Those that have played through Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us on PS4 know that the title was an impressively large game, and it takes many hours to clear the single player story even at a brisk pace. As such, it was interesting to find out that The Last of Us Part II is a staggering 50% larger than the original. Between that and all the extra work the developer is putting in to make the sequel a worthy one, it has been revealed that The Last of Us Part II will push the PlayStation 4 to its absolute limits.

Naughty Dog creative director Neil Druckmann recently spoke with the folks over at the PlayStation Blog about the upcoming sequel and how it pushes the limits of the PS4. According to Drunkmann, just like the original, The Last of Us Part II is designed to push the console to its limits, and as such fans can look forward to much busier and larger environments than what was seen in the first game. “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,” said Druckmann.

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.”

Druckmann also spoke about the improved animation techniques utilized in the game, something that we’ll likely see in Naughty Dog games moving forward. “Likewise, Ellie has this whole new animation system called motion mapping,” Druckmann said. “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.”

This is quite the impressive feat for Naughty Dog, especially given that the game was designed around the limitations of the base model PlayStation 4 and not for the PS4 Pro. As such, those that haven’t upgraded consoles won’t really be missing out on much when the title releases early next year.

The Last of Us Part II releases on February 21, 2020 exclusively for the PlayStation 4.

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