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The Last of Us Part I (2022)
Technical Game Designer
PlayStation Studios
Summary
The Last of Us Part I is a remake of the acclaimed PS3 title, The Last of Us, rebuilt from the ground up for PS5 and PC. The game keeps the original's story, performances, and scenario design, while providing updated graphics, gameplay, and accessibility features. I came onto the project as Technical Game Designer late into its development and helped ship the game through scripting work in a wide variety of areas, including accessibility feature implementation, AI scripting, and cutscene implementation.
Challenge — Many Unknowns
Coming into a project this large at a late stage of development, especially in the generalist role I occupied, meant there was a tremendous amount of stuff for me to interface with – game systems, scripts, and people. I could be dealing with a ticket about invisible objects one day, and then moving on to look at weird NPC behavior. Knowing how to tackle the diverse range of issues I faced on the project meant knowing where to look, finding the right piece of documentation or getting in touch with the right person. Doing that required me to move quickly beyond the surface-level manifestation of an issue and find the root cause of the problem. For each ticket, I had to be proactively curious about why the on-screen issue was occurring, following lines of inquiry to narrow down the problem space. That work allowed me to search efficiently and collaborate effectively, even on a project that contained many new and unknown elements for me.
Challenge — Tuning Trouble
Working as a scripter meant that my job involved a lot of tuning for subjective variables. Variables such as camera fade-out times, or how long an NPC should spend in a particular state. These numbers do not have a correct value, instead needing to be tuned until they 'feel right'. To find these subjective answers, I used consistency, iteration, and feedback. To find a starting point or a baseline, I would look at the rest of the game and try to find similar moments and see how previous designers approached the implementation of those gameplay moments. Then, I would iteratively modify my starting value, at first by large amounts, double or half, and then by progressively smaller amounts as my design space shrunk and I approached values that felt right. Then, it was a matter of collecting feedback to see whether the number I set achieved what I was aiming for. Much of this feedback came directly from the game's director in his frequent playthroughs of the game, but it could also come from artists, other designers, or playtesters.
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