The Web just can’t get enough of The Last of Us at the minute, and we’ve only known about the game for 4 days.

USA Today have been lucky enough to get an Interview with the awesome guys at Naughty Dog, and have been able to get a few tiny bits of info from them about the upcoming game, the most important of which is the release window! We now know that we can expect the game to arrive late 2012, early 2013.

The game will put the player in a 3rd person perspective, very similar to the Uncharted series, and the two main characters, Joel and Ellie, will first meet at the beginning of the story.

In the interview creative director Neil Druckmann says the game’s male lead, Joel, is “a vicious survivor. When he meets this girl, Ellie, she is his one chance at redemption”. The inspiration for the plague that has wiped out most of humanity, was indeed the fungus infected ants, from BBC’s Planet Earth Documentary. Footage from this documentary was used in the early teasers for the game.

USA Today states that, “Back in 2008, Druckmann had been mulling over an idea for a graphic novel about a father and daughter in a zombie tale. He and game director Bruce Straley were watching the BBC’s Planet Earth documentary and saw a segment on the cordyceps fungus. At the time, both were working on Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. The documentary showed how the parasitic fungus infected ants and, having taken over their brains, resulted in protruding growths from their heads. A thousand-plus fungus variations exist, each genetically targeting an individual species. “We instantly thought ‘humans,’” Straley says.”

Naughty Dog co-president Christophe Balestra no longer wants The Last of Us to be called a game, telling USA Today that, ”We want to redefine what our medium is even called. ‘Video game’ is not an accurate name anymore. It is not necessarily a game with rules and a winner and a loser. It’s an experience”.

Naughty Dog’s other co-presidents Evan Wells also talks about how this was the first time that the studio had ever worked on two games simultaneously (Uncharted 3: Drakes Deception/The Last of Us), saying, ”We felt if we didn’t expand the roles for people, we could potentially lose them, because they really wanted to be challenged. We didn’t want to lose that talent.”

I’m really excited for The Last of Us. I’ve been a huge fan of Naughty Dog’s work since Jak & Daxter. They have never failed to impress me, and every game is a step up from the last. I smell another great game and I can’t wait.