I have always been fascinated by video game speed runners. These dedicated and talented individuals spend days, weeks and even years of their lives playing some of their favorite games  in order to achieve perfection. They rely on lighting-quick reactions, optimized strategies and more to make their mark in a highly competitive community.

I am not talented, dedicated or disciplined enough to ever make a worthy mark in this community– but if I did, it would very likely be in The Last of Us community. Naughty Dog has long been revered for their prestigious games, often being considered the best in the standard of storytelling, gameplay design and especially polish. 

Years ago, this led me to asking others in the community: who would you consider your favorite Last of Us-focused content creator? And everyone provided the same answer.

Anthony Calabrese (known as Anthony Caliber on his channels) is one of the fastest speedrunners in the world for Naughty Dog games, especially The Last of Us. I had a chance to ask him about his history with The Last of Us, his opportunities to work directly with Naughty Dog and his concerns about the current AAA gaming industry.

Historically, you’ve gravitated towards Naughty Dog games for most of your speed running career. Especially for The Last of Us on Grounded Mode, I was able to find videos as far back as 2014. What is it about this series (The Last of Us) or this developer that makes you interested in pursuit records for their games? 

Anthony: Well, when I started speedrunning The Last of Us, doing it as a career wasn’t the plan. 

It just sort of became that as my other ventures in life didn’t pan out the way I had hoped. I was in college studying meteorology, and despite trying hard, it was too difficult for me, and I dropped out after 3.5 years. I had $32,000 in debt with no degree, no resume, and really no work experience.  

The pivot to streaming and speedrunning was really a way to save my life. 

I played the Jak & Daxter trilogy when I was really young with my PS2, so I had some history with Naughty Dog before discovering The Last of Us. Fun fact: but I actually played Uncharted after Last of Us. The Last of Us became my favorite game of all time right after I finished playing it. It had that impact on me that nothing else has before. 

The desire to play it quickly really just happened as a result of playing it over and over and over. I tried finding strategies in areas and seeing what would work, and I did that before even learning about what speedrunning was. It felt like a natural progression of playing it. 

Nowadays it’s a way to fulfill my competitive desires as there’s always more time to be saved and new strategies to be found. I have the mind of an athlete and unfortunately not the body of one– so this hobby is perfect for me. I intend to do this for many more years to come and maybe my whole life as long as people still enjoy it.


I understand you first played The Last of Us on a roommate’s PS3? That was exactly my experience as well.

What emotions, thoughts, or events do you recall playing it for the first time? Did you know it was going to be a greater focus for the next decade of your life? 

Anthony: I wasn’t gaming much when I was in college, and the last PlayStation console I owned was a PS2. I had a Wii during the PS3 era and didn’t follow anything about what was going on with that console.

My roommate brought his PS3 to our off-campus apartment for us all to use, and that’s when I saw the game for the first time. I looked up some reviews and gave it a playthrough myself, and the rest is history.

My first playthrough is a bit of a blur because it was so long ago. I knew it was special, but I didn’t know it would be the driving force of my life over 13 years later. Life’s funny that way.

How significant are the differences in your approaches for The Last of Us (original) compared to Remastered (PS4) and Part One (PS5)? Do you consider any major differences in gameplay mechanics, such as enemy AI? Some players seem to think Joel moves much faster in Part One.

Anthony: Well, I’ve never done a speedrun of the original on PS3. However, I did all of my casual playthroughs on It.

The game got remastered only 13 months later, so I started my speedrunning career on that one. The 2014 Remaster is special. It allows for so many things to happen and it’s just as fun and interesting now as it was way back then.

As for the Remake, it’s very different by comparison. In the original, you can sprint directly up to an enemy on the hardest difficulty and they won’t hear you right away. You’re punished and alerted for sprinting too long vs being too close to an enemy. 

In Remake, one step in sprint from across the map will trigger an alert. As for running speed, Joel sprints pretty fast in the original and he never loses that speed no matter how long he runs for. In Remake, Joel sprints VERY fast and can evade enemy attacks more easily…. but after a while his sprint will slow down and huff & puff like he’s out of breath. You can counter this by letting go of sprint for one second, and he’ll get all of his wind back.

Joel’s melee is also A LOT slower in Remake compared to the original. As a speedrun, there is very little that’s the same. In terms of performance, it’s like speedrunning an entirely different game. Which is good for stretches where you still wanna run the game, but do it a little differently. Also original is a lot harder than Remake

That’s really interesting context for myself, as I felt the differences in the remake were not clearly described in the marketing. A lot of gamers with lesser experience might not notice such subtle differences– but as someone so intimate with these various versions, you really could describe it very clearly.  

I’ve seen via your Twitter (I’m sure you’ve seen my petition to Save The Last of Us Online) that we are both pretty big fans of The Last of Us multiplayer. Do you have any thoughts regarding how it was omitted from the second game or its cancellation years later? 

Anthony: I am STILL not over its cancellation… I don’t know if I ever will be. 

I was okay with it not being released alongside part 2’s release, as it needed more time and was a more ambitious project than its multiplayer predecessor. But for it to never see the light of day at a later date? 

I don’t know if Naughty Dog themselves have truly grasped how bad that was to their reputation.  I also never bought their reasoning for it. They basically said they had to choose to be a multiplayer studio or a single player studio and that they didn’t know how many resources were required to support and sustain it. 

Isn’t that something Naughty Dog should have known before they started the project? There’s also the reported Bungie criticism– which I find odd considering Bungie themselves were going through rough times. 

I still hate the experiences and friendships we were robbed of by the multiplayer’s cancellation. I would have been able to play it with other famous streamers, as well as friends. Maybe you and I would’ve played some matches here and there. 

I’ve met so many wonderful people through Factions. My first place away from home, I was actually roommates with someone I had met through Factions. 

Even though it’s still there to play, (and is still fun) it’s too old. It’s not going to suddenly gain a ton of traction anymore. This fanbase really needed this…. and it still hurts that it got cancelled.

I’ve personally written about my frustration with PlayStation as a platform. We are in a very transitional period in gaming; do you have any thoughts or concerns regarding PlayStation (or video games as a whole) and their trajectory? 

Anthony: This PS5 generation I would describe as one big missed opportunity. 

The push for live-service multiplayer that people aren’t that interested in is a big reason WHY. 

Factions 2 was going to be a live service, and I think the biggest casualty of this was the loss of Bluepoint Studios. I’m still very sad about that– and I can see why it happened: a studio (focused on remakes of single player games) was suddenly told to make a God of War live service multiplayer. 

It hurts even more because Bluepoint also made the Uncharted trilogy remaster, which I’ve done some speedruns of. Consumers can go from single-player game to single-player game and make time for a lot of them– that does NOT work for multiplayer. Most multiplayer gamers dedicate the majority of their time to ONE game.

For example, Factions is the only online multiplayer I’ve ever played, whereas I’ve played maybe a couple dozen new single-players games (over the last decade). 

I also think people are way more aware of what PlayStation is doing. Consumers don’t want to feel like a company is taking advantage of them. 

It doesn’t help that the wait between Playstation-studio game now takes longer and costs more than ever before. That’s a recipe for disaster.  

Even though it was 2 different generations, Uncharted 2’s budget was $20 million, and TLOU 2 was $220 million. 

That is just not sustainable. 

In my opinion, studios’ desires for single player games are not reasonable. And I doubt they understand what current gamers want. Games don’t need to look better than Uncharted 4. They don’t have to be any longer than TLOU 1 and Uncharted 4 (both around a dozen hours per playthrough). 

Hopefully games in the PS6 generation trend back towards that PS4-Era direction. 

I totally agree on all points. Last of Us fans didn’t want some massive live-service monstrosity, we just wanted the same multiplayer from the original game: more maps, more modes, etc. Playstation’s focus ballooned it into something non-sustainable.

What would you consider your pivotal moment or crowning achievement as a speedrunner? 

Anthony: Usually getting a time below a 10-, 5-, and 1- minute barrier are big deals. 

A lot of my viewers’ favorite speedrun of mine is when I got TLOU 1 on its hardest difficulty beaten in under 3 hours.  That was 10 years ago in November 2016. 

Then there was getting below 2:50:00, that was 6.5 years ago… and now it could be any day I get below 2:46:00. 

I think my favorite speedrun I’ve done was my first sub 2:48:00 run (from April 2024). For what was known at the time, it was a truly exceptional run. I’m also quite fond of my performances in speedrunning marathons. 

TLOU doesn’t get accepted to many marathons like Games Done Quick & the European Speedrunner Assembly– so when it does, I try to make the moment count. I do my best to deliver an exceptional performance. The first one that I ever did was in Sweden in July 2019, and I really like how that one went. 

My personal favorite thing that happened to me as a speedrunner is getting invited to play TLOU 1 and 2 with Nolan North– very surreal as he is the voice of Nathan Drake himself. Hes a legend. He has over 400 acting credits and played the character David in TLOU. 

At the time it was part of building hype for Part II…  they could have reached out to anyone in the world for that, but they chose me. Obviously, I was honored. And to this day, I still love how those videos turned out.

Outside of Naughty Dog games, what do you think is the most fun game to run? I see you had quite a history with Nintendo titles. 

Anthony: When you become a speedrunner, you have to decide: are you going to be elite at a few games… or pretty good at a lot of games. 

I chose the first option. 

My “resume,” if you will, does not consist of many non-Naughty Dog games. I think the only ones I’ve done over the last 12 years are South Park: The Stick of Truth and a couple of old Mario Sports games. I liked South Park for a while because there was very little randomness in those attempt– which is the polar opposite of TLOU speedruns. I also personally loved that game. 

I also personally love watching speedruns of the big Mario games. The original Mario Bros. community is close to putting up a “perfect” speedrun. Mario 64 might be my favorite speedrun of all time to watch. Not sure if I’d ever try a run of that myself, but I get a big kick out of watching those even in 2026.

I agree, I absolutely love the runs of Mario 64– even blindfolded runs and the like. It’s probably one of the best games (in my opinion) for speedrunning. 

Anthony is the number 1 Last of Us Speedrunner in the world for Grounded/Glitchless runs as per www.speedruns.com. His world record is 2 Hours, 46 Minutes, 21 seconds.

For more Last of Us Speedruns, follow @anthonycaliber on X/Twitter or Twitch. 

For more interviews with notable members of the gaming community, follow @brokowski25 on X/Twitter or @brokowski on Substack.