Neil Druckmann, Naughty Dog’s game director on The Last of Us Part II, has discussed some new details on the Last of Us Part II.

　　In a new blog post on the official PlayStation Blog, the game director talks about new gameplay systems, new challenges, the evolution of Ellie, and the game’s fidelity on the PlayStation 4.

　　As with all Naughty Dog titles, we already knew that The Last of Us Part II is one hell of a good-looking title, but according to Druckmann, the game’s protagonist might very well be one of the best looking third-person characters available. Coming from the original The Last of US on the PS3, the power of the PlayStation 4 allows for squads of enemies in larger spaces, wider environments and more.

　　“Just as with The Last of Us, we were hitting the limits of memory, of computational power, how many enemies we could have on screen, and the size of levels,” the game director said. “Now we’re able to have much wider environments, sequences with a horde of infected, several squads of enemies looking for you in big spaces.”

　　“Likewise, Ellie has this whole new animation system called motion mapping. Not just Ellie, all the characters. It makes movement more responsive, but also more realistic at the same time. So I think Ellie is one of the best controlling and looking third-person action characters out there.

　　“The fidelity we can get in the faces and the motion capture — we can better translate what the actors are doing on stage into the game, and get these nuances so we can rely more on the way someone blinks or the way they squint instead of lines of dialogue. It allows the writing to be much more nuanced than it’s been before.”

　　The Last of Us Part II is slated for a release on February 21 exclusively for the PS4.