Literature expresses its message in words, music does so through harmonies, theatre via the stage, the cinema has the cutting room and third-person videogames offer environments to explore. For as long as it has been possible to play in this manner (more or less since the times of Super Mario 64), videogames have developed a series of skills that, alongside the actual dynamics of the game, the aspects that engage the player in a test of manual ability and problem-solving, tell a story through the places in which the game is set. This is not something that has happened overnight. It has taken years to develop this language that assigns a certain responsibility for the story to locations, but now almost all the best games that are not open world (in which a player can move freely but in enclosed spaces) use architecture and furniture to express everything that is not verbally expressed by the characters.
How The Last of Us 2 communicates through architecture
Environments and buildings are playing an increasingly significant role in videogame narration, even to the point of becoming more important than the characters themselves. This concept has been raised to a level of excellence in the sequel developed by Naughty Dog, in what could potentially be a masterpiece for a generation.
But this place, where Ellie lives, tells us another two things: Ellie and Joel (the characters from the first TLOU, ed) have settled, because everything is working, everything is well-furnished and not dilapidated like the rest of the world we will be exploring. The world in which we will soon be playing is characterised by violence of a kind that is not far removed from the history of America, the violence of the West.
The Last Of Us II is a videogame developed by Naughty Dog exclusively for PlayStation 4. It is the sequel to The Last Of Us (2013), considered to be one of the best videogames of the last decade.
The Last Of Us II is a videogame developed by Naughty Dog exclusively for PlayStation 4. It is the sequel to The Last Of Us (2013), considered to be one of the best videogames of the last decade.
The Last Of Us II is a videogame developed by Naughty Dog exclusively for PlayStation 4. It is the sequel to The Last Of Us (2013), considered to be one of the best videogames of the last decade.
The Last Of Us II is a videogame developed by Naughty Dog exclusively for PlayStation 4. It is the sequel to The Last Of Us (2013), considered to be one of the best videogames of the last decade.
The Last Of Us II is a videogame developed by Naughty Dog exclusively for PlayStation 4. It is the sequel to The Last Of Us (2013), considered to be one of the best videogames of the last decade.
The Last Of Us II is a videogame developed by Naughty Dog exclusively for PlayStation 4. It is the sequel to The Last Of Us (2013), considered to be one of the best videogames of the last decade.
The Last Of Us II is a videogame developed by Naughty Dog exclusively for PlayStation 4. It is the sequel to The Last Of Us (2013), considered to be one of the best videogames of the last decade.
The Last Of Us II is a videogame developed by Naughty Dog exclusively for PlayStation 4. It is the sequel to The Last Of Us (2013), considered to be one of the best videogames of the last decade.
The Last Of Us II is a videogame developed by Naughty Dog exclusively for PlayStation 4. It is the sequel to The Last Of Us (2013), considered to be one of the best videogames of the last decade.
The Last Of Us II is a videogame developed by Naughty Dog exclusively for PlayStation 4. It is the sequel to The Last Of Us (2013), considered to be one of the best videogames of the last decade.
The Last Of Us II is a videogame developed by Naughty Dog exclusively for PlayStation 4. It is the sequel to The Last Of Us (2013), considered to be one of the best videogames of the last decade.
The Last Of Us II is a videogame developed by Naughty Dog exclusively for PlayStation 4. It is the sequel to The Last Of Us (2013), considered to be one of the best videogames of the last decade.
The Last Of Us II is a videogame developed by Naughty Dog exclusively for PlayStation 4. It is the sequel to The Last Of Us (2013), considered to be one of the best videogames of the last decade.
The Last Of Us II is a videogame developed by Naughty Dog exclusively for PlayStation 4. It is the sequel to The Last Of Us (2013), considered to be one of the best videogames of the last decade.
The Last Of Us II is a videogame developed by Naughty Dog exclusively for PlayStation 4. It is the sequel to The Last Of Us (2013), considered to be one of the best videogames of the last decade.
The Last Of Us II is a videogame developed by Naughty Dog exclusively for PlayStation 4. It is the sequel to The Last Of Us (2013), considered to be one of the best videogames of the last decade.
The Last Of Us II is a videogame developed by Naughty Dog exclusively for PlayStation 4. It is the sequel to The Last Of Us (2013), considered to be one of the best videogames of the last decade.
The Last Of Us II is a videogame developed by Naughty Dog exclusively for PlayStation 4. It is the sequel to The Last Of Us (2013), considered to be one of the best videogames of the last decade.
The Last Of Us II is a videogame developed by Naughty Dog exclusively for PlayStation 4. It is the sequel to The Last Of Us (2013), considered to be one of the best videogames of the last decade.
The Last Of Us II is a videogame developed by Naughty Dog exclusively for PlayStation 4. It is the sequel to The Last Of Us (2013), considered to be one of the best videogames of the last decade.
The Last Of Us II is a videogame developed by Naughty Dog exclusively for PlayStation 4. It is the sequel to The Last Of Us (2013), considered to be one of the best videogames of the last decade.
The Last Of Us II is a videogame developed by Naughty Dog exclusively for PlayStation 4. It is the sequel to The Last Of Us (2013), considered to be one of the best videogames of the last decade.
The Last Of Us II is a videogame developed by Naughty Dog exclusively for PlayStation 4. It is the sequel to The Last Of Us (2013), considered to be one of the best videogames of the last decade.
It all seems simple, but the complexity of the scene is later revealed. The second time we return there, it is clear from afar that something is wrong because this time the house is in ruins and the rooms are empty. The irresolvable void that Ellie holds within and the destruction of the quiet life she appeared to have built for herself is represented by the emptiness of those rooms and the dilapidated state of the house.
The Last Of Us II is a videogame developed by Naughty Dog exclusively for PlayStation 4. It is the sequel to The Last Of Us (2013), considered to be one of the best videogames of the last decade.
The Last Of Us II is a videogame developed by Naughty Dog exclusively for PlayStation 4. It is the sequel to The Last Of Us (2013), considered to be one of the best videogames of the last decade.
The Last Of Us II is a videogame developed by Naughty Dog exclusively for PlayStation 4. It is the sequel to The Last Of Us (2013), considered to be one of the best videogames of the last decade.
The Last Of Us II is a videogame developed by Naughty Dog exclusively for PlayStation 4. It is the sequel to The Last Of Us (2013), considered to be one of the best videogames of the last decade.
The Last Of Us II is a videogame developed by Naughty Dog exclusively for PlayStation 4. It is the sequel to The Last Of Us (2013), considered to be one of the best videogames of the last decade.
The Last Of Us II is a videogame developed by Naughty Dog exclusively for PlayStation 4. It is the sequel to The Last Of Us (2013), considered to be one of the best videogames of the last decade.
The Last Of Us II is a videogame developed by Naughty Dog exclusively for PlayStation 4. It is the sequel to The Last Of Us (2013), considered to be one of the best videogames of the last decade.
The Last Of Us II is a videogame developed by Naughty Dog exclusively for PlayStation 4. It is the sequel to The Last Of Us (2013), considered to be one of the best videogames of the last decade.
The Last Of Us II is a videogame developed by Naughty Dog exclusively for PlayStation 4. It is the sequel to The Last Of Us (2013), considered to be one of the best videogames of the last decade.
The Last Of Us II is a videogame developed by Naughty Dog exclusively for PlayStation 4. It is the sequel to The Last Of Us (2013), considered to be one of the best videogames of the last decade.
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- Gabriele Niola
- 19 June 2020
The Last of Us II, which has just been released for the PlayStation 4, is an example of excellence in its genre; a videogame designed with frightening detail to present - through its 30 hours of gameplay and plots, with a blend of flashbacks and personality changes - something that is extremely complex: how to come to terms with the meaning of the lives that we live, and the fact that human brutality is a virus, a spiral that consumes whoever it infects. These are all concepts that would be poorly represented through dialogue, ill-fitting in a monologue, and undervalued if expressed by the characters, and therefore they are presented in other ways. In a third-person videogame, these “other ways” are represented by the architecture and the design of environments.
There are some passages in The Last Of Us II that have been created and designed specifically to express concepts exclusively through environments, and others in which the environments introduce the mood, while elsewhere the way spaces are organised explains concepts that we are not yet aware of, or things from the past within the story that we need to understand. As is the case with the best of works, instead of being spoon-fed with explanations, we are left to draw our own conclusions from what we perceive, and in fact videogames are the best way to do all of this through architecture, because they allow for the creation of three-dimensional environments that can be lived and experienced just like the real world.
A warning: from this point onwards we will try and present a few examples, and inevitably we will be entering the realm of potential spoilers, examining some details that even concern the game’s finale. This is the case with both text and images. Browse the gallery to discover the 6 main environments of the game, analyzed and commented.
When the game begins, we find ourselves in Jackson, a small settling nestled in the mountains. We know nothing about this place except for the name, but the first walk tells us everything, above all through the architectural style. It is a Western village, the urban layout is typical, with its crossroads and shops and bars with their porches. More than two decades have passed since the zombie epidemic and it is clear that people have adapted to the situation. Regular life has recommenced, and the world is restarting, albeit from its origins. When we come across a person that everyone trusts, there is no need to explain that they are a cross between a mayor and a sheriff, and in fact no-one tells us. It was enough to see the buildings and the layout of the village to understand the type of figure that would be in charge in Jackson.
But this place, where Ellie lives, tells us another two things: Ellie and Joel (the characters from the first TLOU, ed) have settled, because everything is working, everything is well-furnished and not dilapidated like the rest of the world we will be exploring. The world in which we will soon be playing is characterised by violence of a kind that is not far removed from the history of America, the violence of the West.
Further on in the game, there is a flashback that explains how, for one of Ellie’s birthdays, Joel took her to what remained of a science museum to see astronaut suits, planetariums and even a reproduction of the space module that landed on the moon. That flashback shows the great pre-epidemic civilisation, the achievements of humankind. But on leaving the area, Ellie also decides she wants to visit the adjacent wing, which is closed, and so she climbs in through a window, leaving Joel outside. She finds herself in a natural history museum, in the section dedicated to the large animals of North America. It is a dark place, full of predators depicted as they prey (the animals of North America, in other words the Americans, the same ones that went to the Moon) and writings on the walls that speak of atrocities. It is a very tense moment and the game suggests as much, giving the player the possibility to arm themselves, something that usually indicates the nearby presence of enemies. But room after room, we are surprised by the representations of animals accompanied by texts recounting human acts. No-one will tell us, certainly not Ellie, but by exploring these areas we understand that these two adjacent museums tell the story of humanity.
The game takes place almost entirely in Seattle, and the city is to be explored extensively. There are various factions living there, but from the beginning Ellie (this time vocally) asks what happened in the past. The city’s past is never explicitly explained, but rather we are left to understand through our exploration. There are tanks abandoned in the streets, close to cars, there are still signs posted by a group, FEDRA, which acted as an extension to the state, a kind of civil protection group guarding against the zombies, and there are an ever-increasing number of differing murals. While the manifestos of FEDRA are official and printed, clearly displayed and communicating rules, the murals are often overlapping, cancelling each other out. They present propaganda, insults and images of a woman. They are everywhere, and it is clear that the latter followed the first, that there were clashes, and that these rebels, captained by a woman who was evidently worshipped as a God, won over the State, decreeing the end of the city as an organised and safe place.
One important place in Seattle is Ocean World, an oceanographic museum that was occupied by a family, something we discover when we go inside. Once again, no-one tells us, but as we explore we see a child’s drawings on the walls, a room set up for sleeping, with ramshackle beds and side tables, a playroom with a cardboard-box castle, and in the end even the skeleton of someone who, for once, was not murdered. At the end, a note will explain what happened (and so will be read), but the profound sense of that place, in which someone will later decide to take exile, lies entirely in how the people that lived there before had modified it, making it theirs.
A part of the game takes place in California, in the vicinity of Santa Barbara, and there Ellie meets a group of zealots. We don’t know who they are, who their leader is, or what purpose they have. We know nothing about them. But everything becomes clear when Ellie reaches the villa that they have occupied. That place, which they have refurnished, chaining up the zombies in the empty swimming pools, expresses a violent-hippie way of living (in the background the gang blasts Black Angels, a neo-psychedelic group, at full volume) and a Californian culture gone wrong, a combination that combines successfully with a Forties-style Hollywood villa where the zombies are neither kept away from not allowed to be a threat, but simply held there in chains.
We are now at the point that we imagine to be the end, with a large house in the mountains with a farm and a sunset. Even before we see the interaction between Ellie and Yara, we understand that everything is fine because the house itself tells us so. It is a family home, in a place suitable for bringing up a child. We are told this by its position and by the whole internal environment, furnished with care.
It all seems simple, but the complexity of the scene is later revealed. The second time we return there, it is clear from afar that something is wrong because this time the house is in ruins and the rooms are empty. The irresolvable void that Ellie holds within and the destruction of the quiet life she appeared to have built for herself is represented by the emptiness of those rooms and the dilapidated state of the house.