The NPC AI of The Last of Us: A case study

The last of us is a third-person shooter (TPS) action-adventure made by Naughty Dog and distributed by Sony Computer Entertainment developed majorly for PlayStation 3 and later on remastered for PlayStation 4 in 2014 [1]. Since it's release the game has received amazing reviews by game developer critics [2] [3] [4] as well as by the gaming community and is considered as the best game of the decade as per Metacritic [5]. The game is set in post-apocalyptic America after the parasitic Cordyceps fungus [6] has wiped out majority of the humanity as we know it and divided the entire world into the infected and the survivors. In the nature this species of fungus [7] can be seen attacking on the ants and taking control of their brains [8] forcing the ants to lose control and become a useless creature with only one job left - become host for the fungus, generating a massive sprout which eventually shoots out of their head and infect others eventually. Inspired by this natural phenomena, the creators of The last of Us thought of a scenario where a similar fungus affected the human body.