The Last of Us 2 Dev Diary Talks Missable Quests, Making Skills Count

Naughty Dog is releasing The Last of Us 2 dev diaries leading up to the game’s June 19 launch date. Today’s covered The Last of Us 2 gameplay and includes an interesting nugget: you won’t see everything The Last of Us 2 has to offer during a single playthrough.

Despite The Last of Us 2 having a similar pace as the original game, the level design is much more open, according to the game’s Co-Director Anthony Newman. That means some “story moments, entire combat encounters, [and] full scripted sequences” can be completely missed.

Neil Druckmann, The Last of Us 2‘s director, told IGN the game opens up at certain points, giving players options for where they can go or what side stories they might want to complete, if any. Druckmann also mentioned this isn’t a way to pad the story either, since it moves at essentially the same pace as the original.

Newman said the goal of all this was to make The Last of Us 2 feel unique to each person who plays it:

… when you do encounter [these missable moments], 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.

What effect, if any, this has on how the intense story and Ellie’s journey ultimately play out remains to be seen.

The other thing that helps make The Last of Us 2 feel unique is the upgrade system’s return. You can upgrade character skills and equipment in The Last of Us 2, just like in the original — but not completely. You won’t be able to fully upgrade everything or max out skill trees in one playthrough.

Newman said:

The choices that you make, you’re going to have to live with. And we wanted to make sure that all the choices that you made had a really noticeable and tangible impact on the way that you play.

Newman’s comments are part of the dev diary at the top of this post, and you can check out Druckmann’s supplementary comments over on IGN.

Next week’s The Last of Us 2 diary is all about the details. We’ll be watching that one as soon as it releases too, so stay tuned to GameSkinny for more The Last of Us 2 news as it develops. Check out our The Last of Us 2 pre-order guide if you haven’t already, and don’t forget to make plenty of room on your PS4’s hard drive.