Photographers and gamers! Who of you are contained in the middle of that Venn diagram of hobbies?
Something about the photo mode in The Last of Us Part II (TLOU2) held my attention, unlike the photo mode from any other game (save Pokémon Snap). Indeed, the TLOU2 game developers at Naughty Dog even wrote about how they get their best shots on the official Playstation blog. My usual lack of interest in photo mode is surprising considering my love for real-world photography, but on closer examination, maybe there was something off about those other experiences that prevented me from fully appreciating their potential.
What follows is my theory why this photo mode clicked where others did not. Consider it a combo photography / user experience post. I’ve also included photos from the game throughout. They’ll contain location spoilers, although I doubt they’ll mean much until you get to that part of the story.
Reason #1: The game is on-rails
TLOU2 isn’t a sprawling open-world adventure game like Red Dead Redemption 2, The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, or Grand Theft Auto 5. Instead, the game is mostly linear and follows a determined path. This allows the game developers to take you through areas at a set time and a set pace, creating moments in the story with the perfect lighting, colour tone, weather, and more.
Compare that to an experience my brother and I had while playing the original Red Dead Redemption. He finished the game before I did and told me about the beautiful finale from the last story mission in the game—the music was perfect, the light was golden—you get the idea. Eventually, I caught up, but didn’t have the same experience. In fact, I was surprised when the mission finished because there didn’t seem to be anything remotely exceptional about its “look”. I asked him about what he saw. It turns out he finished the story mission as the in-game sun was rising for the day while I finished the mission in the harsh mid-afternoon light. Hence, no streaming light between the trees, nor warm atmospheric glow.
The open world photo mode experience is a game of chance. You need to be at the right time and the right place, not unlike photography in the real world. Naturally, you can increase your odds of being at the right time and the right place by getting out more or photographing (playing) at the right times, but only playing a game during its in-game golden hours isn’t practical.
Looking back at TLOU2, the “on-rails” nature of the game gives the developer a high degree of control over the cinematic experience. They can force you into the right time and place so all that’s left to do is recognize and capture the beauty of the experience as best you can. There’s less left to chance and fewer missed photo opportunities as a result.
Reason #2: Automatically turning on the photo mode shortcut
Early in the game there’s a small tutorial about photo mode. It’s through this tutorial they show the player the prominently located photo mode option in the pause menu. However, after accessing it enough times the game automatically turns on the photo mode shortcut by clicking in the two sticks of the controller. This shortcut only saves one button press (pressing the pause button, then selecting photo mode vs. pressing two sticks at once) but this is another example where it doesn’t pay to “count the clicks”. Other games might have a similar photo mode shortcut, but either the lack of explanation or the lack of turning it on could’ve been critical factors that prevented it from sticking.
However, equipped with this shortcut in TLOU2, I could almost instantly jump into photo mode and quickly pan the camera around to see if there was an angle. Occasionally, there wasn’t, and I’d back out without taking a photo. Other times there was, and I’d tweak and refine the settings while time was frozen. After photographing fleeting moments in the real world—and missing many over the years—it’s powerful to sit in a singular moment indefinitely. I could dial in the settings just right, without worrying the light would fade or a pose would change.
My favourite technique involved increasing the depth of field slider to maximum, then setting the focus distance to the perfect spot on the subject. Usually, the depth of field was so intense at this point that one slider click in either direction spoiled the focus. After achieving critical focus, I’d reduce the depth of field slider to something that looked natural while also knowing my desired subject was perfectly in focus.
It doesn’t hurt that the game is beautiful
The combination of a) the game’s on-rails nature and b) the ease of accessing photo mode probably contributed to my (over?) use of photo mode. But without a beautiful game backing those two techniques up, they wouldn’t mean much.
If you’ve played the game you know, The Last of Us Part II’s emotional burden is heavy. I frequently felt like I was playing one of the best games I’ll ever know, and you only get to experience the first play-through once. I’m glad I have these photos as souvenirs.