The Last of Us 2 is by no means a simple game. It has a very layered story, lots of details and top-tier visuals, and incredibly versatile gameplay. That said, it seems like the most challenging element to develop for The Last of Us 2 may be something that would otherwise seem simple and basic: Doors. One of the team members for Naughty Dog went on a bit of a Twitter rant talking about how complicated it was to implement doors into the critically acclaimed game.
Recently, it was revealed that TLoU 2 is the most-awarded game of all time. It has garnered praise for being an incredibly well-rounded game, even if there are some who would disagree. Thanks to an incredibly divisive yet powerful story, The Last of Us 2 has stayed in the minds of its players for almost a year. One thing many do agree on is that The Last of Us 2 is just an incredibly fun game to play, grotesque violence aside. Being able to jump down into grass and hide from enemies, lure infected zombies to attack human opponents, and the intense, anxiety-filled nature of gunplay makes it a truly exciting gameplay experience. Some of the smallest elements of gameplay weren’t nearly as fun to develop, though.
Even though TLoU 2 won Game of the Year, some of the simplest things turned out to be the hardest for the veteran team. The Last of Us 2 co-game director Kurt Margenau took to Twitter (via GamesRadar) to explain just how absurd it can be to develop something as simple as doors. Margenau noted it was the thing that took the longest to figure out properly and it was added as a way to help add more layers to the game’s stealth systems. That said, there were a lot of complicated physics tied to them. “In non-combat tension, the doors stay open, so you can see where you have explored without them re-closing. Oh and they are physics based so they slam shut behind you when opening them violently I.e. sprinting thru them,” said Margenau. “We just had to invent a new physics object that the player can push but can also push the player, wholly unique in our engine. Jaros [Sinecky] (of rope physics fame) is a genius.“
From the sounds of it, there may not be doors in the next Naughty Dog game given how much of a headache it actually was. “There pretty much wasn’t a department not affected by adding doors in combat. Buddies, melee systems, everything. F–k doors,” Margenau continued. It sounds like this caused a lot of headaches and very well could’ve even contributed to why The Last of Us 2 took so long to release, among many other reasons.
Given Naughty Dog’s attention to detail, it’s no surprise that they tried to make even the doors in The Last of Us 2 perfect. Whether or not doors will reappear in the upcoming multiplayer for The Last of Us 2 is unknown, but it’s likely there will be some effort made to integrate them since they were integral to the stealth of the story mode. There’s likely numerous headaches that also come from not just having one player, but multiple players being able to interact with a single door. Perhaps this will be easily solved given the experience the studio gained from integrating doors into the main game, though.
