Finding Strings

Gameplay Scripting & Technical Design

Sniper section

The level opens with a mellow setpiece where Tommy lets Ellie try out his scoped rifle while he tries to get her to open up about her recent issues with Joel.

After building the layout I also scripted all of the gameplay from scratch to ship. The sequence is a shooting gallery but the extreme distances required us to make custom modifications to our enemy ai, foliage, and shadow rendering systems and to blend between multiple states when the player zooms in and out.

On top of that, I implemented Tommy’s interactive performance. This included some extremely complex animations like handing the player a rifle in close up and seamlessly blending walking, talking, and using binoculars.

Combat

Our goal was to capture the feeling of the Last of Us Part I from Ellie’s perspective. So we built the latter half’s flow and combat to make you feel like the sidekick to the AI-controlled Joel. To do this I worked with our AI programmer to built custom parameters for Joel allowing him to be as or more effective than the player.

To hammer this home the fight in the lobby is an intense encounter with multiple waves of infected coming from unexpected directions. Without Joel, most players would be overwhelmed, instead, they get to directly experience his teamwork and protection.

Bloater Fight

Bloaters in Part II are designed to be living wrecking balls. This is the first time the player encounters one, so it needed to act as a tutorial as well as a climax for the level. To that end, we continued with the “player as sidekick” combat model and I scripted the bloater to continually shift its focus between Joel and the player. This lets the player observe the bloater’s behavior in temporary safety. I also created a moment in the prototype where Joel is able to rescue Ellie from the bloater’s iconic “mouth pull” kill and in later versions, (handled by designer Andrew Frost) it evolved into the climax of the fight.