After waiting with bated breath for weeks, E3 is finally here, and with it, some news about The Last of Us: Part II. There have been a lot of mind-blowing trailers at E3 this year, but the nearly 12-minute gameplay trailer for TLOU 2 has easily been one of the most impressive yet.
We’ve learned quite a bit about the new game both from watching the trailer and from some of game director Neil Druckmann’s comments. Let’s check it out.
1. At the start of the game, Ellie is happy and Joel is alive.
The trailer opens with scenes of Ellie at a party, where she dances and shares a kiss with a new character named Dina. This seems to be the present, not a flashback, as Druckmann describes the game’s synopsis like this:
“In The Last of Us Part II, Ellie is now 19 and has found a semblance of peace and normality living in Jackson. She’s had a chance to be a teenager and forge lasting relationships. When that peace is disrupted by a violent act, Ellie is thrust into a brutal journey of retribution, fueled by a need to bring those that have wronged her to justice, pushing her to her very limits.”
In short, at the start of the game, Ellie is still in Jackson. Judging by the trailer, she hasn’t lost her sense of humor. And since her “old man” is mentioned by Jesse, we can assume Joel is alive and well too. Since Ellie seems relatively well adjusted, she must have made some degree of peace with his actions at the end of the first game.
2. That happiness isn’t going to last.
Of course, Druckmann’s statement “When that peace is disrupted by a violent act …” means that Ellie’s life is about to take a sharp downturn. Going by what we saw in the first trailer, it seems likely that this will entail the deaths of a lot of people—possibly including Joel, Dina or both.
3. The gameplay engine has received a massive overhaul.
Druckmann has also said, “We’ve completely overhauled our engine, developed new combat mechanics, created new analogue stealth systems, and revamped our animation system to fully express Ellie’s desperation, resourcefulness, and unique agility. These impressive advancements certainly are obvious in the new trailer.
4. Gameplay will be more open.
The Last of Us was pretty good at making us forget we were essentially “on rails” through the levels, but sometimes it did feel a little confining and unnatural. Good news—The Last of Us: Part 2 is going to allow us more freedom.
Druckmann said, “Our environments are broader, more complex, and more detailed – bringing unprecedented realism, verticality and player choice to the world of The Last of Us.” So it sounds like there are multiple pathways we can use to explore. The environments we saw in the trailer also looked a lot more open.
5. The AI is a lot more sophisticated.
In the original game, the AI often moved in predictable circular patterns, often interspersed with a line like “Hey, look over there while I look over here.” If you were taking your time stealthing your way through a situation, you would hear this repeated a lot.
In the trailer, you do not see this behavior. “The human enemies you’ll encounter are now more threatening and capable, using sophisticated communication and environmental awareness to create intense, more dynamic stealth and head-on combat encounters,” Druckmann explained.
This makes one wonder if any of our old tactics will even work in The Last of Us 2. The enemy has evolved, so as gamers, we’re going to need to evolve our strategies too.
That wraps it up for now. If you need more catching up on The Last of Us 2 news and details, check out this post which goes over everything else we know so far about The Last of Us 2.