Tag Archives: The Last of Us

Tower Trouble – The Last of Us Exercise

Activities, Design, Level Design, Projects,

The following is a level design exercise where I made a level pitch for a sequence in The Last of Us.

Beat 1 – Linear Narrative

Beat 1 Top Down

Beat 1 – Sequence

Overview: Joel and Ellie traverse through a hotel towards their objective, a bank where Tommy is being held.

  • Party drops down from a hole in the wall into the hotel storage room.
  • In front of them is a pool of dried blood and something written on the wall which can’t be made out.
    1. Dev note: Visual storytelling elements to heighten tension. 
      1. Who died? 
      2. Am I in danger?
  • Turning the party catches a glimpse of the bank. Their goal.
    1. Dev note: Use of a weenie.
  • Completing their left turn before them is a T-junction.
    1. Dev note: Option to explore.
  • Turning left the party sees the rest of the storeroom and find supplies on the shelves. 
    1. Dev note: Items are 1 duct tape, 1 blade and 1 part.
  • Turning 180 degrees the party sees an elevator opposite them. 
    1. Dev note: Blood is continued tension breadcrumb.
  • Approaching they see the elevator is tightly sealed leaving them with no option but to take the blood stained path to the right. 
  • The party proceeds down the partially collapsed hallway.
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Last of Us – Bill’s Town Notes

Activities, ,

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
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