin Moriarty, IGN‘s Senior Editor. If you’re a PlayStation fanatic — and since you’re on the PlayStation.Blog, you probably are — you may recognize me as the man in charge of IGN’s PS4, PS3, and PS Vita coverage. You may also know me as one-third of Podcast Beyond.

Today, I write my inaugural PlayStation.Blog post to tell you about something I’m very excited for. See, I’m pretty darn keen on The Last of Us… so much so, in fact, that I got sucked in for about 40 hours worth of multiplayer madness after the game launched. And that got me thinking: who’s responsible for The Last of Us’ most understated feature, its online suite?

Naturally, I found an answer. Naughty Dog’s David Ballard was kind enough to come to IGN’s San Francisco headquarters to record a series of videos with me, one for each map in the multiplayer suite. As an integral part of the creation of The Last of Us’ multiplayer, Ballard has all sorts of insight into the creation of each stage. He points out easter eggs, hidden areas, and parts of the maps that were radically changed or outright abandoned before the final game shipped. This is stuff diehard fans of the game are going to want to see for themselves, especially since he provided a bunch of footage you can’t see in the game.

Watch out, a lot of videos coming your way…

Surviving the Checkpoint

The Old, Dilapidated High School

Higher Learning at the University

Traversing the Dam

Taking a Look at Downtown

The Snow-Ridden Map Called Lakeside

I wanted to share these videos with you, the PlayStation.Blog audience, because I think you’re really going to love them. And if you want to learn even more about Naughty Dog — like the entire history of the company, for instance — I implore you to keep it tuned to IGN in the coming weeks, because boy, do I have something for you.

Thanks for taking the time to read my humble post. Until next time, Beyond!