Last of Us – Bill’s Town Notes

1 – Drawing Attention to a Building

  • Use of light texture.
  • Billboard with red striking sign.
  • Blue awning.
  • Depth of side of building.
Drawing Attention

2 – Affordances

  • We encounter a door that can be opened with a shiv. This in my mind established an accordance that doors that looked like this could be opened.
Openable Door
  • Later on we may encounter another door that looks like that same shiv door from before, but this one doesn’t open (affordance confusion)!
Non-openable Door

3 – Drawing Attention to Areas of Interest

  • Like the contrast on the left side, draws my eye to the area where the safe is located.
    • Sign as well as red car.
  • Like the depth on the right side, draws my eye.
    • Depth and blue police car.
Areas of Interest

4 – Lock Before The Key

In this section the player finds a safer that requires a numerical combination to be opened.

The Lock

Further down the street the player sees the glint of a note against a dark junk wall, and finds the combination to the safe written on the note. I have an issue with this!

The player does need to do backtracking which isn’t ideal, but it isn’t much, my issue relates to getting the combination. When the player gets the combination it would be an additional plus to underscore receiving this important information with a touch of VO that hinted the relationship between the safe and note e.g “hmm wasn’t there a safe back there?”.

The Key

5 – Corridor

  • Another nice use of color with a blue dumpster at the end of the corridor.
  • Nice use of leading lines.
  • Light on edge of building catches the eye.
Leading Down the Corridor

6 – Texture

I like the very subtle yellow paint line. The use of a close up texture to lead the player (that color yellow also associated with accessibility in other places e.g. a ledge you can climb).

Subtle Yellow Line
Color Language

7 – Light

Love the colored light that comes through the panes of colored glass, it reminds me of Gaudis interior of Sagrada familia.

Colored Light

8 – Composition

Strong Christian iconography. I liked the composition of the elements.

9 – Memory Lane

Went through what reminded me of Joels home. One room looked like a kids room. Feels like they are subtle reminders of Joels past.

Foreshadowing memory of Joel’s daughter
One Last Look

10 – Association

In another house the player can choose to engage in dialogue with Ellie. The backdrop being a child’s room. This combination summoned a reminder of Joel’s daughter.

Ellie and Joel’s Daughter

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