Two Gamers Played The Last of Us Part II. They Were Blown Away.
Conor: If you find this fun in the traditional sense, you’re twisted. But sad movies aren’t fun either, and I found the game interesting and worthwhile in that it told an effective story and expanded my sense of what big-budget games can do.
Mike: Yeah, that’s fair. I won’t go too heavily into spoilers, but I appreciated some of the risks the studio decided to take here right from the get-go.
The way they are willing to kill off characters made me feel a sense of, I don’t know, unease? Like the world they inhabit is actually dangerous, and that no one is really safe. Kind of like what an actual zombie apocalypse might look like.
I know you loved the first one. What struck you as the most novel thing about the sequel?
Conor: How emotional it made me. At the end I was scared to finish because I was so worried what Ellie might do, and that’s a feeling I’ve never had in a game. It left me sad and exhausted, as you say, but you have to marvel at the storytelling.
Mike: Agreed. It was a feeling few games really give me, which is why it felt like more than a game? I made the allusion to an interactive film, given the numerous cut-scenes and story development cinematics.
One thing that really stuck with me was the level of detail and care they put into hammering home the points they were trying to make. In most games, for instance, murder costs nothing, and is often largely the point of playing. Take Call of Duty or some other shooter game where your goal is to just ratchet up the highest body count.
I’m not saying killing in this game isn’t part of it. But each death takes an emotional toll on the character and, I would argue, on the player. They do this thing where when you kill a random enemy, one of their allies might cry out “Steve!” or “Jill!” or whatever. It’s subtle, but gives an entire back story to someone that in other games might just be any old NPC (non-player character). And all it took was a name.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/19/technology/last-of-us-2-gameplay.html