Naughty Dog does a deep dive on the intricacies of The Last of Us Part II’s gameplay

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Ellie is not Joel, and that may sound like a stunningly obvious observation. But, a protagonist switch-up has Naughty Dog special tailoring more than just narrative beats in The Last of Us‘ sequel.

Last week, PlayStation kicked off a four-part series that details different pillars of The Last of Us Part II (or, “T-Lou” as its closest friends call it). Jordan helped walk you through the ways Naughty Dog approached storytelling. I’m here to talk about gameplay.

The takeaway that Naughty Dog wants to get across is that putting Ellie in the spotlight informed the game’s design. The developer wanted to adapt her relative-diminutive stature in ways that would both benefit and hamper Ellie in this extreme survival scenario. For instance, the pros are: Ellie can jump rather than simple clambering; she’s nimble and can effectively dodge; she’s able to hide in vegetation and under objects like vehicles. One big con is that literally everything that wants to kill her is bigger than her.

Next week, Naughty Dog’s talking “inside the details,” whatever that means. We’ll have the details on the details next week… and we’ll be here to detail those details.