The Last of Us 2, Naughty Dog talks about the complex animations present in the game

The Last of Us 2 can count on what can be easily called some of the best animations ever seen in the gaming landscape, which apparently have a great deal of design work behind them, largely attributable to what was done by Keith Paciello, lead animator of Naughty Dog, who explained some of this magic in a new post on the PlayStation blog.

It's not so much about motion capture, but about a series of interconnected technologies, whose direction is mainly work by Keith Paciello, who proposed a new animation management system which was then approved by the entire team. This complex system is the basis of the numerous contextual animations found within The Last of Us 2, which make the behavior of the characters and also their facial expressions within the various contexts particularly realistic.

Paciello explains, for example, how he made Ellie seem to admire works of art inside a ruined synagogue, a result obtained by establishing patterns on the animations linked to the area of ​​the screen framed by Ellie's virtual "gaze": " you as the player are aiming the controller at Ellie to look at the painting. In addition, I have animated small eye bolts (saccades) within the character's facial features to try to indicate a process of general intention. Then the animated eye saccades that sit above the eye's lens, work together to create what appears to be a focus and thought process, ”said Paciello.