Development of The Last of Us Part II
Approximately 2,100 people developed The Last of Us Part II over more than five years, led by the 350-person team at Naughty Dog. Sony Interactive Entertainment published the action-adventure game in June 2020 for the PlayStation 4; a remastered version was released in January 2024 for the PlayStation 5, and in April 2025 for Windows. A sequel to the 2013 game The Last of Us, PartIIs core development began after the 2014 release of The Last of Us Remastered. Neil Druckmann returned as creative director, co-writing the story with Halley Gross, while Anthony Newman and Kurt Margenau were chosen as game directors. Matthew Gallant was Remastereds game director.
After its announcement in 2016, the game was fervently promoted with press showings, cinematic trailers, and special editions. Its release date was subject to several delays, partly due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The development reportedly included a crunch schedule of 12-hour work days and was slowed by the enormous turnover of employees following the development of Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, while the team was forced to operate via remote work arrangements in the final months due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Development costs for PartII totaled around, making it one of the most expensive video games to develop.
For the story, Druckmann was inspired by his own experiences growing up in the West Bank, where violence was a frequent topic. Gross also took her own experience with post-traumatic stress disorder with the game's characters. Ashley Johnson and Troy Baker reprised their roles as Ellie and Joel, respectively, recording their motion and voice simultaneously. Ellie is one of two main playable characters in the game; the other, Abby, was portrayed by Laura Bailey. The change was inspired by a similar switch in the first game. The writers wanted to portray Abby's vulnerabilities, aware that players would likely initially dislike her but eventually empathize.
The developers pushed the technical capabilities of the PlayStation 4 for PartII, creating larger environments and adding more enemies than previously. The advancement of the game's artificial intelligence granted deeper connections with characters; some gameplay elements were similarly intended to create an emotional response from players. The game was originally planned as an open world game, but became more linear to better serve the narrative. The accessibility options were seen as an extension of those introduced in Uncharted 4, and the developers attended conferences and worked with advocates. Gustavo Santaolalla returned to compose and perform the score; Mac Quayle contributed additional combat music.
History and overview
Approximately 2,169 developers across 14 studios worked on The Last of Us Part II. Story concepts were first conceived in late 2013, following the development and release of The Last of Us. Development began in 2014, soon after the release of The Last of Us Remastered. By August 2017, with the release of Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, the entire 350-person team at Naughty Dog had shifted to develop PartII. Neil Druckmann led development as creative director and writer, reprising his role from The Last of Us and Uncharted 4: A Thief's End. Bruce Straley, game director on the original game, left Naughty Dog in 2017; Druckmann felt that the dynamic on PartII, the first game he co-directed without Straley, was different as a result.Anthony Newman and Kurt Margenau were selected to be co-game directors for PartII, a first for Naughty Dog as the position was previously held by one person. Both were hired during the development of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves ; Newman was the melee combat designer for The Last of Us, and Margenau was game director on Uncharted: The Lost Legacy. Margenau and Newman oversaw and approved the gameplay elements, such as level design and mechanics. Co-lead game designers Emilia Schatz and Richard Cambier were also part of the creative leadership team, continuing their roles from the development of Uncharted 4.
Druckmann identified that, while Naughty Dog was granted the freedom to create any type of game, they were energized when presented the option to make a sequel to The Last of Us due to the importance of the characters, despite knowing it would divide some fans. The team subtitled the game as PartII because they viewed it as an extension of the first. Druckmann wanted PartII to be as effective a sequel as The Godfather Part II was to The Godfather. As resources were shifted to improving the scale of the game, plans for multiplayer were canceled, shifted to a standalone game, The Last of Us Online, which was canceled in December 2023. Naughty Dog said PartII was the longest game they had made.
For the final months of development, the team shifted to remote work due to the COVID-19 pandemic, though they were given the option to do so prior to the mandatory stay-at-home order in California; the operations management department ensured the transition was smooth, as the studio housed technology such as development kits that were not accessible in home setups. Druckmann felt lucky that development was almost complete by the time the pandemic spread in the United States. Game development ceased by May 4, 2020, when it was submitted for manufacturing. According to documents from publisher Sony Interactive Entertainment, the 70-month development peaked at 200 full-time employees and cost around, making it one of the most expensive video games to develop.
The development, according to a report by Kotakus Jason Schreier, included a crunch schedule of 12-hour work days owing to the studio culture; after the game's delay, developers continued under this schedule for the additional months. Schreier suggested that development was affected and slowed due to the enormous turnover of employees following the development of Uncharted 4, with few veterans left on the team. Some of the developers working on the game allegedly hoped that the game would fail to prove that the working conditions they are under are not viable. Sony granted Naughty Dog an additional two weeks of development for bug fixes. Druckmann felt that he failed to find the correct balance for employees on PartII, and said the studio would receive external assistance for future projects.
Story and setting
Druckmann, who was promoted to Vice President of Naughty Dog in 2018, had less time to write on PartII than on The Last of Us; he wrote the majority of the latter, but less than half of the former. Halley Gross was approached to collaborate as a writer on the game shortly after she had completed her work on Westworld in 2016. She was hired as a writer early in development to help Druckmann outline the story and decipher characters. She felt that she and Druckmann had very similar tastes and interests. When Gross joined the project, Druckmann had a structure for the entire story; Gross felt that her perspective on characters and trauma added to the narrative. When crafting the story further, Druckmann and Gross created an outline and presented it to the studio to "stress-test" it. They then worked in non-chronological order with animators, layout designers, and other departments to develop ideas. Each section of the game was mapped on a wall using notecards; a section was scrapped if it did not contribute to the overall narrative momentum, or was "just cool for the sake of being cool". Druckmann found that the additional voice of Gross led to more believable characters, particularly regarding romance and comedy. When she assumed more responsibilities about two years into development, Gross was given the title of "narrative lead". Josh Scherr and Ryan James contributed to additional in-game dialogue, with Scherr also writing the descriptions of the collectible cards.Druckmann felt that his time working on Uncharted 4 for two years allowed the story of PartII to slowly develop. The team experimented with different plot structures and considered scrapping the game entirely until they settled on an idea that mirrored the first game; Druckmann identified that The Last of Us is about the extreme measures one would take for love, whereas PartII is more about how far one would go to bring justice for those they love. He initially stated that, while the first game focuses on love, PartII centers on hate; he later rephrased that both games are about love, analyzing the best and worst it can offer. He felt that the town of Jackson represented the best, as its population attempted to live morally in a world representing the real one, while the war between the Washington Liberation Front and the Seraphites demonstrates the worst, despite some glimpses of hope within the lives of the former. Druckmann predicted that some players would dislike the game's story, but said that he would prefer passionate hate over apathy. He found that some players considered the characters in the first game to be "sacred" and wanted to ensure that was not the case with the sequel.
The game's themes of revenge and retribution were inspired by Druckmann's own experiences growing up in the West Bank, where violence was a frequent topic. He specifically recalled watching footage of the 2000 Ramallah lynching and how, after hearing the cheering crowds, his mind immediately turned to violent thoughts of revenge against them; he later admitted to feeling "gross and guilty" for having these thoughts. He wanted the player to feel a "thirst for revenge" before making them realize the reality of their actions. Once he had settled on a basic concept, the remainder of the narrative outline was complete within weeks. He noted that some members of the team felt reluctant about the game's cynicism, but ultimately he preferred a divisive story than a "mundane" one. He found that stories showing the cost of revenge were more nuanced, and wanted to use the interactivity of the medium to push these feelings to players. He found that people often want to bring someone to justice after witnessing a horrible act, but are unable to do so due to laws and society; in the game's world, where these societal structures no longer exist, he saw an opportunity to explore this concept. When researching for the game, he watched the documentary films Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills and its sequels Revelations and Purgatory, and found it particularly interesting when parents would make comments in interviews about wanting to hurt or kill the West Memphis Three over the murder allegations; he felt that these comments were the "perversion of love", wanting to commit a heinous act to bring justice for those they love. He also referenced Dave Grossman's book On Killing, which discusses the desensitization of violence for soldiers.
Druckmann noted that the game's other themes include tribalism, trauma, and the pursuit of justice. He felt that humans often dehumanize those they oppose in order to justify their own actions in the chase for justice; he found this particularly relevant in modern politics and online discourse, and wanted to explore it within the game without being overly "preachy". Gross added that "one man's justice is another man's revenge" and wanted the story to show different perspectives and consequences. Druckmann felt that the depiction of violent acts was necessary in a story that deals with the cycle of violence, but welcomed members of the team to work on other elements of the game if anything made them uncomfortable. Co-art director John Sweeney pushed for realism in the violence, particularly with minimizing it instead of embellishing. The inclusion of a PlayStation Vita playing Hotline Miami, a game with similar themes about violence of which Druckmann and the team are fans, was considered an extension of the theme; earlier versions used another Naughty Dog game, but Dennaton Games allowed the team to use Hotline Miami. Cambier noted that Ellie's violent acts are committed for love or for hate, and were therefore justified by the narrative.
The game underwent several changes throughout production. Initial pre-production concepts included Ellie discovering information about other immune people. Later in development, the game had five days in Seattle instead of three, including an additional side story wherein Ellie traveled to the Seraphite island, which was intended to humanize the Seraphite characters more. An earlier version of the farm sequence featured a playable sequence of Ellie hunting a boar; gameplay, art, and performance was completed, but the sequence was cut for pacing purposes and is instead referenced in Ellie's journal. In an earlier draft, Joel had a girlfriend named Esther, who was originally mentioned as part of a live performance of some scenes from the first game called The Last of Us: One Night Live. In the drafts, Esther lived in a town about two hours away from Jackson. In an early version of a flashback, Ellie and Joel traveled to Esther and found that she had been bitten; her death triggered a conversation between Ellie and Joel about a cure. The character was later scrapped as the writers felt she was established too quickly, and was more relevant to Joel's arc than Ellie's. A love letter from Esther remained for some time afterwards, but was eventually cut from the final game.
Druckmann identified that the first game's pacing was like a film, but he wanted PartII to be reflective of a novel, with several quiet moments. Some of the game's dialogue was inspired by the British dark comedy series The End of the F***ing World. The notes scattered around the world were developed out of discussions with the team; as a level was built, the team would discuss the stories behind particular objects in the environment. The team decided to use Seattle as the game's primary location as its hilly nature and varied weather led to more interesting gameplay scenarios. Early in development, Sucker Punch Productions shared a 3D map of Seattle created for Infamous Second Son with Naughty Dog to help them understand the city's layout. Artists at Naughty Dog traveled to Seattle to analyze the architecture, vegetation, materials, topography, and lighting, and capture photorealistic textures. The team experimented with larger open world environments in PartII, as they had previously done with Uncharted 4 and The Lost Legacy. Druckmann wanted the open world of Seattle to contribute to Ellie feeling lost and frustrated. The final chapter of the game originally took place in Mexico before being moved to Santa Barbara, California.