In part, the Last of Us 2 establishes its world through the recurring appearance of Seattle landmarks. “Weenies,” unique constructions frequently used in Naughty Dog games, serve as landmarks for players to investigate or find their way to. Some prominent soft targets in The Last of Us games have included the Boston Capitol Building with its gold dome, the Pittsburgh suspension bridge with its yellow span, and the Seattle Space Needle with its stainless steel spire.
Although these tidbits play an essential role in many other Naughty Dog games by subtly directing the player’s gaze and giving them a sense of where they are in the world, The Last of Us 2 is unique in that it does not employ this technique. Instead, the game’s non-linear structure allows players to focus on the mission at hand and see places they’ve explored before and sites they’ll see later, all inside the confines of a single city over three days.
TheLordofStarfall points out an example of this on Reddit. Weenies that the player discovers later in the game appear far earlier than they should. Ellie and Dina ride through Seattle’s city on horseback on their first day there in quest of fuel to power the gate to the Serena Hotel, where they expect to discover the Washington Liberation Front.
As many reviewers have noted, Ellie and Dina’s camp near the Pinnacle Theater after day one is visible from the television station they visit earlier in the day. The next day, as Ellie approaches the hospital, she can view the entire downtown area she and Dina explored, and on day three, as she enters the Aquarium, she can see the Space Needle.
Unfortunately, the environment of The Last of Us 2 is a testament to Naughty Dog’s insanity since it avoids the obvious compromises that other creators would have made to make the most of the limited resources available on PlayStation 4 hardware from 2013.
