The Last of Us Part II: Neil Druckmann ensures systems are real.
During E3 2018, Naughty Dog showed off the first gameplay details of The Last of Us Part II, showing Ellie fighting other humans from were quite brutal. Although it surprised many, the video gave the impression of being “rehearsed” too much for a game. To calm fans down, creative director Neil Druckmann ensured that everything we saw in the presentation was real.
“These were real systems,” said Druckmann to the Kotaku website. “In an E3 demo, you have these complicated systems that are random and we are making them deterministic and we play a lot and we rehearse and choreograph, so we are showing very specific things. But these are all real systems that players will experience as they play. ”
Most hostile universe
“We wanted to make enemies more threatening, and that means making them smarter,” explained the creative director. According to him, Naughty has rewritten the perception systems used in the original game to deal with the fact that The Last of Us Part II has even bigger environments and with more options for places to hide.
“They communicate with each other much more than before. In the past, in the previous game, if someone saw you, immediately everyone in the area knew where you were. Now there is the spread of information. So whoever sees you has to tell you about it. Whoever listens to you has to spread the information, ”explained Druckmann.
The Last of Us Part II will allow you to eliminate enemies before they alert your teammates, also featuring some new systems that facilitate your mission. Among them is the possibility to pick up items on the go and use them right away, something demonstrated by the moment Ellie throws a bottle.
“We have this concept of similar stealth. So, in other games, including Uncharted 4, when you were in the tall grass or in another type of vegetation cover, you were completely hidden ”, said the creative director. This does not happen in the new game, which has an indicator of how hidden you are. “The smaller the circle, the more hidden you are. You are never really hidden when you are in the foliage. It changes how close an enemy has to be to see you ”.
Cycle of violence
Duckmann also explains that Naugty Dog’s intention is to make the player feel repelled by the violence presented, which resulted in the creation of very realistic scenes and animations. According to him, the game is about the cycle of violence and how it spreads, and the bet on more realism is necessary for the team to be as honest as possible.
“The kind of stories we tell, with specific strong characters, we like that sometimes you’re not aligned with that character. It kind of makes you question philosophically: how do I deal with these things? And that was a big part of the first game and many of the things that we learned from it are being applied in this game ”.
