The Last of Us Part 2will primarily take place in Seattle, Washington, and Naughty Dog has decided to provide a breakdown as to why exactly that is.The Last of Us Part 2Director, Neil Druckmann, discussed the topic in an interview with IGN. He primarily wanted to get across just how much the setting impacted the story and its gameplay.
According to Druckmann, one of the reasonsNaughty Dog picked Seattlewas because of its various locations. The developer knew that it was going to have Ellie spend a lot of time in one city, so it picked one that allowed it to switch up the art styles and locations. In regards to this, Druckmann noted that the Pacific Northwest provided various residential, environmental, and city-like areas that the devs could use.
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Naughty Dogopted for this variety to ensure level designers had interesting material on hand to create exciting exploration and combat spaces for players. When scouting for a location to use as an in-game setting, Naughty Dog asks itself things like, “what are interesting locations for exploration or for our new physics system to get different kinds of puzzles?”
The developer does this for all of its games, and once it finds a place that fits the description, it studies it thoroughly so that it can recreate it accurately. While developing the location in-game, Naughty Dog adds its own personal touches to it to match it with the game’s story. In the case ofThe Last of Us Part 2, nature has reclaimed the world, so Naughty Dog overran Seattle with foliage.
As well as aiding the story, this decision allows the devs to do interesting things withThe Last of Us 2’s gameplay, such as allowing both the player and their enemies to use stealth elements against each other. Druckmann used Stalker Infected as an example. Ellie will encounter them growing in the walls of places like sewers. Sometimes, they’ll be dead, but other times, they’ll rip themselves from the wall unexpectedly and attack.
One ofthe two enemy survivor factions, the Seraphites — otherwise known as the Scars — will also use the world’s vegetation to their advantage. Being a cult that has “rejected the technology of the old world,” Scars prefer to try and murder Ellie from the shadows with silent, hand-crafted weapons like bows and arrows. Ellie can use the overgrowth to her advantage as well, so whoever pulls off the guerilla tactics better will likely end up the victor.
The Last of Us Part 2launches for the PlayStation 4 on July 14, 2025.
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