Evan Hill

Hill designed only four areas of The Last of Us Part II. Each area had a team of artists, animators and scripters behind it. Baldwin and Swenson modeled the museum, Beppu textured it and Greenway lit it.

As the level firmed up, Hill's role moved from layout to producer, keeping track of what everyone needed.

The level began as two spreadsheet cells. The brief was that Joel taught Ellie to swim, and that they confront each other about the Fireflies. It grew into a three act arc that took about two years.

Hill's team scrapped and rebuilt until the level worked. Some sequences in the game were redone about 25 times. The space area alone went through three or four full revisions.

Hill describes the secret as being "willing to do to scrap something that doesn't work and re-do it."

Hill says the lesson is not to copy the budget. This hand-crafted process, with each person owning only a few areas, is not affordable for most studios. Mark Brown cites reports of crunch at Naughty Dog and at Rockstar.

What scales down is improvising as the characters, letting players miss things, guiding the eye with art and geometry, and mirroring the relationship in the level's feel.

Hill blocks out levels in 3D with the real camera and controls. Naughty Dog designers go straight into blockmesh using the final character controller, camera and animations. Hill built the museum this way with Ellie's real controls.

Playing it in 3D shows what a space feels like before any art exists.

His early museum blockmesh was mostly blobs. Each blob marked a point of interest, and the blobs tested how dense the space felt.

Once pacing was set, the art team kept adding ideas that shaped the final version.

Hill walked Neil Druckmann through rough layouts and improvised as the characters. Druckmann saw a very rough placeholder dinosaur and asked "can I climb it?", so Hill made it climbable. It became one of the level's best moments.

Hill kept riffing on the layout with Druckmann, and many memorable moments came out of those sessions.

Dialogue was written in reaction to the level art. Writers Halley and Neil came in late and worked with the level and scripting team on what would sell each moment. Designers built for navigation, then the writers found how Ellie would describe it.

The funny lines when Ellie climbs the dinosaur came this way. Hill says it is why the level feels interlaced and grounded.

Hill made an open beach feel boundless while fencing it. Natural barriers keep the player inside the space. Even if you jumped in the water, you would think you are not going to climb over all of that.

Draw distance and funneling were a big pain, solved with smoke and mirrors and an art team working within the limits.

He cut the swimming lesson and made it a reveal. The scene was first planned as a real lesson. The team chose to show that Joel and Ellie had already done it, which gives Joel a dad-like tease.

The moment was once a cutscene. Hill had to personally harass Neil to keep the button press, since it lets the player trigger the turnaround.

Joel starts as a "follow me" sign, then stops leading. Early on Joel constantly points the way. Then he goes quiet so the player wanders ahead, matching the story beat where he lets Ellie wander.

A brighter hue on the dinosaur's tail hints it can be climbed. The aim is to hint at possibilities rather than lead directly.

Hill turned down guidance in the museum opening. Naughty Dog normally uses weenies, colour and lighting heavily. In the museum they dialed these back so there is no golden path.

The player pieces the space together actively.

He kept player-paced interactions short and punchy. Each museum interaction, like flipping pages or touching exhibits, is quippy so the player can turn another page for more. Short beats teach players that every little thing is worth touching.

Hill let players miss content on purpose. Forcing everyone through every interaction would drag for some and infuriate players who want to run through. Letting people set their own pace gives a sense of driving the experience.

The team accepted that there is no perfect, singular experience of the level.

He used geometry and camera to time reveals. A wall slides out of the camera's way to reveal the dinosaurs gradually. The T-rex doorway was sculpted with foliage after it showed too early in tests.

Now the player sees it at the moment Ellie sees it and reacts. After the Lunar Rover, the camera swings to frame the space capsule, so every placed object points to the next thing.

Hill added the space capsule and rebuilt the level toward it. The sequence was first meant to end at the Firefly graffiti. Digging into the characters pushed the team to show Ellie feeling unburdened, so more space was added to lead up to the capsule.

As Hill puts it, "Before the dinosaur was the high point. But now with this it's just a part of the build."

A dark third act counterweights the high point. After the capsule, the level turns dark and spooky to show the undercurrent in Ellie and Joel's bond. Everything before it is the perfect version of the relationship.

The ominous graffiti hints at someone regretful of violence they've done. The level's mood tracks the relationship, so the player feels the arc.

He built tension with a fight that never comes. The dark section has no enemies, only fake pickups and a combat-style layout. This ties the good times to the conflict in the relationship.

Hill: "Just to even signal that it's a possibility is enough to get people to tense up."

Loading gates sit where the story wants a breather. No memory budget forced them. The team assumed players needed a break, and the jump off the cafe into the water after the capsule serves as that traversal beat.

Unloading gives the next narrative beat the full bandwidth.

Each level is tuned as a contrast to its neighbors. The museum follows an intense subway, which makes it a big contrast point. A boar jump scare after it re-tunes players before the Jesse rescue, where dogs appear for the first time.