Being set in a world ravaged by a pandemic that has mutated people into fungus-like monsters, The Last of Us 2 is chock full of horrific enemies for players to encounter. The Clickers alone are infamous for being incredibly deadly despite lacking sight, but Naughty Dog's sequel introduced a unique and unforgettable monstrosity: the Rat King, an amalgamation of several Infected fused together.
In an interview with GamesRadar, several Naughty Dog staff members went into detail about where exactly the idea of the Rat King came from, how it was designed, and ultimately implemented into the game.
While never actually referred to as the Rat King in The Last of Us 2, the monster is directly inspired a real-life, albeit very rare, phenomenon where several rats are discovered with their tails intertwined and bound together. These Rat Kings are considered a bad omen in folklore and have made appearances in other media, including Stephen King's It novel and Netflix animated series Hilda.
According to co-director Anthony Newman, the Rat King was actually conceived during development on the first Last of Us game, but since Naughty Dog couldn't find a good scene to include it, it was ultimately scrapped. Many years later, whilst storyboarding an intense scene for the character of Abby, where she's trying to gather supplies and forced to overcome several ordeals, Naughty Dog realized this might be the perfect place to finally debut its Rat King.
Co-Director Kurt Margenau says:
"We wanted Abby to have this really intense thing that she overcomes, because she's kind of on this redemption mission to get the supplies for Yara's arm and so it seemed like the perfect place for the Rat King."
"She's gone through all of these trials: Overcoming her fear of heights climbing to the sky bridge, fighting through hordes of infected on the way down, and coming out the other side thinking the worst was over – only to be thrown right into this nightmare boss fight."
With the Rat King consisting of several enemies, the character animators were met with the daunting task of figuring out how it would move. To achieve this, they tied three actors together using a cage built on caster wheels, while animation director Jeremy Yates studied preserved specimens of real Rat Kings to help conceptualize how such a creature would feasibly move.
The team also drew influence from puzzle-platformer Inside by adding ragdoll physics to the growths on the monster's back to emulate the gelatinous effect seen in that game. Meanwhile, sound designer Beau Anthony Jimenez created the sounds the Rat King makes by combining noises from big cats, birds, and snakes, whilst making sure it sounded like it was coming from underneath layers of congealed protoplasm.
"I would layer in gargles, gags, and sloppy wet gore sounds to add a sickening realism to the vocal effects. It needed to sound part of the universe, and part of the established infected family."
As for the boss fight itself, Margenau says that the aim was to have the Rat King on-screen as much as possible, while making sure that there weren't any dead-ends in the environment that could result in an unfair death.
The boss' second stage, where a Stalker splits off from the Rat King, was added to help make the boss stand out more than just a tankier version of regular enemies and is described as being inspired by the Magni and Modi boss fight from God of War, due to it consisting of two enemies which complimented each other with their respective weapons.
Could the Rat King see a return in a Last of Us 3? Newman does say that there was going to be a note in the game suggesting that there are other Rat Kings, but it never made the cut. Newman describes it as "pseudo-canon," meaning it's possible that the Rat King was a one-off occurrence and won't make any sort of reappearance.
The Last of Us 2 is available on PlayStation 4.
Source: GamesRadar