The Last of Us
January 2011- July 2013
The University
This was the first level I built for The Last of Us and the one that took me the longest to get right. Exploring on your horse was tricky to make interesting and I was still getting used to the tone of the game. It’s also at a weird point in the story where we set up the idea that this is the final leg of Joel and Ellies journey, but in reality, it’s just the start of act 3.
The pacing and tone had to make the player feel uneasy, as if something wasn’t quiet right and then we draw that feeling out as long as possible to build the tension. The hope was that this would make the climactic ambush and escape sequence at the end of the level more impactful.
Wild Animals
This was the level that I had the most fun building for The Last of Us. I knew it was the penultimate level and we had some really exciting ideas about how to communicate some important narrative beats. It’s also one of the more quiet and beautiful levels in the game which appeals to me as a designer. These are the spaces that I really enjoy crafting.
Outside of narrative beats that we had to service, we also had to let the player test all the skills they had learned across the entire adventure, so we made sure to include a large, infected fight and a more involved co-op puzzle for Joel and Ellie to solve together. We knew there was going to be plenty of human combat in the final level so that could be omitted, but all the other pillars had to be represented in some, satisfying way.
Real Lab
The challenge with the Firefly Lab was that we needed it to feel like a finale without using a cheesy, over the top boss battle. We opted for more subtle changes such as the introduction of automatic weapons and electrical lighting, two things that the player wouldn't have seen since the military city at the start of the game.
This wasn't enough though, so I pitched that we make the cutscene in the operating room and the subsequent escape into a playable sequence. The playable sequence of Joel carrying Ellie out of the hospital mirrored the image of Joel carrying Sarah through the streets of Hometown at the start of the game, which reinforced Joels motivations and gave the level a unique, climactic sequence to end on.
Epilogue
This sequence was really small but there was still some interesting design choices to be made. The main objective of the space was to give the player some room to process what had just happened in the previous chapter, so a quiet, peaceful walk in the woods would allow that.
The most interesting choice, however, was to have the player control Ellie instead of Joel. If the player controlled Joel they would inherently try to empathies with and defend his actions and that isn't the kind of introverted exploration we wanted. By having the player play as Ellie they see Joel's actions from a slightly more detached, objective perspective, which we felt was a much more interesting point of view.
Uncharted 3
Yemen Temple
Its widely regarded at Naughty Dog that a good puzzle is as challenging and time consuming to create as a boss fight because of the amount of bespoke interactions and complex logic involved. The Yemen Temple consisted of 3 puzzles and a set-piece chase sequence. This level did not match my rather junior abilities at the time but I relished the challenge and grew enormously from the experience. I especially enjoyed designing the puzzles which were all based on optical illusions.
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Ship Graveyard
The Ship Graveyard was the exact opposite of the Yemen Temple. Instead of bespoke puzzles and set pieces, the Ship Graveyard has buckets of core combat and traditional clambering and exploration. It was a chaotic, wrought iron playground all set upon a beautifully dynamic ocean. I had a blast building out this space and credit this level as the reason I have specialized in level design in the years since.
