How The Last Of Us Part 2 Solved The Tricky Problem Of Third-Person Bows And Arrows

gamespot.com:

A Naughty Dog designer has broken down how complex just one weapon can be, and how it was solved in the studio's seminal sequel.

By Alessandro Barbosa on

Despite featuring many of the same weapon types, different games have varied ways of tackling how each of them works and feels. Sometimes this evolves through sequels, which is clearly evident when looking how how bows worked between The Last of Us and The Last of Us Part II. The decisions that lead to this change were numerous, according to a senior game designer at Naughty Dog, who has broken down exactly how it works.

In an enlightening thread on Twitter, designer Derek Mattson made the distinction between two popular methods of dealing with projectiles in games. One is used for slower moving ones, such a grenades, where a precise arc of movement can be displayed on screen to show players exactly how an object will move and where it will land, leaving just timing and placement up to the player. This is exactly how the bow in The Last of Us originally worked, with Mattson saying that the arrow could be seen as just a faster-moving grenade.

1. Treat the bow more like a grenade The original TLOU does this. The 2D reticle is replaced with an in world GUI arc. The player has near perfect info on the path of the projectile. The projectile is no longer shot from the camera and the problem is circumvented all together. pic.twitter.com/kbZ4e3pMKf

The downside to this approach, as Mattson continues, is a lower skill ceiling and a possible trade-off in satisfaction, since the ambiguity of where an arrow will land is completely removed. That's where a second approach offers a solution, with Mattson using Tomb Raider as an example. He theorises that it uses a method that most