You might be confused about how to reload in The Last of Us since there’s not a dedicated button for the action. Unfortunately, due to how slow your character tends to reload, going into a battle with your firearm fully loaded is essential. This is especially true at greater difficulties when having a fully loaded weapon is the difference between life and death.
How to reload in The Last of Us Part 1
Instead of using a dedicated reload button, The Last of Us requires you to perform an action that may seem counter-intuitive. To reload your weapon in TLOU, you need to press the R2 button when not aiming. If you find yourself confused about refilling the magazine in the game, that’s not surprising. In most games, if you press the fire button, your character will still shoot even when you’re not aiming.
All the firearms in the game follow this standard reload pattern. However, the bow is a special case here. When you hold L2, Ellie will nock an arrow. By aiming and holding the fire button, your character will draw the bowstring and prepare to let loose. In this case, you may want to cancel the action. To cancel firing the bow, just release the aim button.
As a rule, the more powerful the gun, the longer it takes to reload. This is something you’ll want to keep in mind when choosing which weapon to use. Thankfully, several of the guns have upgrades that expand magazine capacity or reload speed. These are incredibly useful given that the default reload time for each weapon, even the faster ones like the handgun, is relatively slow.
Unfortunately, there’s no way to expand your default ammo capacity. It doesn’t make sense that your character only carries around two magazines for each weapon. I suppose we’re supposed to suspend disbelief for that.
