a report by Kotakus Jason Schreier, included a crunch schedule of 12-hour work days owing to the studio culture; after the game's delay, developers continued under this schedule for the additional months. Schreier suggested that development was affected and slowed due to the enormous turnover of employees following the development of Uncharted 4, with few veterans left on the team. Some of the developers working on the game allegedly hoped that the game would fail to prove that the working conditions they are under are not viable. Publisher Sony Interactive Entertainment granted the developer an additional two weeks of development for bug fixes. Druckmann felt that he failed to find the correct balance for employees on Part II, and that the studio would receive external assistance for future projects. Story and setting Druckmann, who was promoted to Vice President of Naughty Dog in 2018, had less time to write on Part II than on The Last of Us; he wrote the majority of the latter, but less than half of the former. Halley Gross was approached to collaborate as a writer on the game shortly after she had completed her work on Westworld in 2016. She was hired as a writer early in development to help Druckmann outline the story and decipher characters. She felt that she and Druckmann had very similar tastes and interests. When Gross joined the project, Druckmann had a structure for the entire story; Gross felt that her perspective on characters and trauma added to the narrative. When crafting the story further, Druckmann and Gross created an outline and presented it to the studio to "stress-test" it. They then worked in non-chronological order with animators, layout designers, and other departments to develop ideas. Each section of the game was mapped on a wall using notecards; a section was scrapped if it did not contribute to the overall narrative momentum, or was "just cool for the sake of being cool". Druckmann found that the additional voice of Gross led to more believable characters, particularly regarding romance and comedy. When she assumed more responsibilities about two years into development, Gross was given the title of "narrative lead". Josh Scherr and Ryan James contributed to additional in-game dialogue, with Scherr also writing the descriptions of the collectible cards. Druckmann felt that his time working on Uncharted 4 for two years allowed the story of Part II to slowly develop.