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Demystifying Game Design in The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered

Behind-the-scenes features give a fascinating, if incomplete, look behind Naughty Dog’s curtain.

“We thought it would be nice to have a more curated experience.” For “The Hunt,” which sees protagonist Ellie tracking a boar through a forest, that meant delineating the level’s boundaries by making sure players couldn’t simply walk off cliffs of geometry. Druckmann, lead writer Gross, and actors Troy Baker (Joel), Ashley Johnson (Ellie), and Laura Bailey (Abby) dissect the game’s story in such close-reading style that it often feels like you’re listening to a set of CliffsNotes. From the commentary I’ve heard in the first seven or so hours of the game, there’s no mention of the studio’s crunch culture(as you’d expect) and Druckmann reveals little of either his writing process or the ways his own background and experiences of growing up in the West Bank influenced the “ cycle of violence ” story.

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