Naughty Dog have talked plenty about how big The Last of Us Part 2 is going to be – it’s apparently the biggest and most ambitious game they’ve ever made – and that’s something that will be reflected in its level design as well. Though it’s still very much going to be linear, guided experience, as the developers revealed last year, similar to Uncharted 4 and The Lost Legacy, The Last of Us Part 2 will be intermittently dotted with larger, more wide open areas that will present plenty of opportunities for side content and exploration.
In fact, thanks to that style of design, The Last of Us Part 2 is going to even have entire combat encounters, scripted sequences, story moments, and more that players might miss entirely. This is something that the game’s Co-Director Anthony Newman said in a recent behind-the-scenes video talking about The Last of Us Part 2’s gameplay. He also added that it’s very likely many players won’t see everything the game has to offer in a single playthrough.
“In this game, we’ve gone so far in making the level design open that there are actually entire story moments, entire combat encounters, full scripted sequences that you may completely miss,” Newman said. “And there are things that we feel like, even though a portion of our player base may never see these things, the fact that when you do encounter them, you feel like you discovered them, it lends them this charm and this magic I think is unique to games that this happened to me, because of what I did and the place I explored to.”
The Last of Us Part 2 is due out for the PS4 on June 19. It’s ambitious nature will be reflected in its large file size, which will be around 100 GB (or 2 Blu-ray discs for the physical release).