Yesterday, Naughty Dog brought us yet another look inside one of this year's most anticipated games, The Last of Us Part II. This deep dive into the development of the game came after some incredible new gameplay sequences in Tuesday's State of Play where director Neil Druckmann provided the voiceover for the majority of the stream and also gave us more information about combat, gameplay systems, and mechanics, and traversal. This time, Naughty Dog treated us to a look behind the scenes of development and also a handful of pieces of new concept art for The Last of Us Part II that showcased the developer's inspiration for the post-apocalyptic sequel.

In the video, Neil Druckman and Naughty Dog's Art Director John Sweeney talked about making numerous trips to Seattle to study the local architecture to provide authenticity to the environments in The Last of Us Part II. Sweeney stated that they even went as far as to walk in the shoes of Ellie themselves through the city to get as much reference as they could which took them inside buildings, taking pictures of signs on the wall and also visiting bus stops scattered across Seattle in the hopes that including these real-world elements, it would immerse the player even more. Between discussions, new concept art was displayed that was both beautiful and haunting.

Many of the art pieces showed Ellie on horseback whilst exploring the environments on offer in The Last of Us Part II. The concept art ranged from Ellie looking over some lush fields and trees to depicting the overgrown and eerie infrastructure of Seattle. As broken as the world may be, the sheer beauty of it still shone through and offered a little respite in its dire post-apocalyptic creation. You can check out the new concept art pieces for yourself in the gallery below.

You can pre-order the artbook now before its release date on 16 Jun. 2020

The Last of Us Part II is set to release in just a few short weeks on June 19, exclusively on PS4. If you want to see more videos like the one mentioned here, you can also check out the previous two installments in this series about story details and gameplay.