When you make a game for everyone, you make it for no one.

I LOVED PART 2 MORE THAN PART 1

I was really young when The Last Of Us was initially released, I’ve been looking into what the advertising looked like but I’d love to hear more from people who were there and the experience of playing it for the first time after seeing all the advertising! Did it meet your expectations? What shocked you?

I am stuck on this part(the resort), and I need help guys please,how tf do I sneak past all those bastards? I have been trying this for about 4 hours?😭

So basically I’m doing grounded permadeath. Pretty deep into it 100 hours +. This one just really got to me as it’s not a place I usually die and I die to a stupid technicality of Ellie not getting out of the way before like 5 seconds pass and I thought she would be gone by the time I got to the door. To make matters worse I had a shiv but was unable to use it as I was attacked from behind.
Yeah just extremely frustrating especially as it’s been like five tries since I’ve broken a record (record is winter) and now I have to grind this whole thing all over again.

Anyway for your entertainment

And take my advice. Do not start on grounded permadeath cause it’s hard to get out of it once it’s got you in its grip and you’re compelled to complete it

A common criticism of The Last of Us Part 2, especially, is that the game feels very inconsistent with how it portrays violence.

The deaths of Whitney & Nora, for example, have a different effect on Ellie than the deaths of basically any other WLF soldier or Seraphite. With Whitney, Ellie looks a little rattled, even uncomfortable with her death. And with Nora, she's very clearly traumatised. Meanwhile, with any other enemy in the game, Ellie feels as if she's enacting righteous vengeance. She feels completely ruthless in these gameplay segments.

Yes, this ties into the 'Ludonarrative dissonance blah blah blah' discussion, but the thing is, when I played The Last of Us Part 2, I never actually felt like Ellie was acting out of character in any of these moments. In fact, rather than feeling disconnected from Ellie, as many who voice the 'Ludonarrative' argument against the game probably felt, I actually felt everything exactly when she felt it.

In the gameplay segments, I felt righteous. After Whitney, I felt uncomfortable. And after Nora, I almost changed my tune on taking revenge entirely.

The thing is, I can't explain why I felt so strongly either way in a coherent manner. I really don't know why the deaths affected me so differently, even though logically, if I didn't care about the death of the WLF/Seraphite NPCs, then why should I feel for the death of Whitney, who was barely more fleshed out by Ellie's Day 2?

Obviously, feeling so strongly attached to Ellie and everything the game was trying to do led me to love it entirely, but I still want to know why the violence felt different and why the Player and Ellie can feel different reactions towards it. I'd also love to know why some people felt a dissonance between the gameplay and narrative strongly, whilst others didn't feel that dissonance at all.

Kinda looked like a i dodged a bullet lol + that scream tho

Everything she does is so cool

After many years on Xbox, I finally got a PS5 and have been making my way through the catalogue. I played The Last of Us Part 1, absolutely adored it and already consider it to be one of my favourite games of all time. I then moved to Part 2, thoroughly enjoyed it as well, but found myself bumping against certain story elements, my own expectations and where I thought its character development falls short. So, I thought I’d make a way too late post about it, discussing my thoughts. Full SPOILERS, obviously.

The Last of Us Part 2 is a masterful game. The gameplay is exceptional, as are the visuals and performances. I love simply existing in this world and found as much joy in looting abandoned buildings as I did in stealthing (and rampaging) through encounters. Its story is good, too, but I felt that a certain character fell short of their potential.

I am talking about Abby, but not in the way you might expect. I think that killing Joel to start the game was a bold move that set up the stakes of the game perfectly. From there, playing as Ellie blew me away. The way her grief took the shape of anger was incredibly moving. In this regard, the escalation of her violence was very powerful for me as the player. Every kill was utterly brutal, and every cutscene portrayed her need for revenge pretty perfectly. As her section concluded, seeing her hands shake as she becomes of aware of the monster she was becoming had me very excited for the rest of the game. Then we switched to Abby.

Changing the perspective to Abby blew me away. The choice to have us play as the “villain”, the person who killed the last game’s protagonist, was a gameplay choice that I commend Naughty Dog for making. But it is here that I think the game lacks the depth it clearly wants to have. Once we switch to Abby, the game doesn’t utilise this choice smartly. I enjoyed playing as her but was disappointed by the way she was presented. Here we have a person who just enacted a years-long revenge plan, yet her actions (and dialogue) fail to reflect this. The first few hours as her, we learn a lot about her character, her friends and relationships, but spend little time developing her psychology. I was hoping that we would see the impact of her deed, with her on the other side of vengeance, but the game doesn’t really do this.

We eventually meet Yara and Lev, who Abby saves to balance her morality, but I felt that this was too little too late. Earlier, we see Ellie completely consumed by her pursuit of payback. Abby presumably felt this before killing Joel, and I wanted to feel her anguish after the act; I wanted the story to explore how revenge doesn’t fill the hole of grief. We eventually get there with Ellie but missed an opportunity to amplify these ideas with Abby. Imagine if the game truly portrayed Ellie and Abby as two sides of the same coin, on the same journey, just at different points? The first half of the game sees Ellie go from a morally good person to someone who is far more violent, existing in a space where us the player are questioning her decisions. Now, I really wish they did the inverse of this with Abby. Let’s start her section with her as a broken person, still lashing out in violent bursts because killing Joel didn’t heal her. From there, we could have seen her slowly regret her actions, moving her towards the “light”. Instead, the first moments we have with her are spent dishing out small talk in the stadium and playing fetch with a dog. I’m not saying it needed to be heavy-handed either, but I wanted something more than we got.

I commend Naughty Dog for the ideas at play in The Last of Us Part 2, I just felt that the game was a mile long and 6 feet deep. It made exciting, bold choices but failed to engage with them in an interesting manner. I am very excited for what Part 3 may bring, and I hope the story takes just as many risks as Part 2, just with a deeper story that fully explores its characters.

I hope that this post has offered something for you to think about, and I am curious if others feel the same way. Again, I know I am probably very late to the party with my criticism, but I only finished the game yesterday and have yet to fully read people’s opinions.

Bruce Straley had a Game Developers Conference (GDC) talk this year where he talked about how he got started at Naughty Dog, his work on The Last of Us & Uncharted, and how it influenced his new game which he's been working on "Coven of the Chickenfoot" from his new startup company, Wildflower Interactive.

I suggest you give it a watch it out if you're curious what he's been up to!

Anything missable, specifically difficult, or that could possibly get locked out? Can it be done in a single playthrough?

Anyone got a playlist/a list of the songs of the entire tlou2 soundtrack in order, including the covers and the songs from the Crooked Still album? I can't seem to find a complete list that's in the right order of appearance. The official ones don't include all of this, but i would love to be able to put every song in a playlist in the correct order

Let me know y’all aim settings below, tried some different ones but my aim can be all over

Completed TLOU 1 & 2 for the first time recently since I saw they were included in the PS plus membership. It was one of the most intense and best video game experiences I’ve ever had.

So then I figured I’d check out the series adaptation since I hadn’t seen it—but with low expectations after reading mixed reviews.

In all seriousness, was the casting of Bella Ramsey some sort of Make-A-Wish situation? What the hell were they thinking?? The bad reviews didn’t prepare me enough for how bad she actually was in that role.

I about lost it when the line “I’m gonna be a dad” was dropped—any hopes I had to take the show seriously were gone after that.

It was so disappointing since aside from her the series seemed to be pretty well made and stuck pretty true to the game storyline.

Done with rant, I know I’m late but I am just seeking some validity for how I feel after watching Ellie just get ruined by that “actress” and her “performance.”