Today Sony presented a State of Play featuring the almost too big for its britches, The Last of Us II. Creative director and lead for TLOU2, Neil Druckmann gave the world a tour de force of some of the sequel’s story beats, gameplay additions and improvements, as well as some hints of what’s to come once we have the game in our hands. The presentation was capped with a lengthy bit of never before seen gameplay that highlighted much of the game’s newest combat and stealth mechanics. So what is the verdict? Despite the crazy PR surrounding Naughty Dog, Druckmann, and the game itself, does it still seem poised to deliver the goods on June 16th?
I’ll start by saying that I enjoyed the original game. Joel was and remains my favorite character overall and I was entertained by the narrative. However, my biggest gripe was that after just a few chapters, the gameplay loop began to feel stale and uninteresting. Most encounters, especially with human enemies, tended to play out similarly to one another unless there was a scripted sequence involved. In fact, much of the time I was only invested with what was happening when one of these sequences were taking place.
This brings me to the changes and improvements that have been made to the core gameplay. Stealth is still a big component and is made just a little more involved by allowing characters to hide in tall grass, go prone, and even traverse the environment via the new rappel and grappling mechanic. You can now use a grappling hook to climb, lower yourself, or swing to different locations, thus allowing you to gain a height advantage or even slink by encounters all together.
The crafting system returns and is largely the same, allowing you to put together items and weapons on the fly from the pool of resources you’ve gathered throughout the remains of Seattle. New to the game is the leveling system which is an rpg-lite skill tree that lets you allocate accrued experience to abilities such as improved Stealth and unique combat techniques you wouldn’t have access to otherwise. It’s nothing revolutionary, but it adds flavor to what I felt was a rather bland dish. Also, according to Neil, there won’t be nearly enough experience to gather in one playthru that would allow you to max out every skill. This would make NewGame+ plus more enjoyable if your stats and skills carry over.
Weapons also get the treatment via workbenches that allow you to customize and reconfigure your favorite tools of destruction to suit your needs. The video showed off Ellie inspecting a sidearm and fitting a scope onto one of her rifles as an example. Again, none of this is groundbreaking in any way, but thanks to Naughty Dog’s obsessive level of polish and attention to detail, everything looks smooth and enjoyable to interact with.
It’s also made clear that much of your opposition and threats in the world will come from the two warring factions; The Washington Liberation Front and religious zealots, The Seraphites. They did make it a point to note that the infection are very much present and even gave us a taste of some infected types like the stealthy Stalkers and the Shamblers, which release a corrosive cloud into the air once they’re close to you. There was a brief mention of some new and ‘ferocious’ infected that we’ll have to play the game to witness. Based on the audio that played, they sound…large. Combat itself is much more bombastic and gruesome. Ellie can dodge attacks and counter with lethal precision, even turning an enemies weapon against them and adding it to her repertoire afterwards. I won’t mince words; the human on human violence is disturbingly intimate, which I assume is the point. It seems like they’re trying to present the question of ‘how much of your humanity are you willing to sacrifice for your own cause?’ However, I wouldn’t blame someone for the notion that the game teeters pretty damn close to snuff film levels of shock value. It’s certainly earned the ESRB’s Mature sticker of approval.
I have been and remain cautiously interested in TLOU2 as the narrative seems to have been taken in a very divisive direction, one that has caused a lot of commotion on social media. The game does look and sound great, and Naughty Dog’s pedigree looks to shine through once more as they have knack for creating memorable gaming ‘experiences’. Will the gameplay hold up to the inevitable scripted sequences and cut scenes that are ultimately the best part of the IP? We’ll have to find out next month when the game releases on June 16th.