Ellie’s back and she’s mad.

Last week, Sony held another State of Play with Naughty’s Dog upcoming game, The Last of Us Part II (I didn’t know it was called Part II) being the focus. In it, game director Neil Druckmann spends 25 minutes diving into the setting, gameplay mechanics and giving us an extended look at an in game sequence. I’m going to link the video below, and have no fear because the comments have been turned off.

Let’s just start off by mentioning it looks really freaking good. I think the character models and the world itself looks stunning, and Naughty Dog has such a great track record with creating graphical masterpieces so kudos to them for continuing that streak.

The gameplay looks the same as the last game but refined and with some new additions. You can now craft suppressors for your guns which have limited use, and Ellie is more mobile than Joel so you can jump and dodge enemy attacks.

Side note: Not going to lie, I liked the dev team’s explanation of the latter additions which were Joel is old and Ellie is young so she can jump and dodge. I think that’s the most logical and clear explanation I’ve ever heard about adding a new feature in a game. End note.

You can now pit enemies against each other which is actually pretty cool since in the first game you’d only fight one enemy type or the other. I just wonder if both groups will gang up on you if they find you were manipulating them. You can hide in tall grass, Listen mode shows your scent trail as there are now dogs in the game, and you can craft different ammo types for your bow. Druckmann also mentions that you’ll have allies that will “meaningfully help you in combat” which I hope doesn’t translate to Bill pushing off a Clicker, shooting it, getting grabbed, pushing it off and repeating the same cycle until you kill it yourself.

Okay okay it looks good and the additions look neat. The game launches in a few weeks, and even though the spoilers are out there, the controversy caused seems to have died down. That being said stay vigilant. I just wish they had a multiplayer mode this time around.

The Last of Us Part II brutally murders clickers and humans on June 19th, 2020. Play the first one on Survivor or Grounded mode while you wait.