Submit Your Comment For The Deepest Dive On The Last Of Us Part II - Part... II

I'm not a surfer but I had the same thought and found the same thing. If you get hit by a crested wave it tumbles you under and you loose a lot of air. If you dive beforehand you can avoid the big stamina hit, much like real life. I was hugely impressed that this mechanic existed.

Nick Rodriguez

I want to say something about the dogs. I knew they would be here, I knew it was going to happen. But what made it even worse was alerting the group right as I was about to get a stealth kill. This lead to me wildly swinging my melee weapon around. In this frenetic madness, I turned the camera to see a dog charging me mid swing. Pretty solid animation. I'll let you guys know if I make to day 3

There was some controversy over TLOU2's dog enemies and Day 2 is the first time Ellie encounters them. I never had any issue taking the dogs down (even though they all have names). Same goes with the human enemies. So here's my question: Did the game's "every enemy has a name" feature humanize those enemies for you and make you reluctant to fight them?

Isaac Monterose

At first, my prophecy about this game eventually getting too hard to be fun seemed to becoming true. I died over and over at the first Scars section, at multiple checkpoints. But then I started playing outside my comfort zone and being a little more aggressive, and I think I hit a breakthrough! Those land mines are super helpful for dealing with infected at choke points (no pun intended) and sniping the Scars with the bow and arrow felt GREAT. I’m still super engaged with the story, but as I think JeffM predicted, Ellie knowing about what Joel did makes her motivations more confusing. I understand she’d still be distraught at losing Joel even if she somewhat hated him, but enough to go on a killing spree after people whom you admit you understand? I never agreed with Ellie’s actions in the first place (not a big “revenge” guy myself), but I empathized with her. Now, unless she’s hiding something ELSE from the audience, I’m not so sure. Also, we’re all agreed the rest of the game is going to be from Abby’s perspective, right? I have no clue beyond the game, that’s just my guess.

Joseph Stanichar

Boris! I felt like this encounter was a super fun payoff to the subplot of the Hillcrest community. Didn't expect to see him pop up and loved that his bow (teased earlier) was the reward for defeating him.

I was blown away by the waves while getting close to the Aquarium

SwittersYoni

One minor detail that has a surfer I absolutely loved. In the sequence where ellie's boat dies in the ocean and you have to make your way to the aquarium, if you time things right and dive under waves early enough, ellie's movement isn't impacted. But if you don't duck early enough, she gets pushed around by the wave. As someone that learned about going under waves the hard way, this was great to see.

Jerry Young

I feel like the combat really opened up in a fantastic way over the course of this section. The sprawling level design of the Hillcrest fight blew my mind and led to one of the most intense and stressful chase sequences I’ve ever experienced in a game. The exact same could be said about the hospital infiltration. And how about that Seraphite introduction? Hearing a distinct whistle, wondering what that sound was, and then quickly taking an arrow to the shoulder had me immediately terrified of the cult. The way they communicate through whistling instead of talking combined with the gruesome religious rituals make them seem almost inhuman compared to the WLF. In addition, Ellie’s expanded arsenal allowed for more ways to quickly get in and out of a fight, which usually had me scrambling to find a hiding spot any time I would get caught. Overall, I’m absolutely loving the combat in a way I never felt about the first game.

Their is one small detail I wanted to to point out this week. Through out the various flashbacks you can see the work in progress on Ellie's tattoo. When Tommy lets Ellie use his rifle to take out stragglers, the tattoo looks like it has just been started. By the time Ellie confront Joel outside of the hospital, the outline of the tattoo is nearly complete. It is a cool little detail that really adds to the world building of the game.

IanTClark

Hello! This time around, my comment is related to Ellie's personality in cutscenes versus gameplay. In gameplay, she's a murdering machine that stops at nothing to exterminate the opposition with a facial expression of pure hatred. She even insults them after killing them, but when she finally reaches Nora, Owen and Mel, she gets heavily affected mentally. I do find her reaction interesting in cinematics and I would have loved the game to explore it more, but to use an old term, the ludonarrative dissonance never felt as strong as in this game between what the title needs the player to do versus what the title wants to tell during cutscenes.

I'm not quite to this section of the game yet but I wanted to provide a correction on part 1 of the deepest dive! You say Ellie and dina walk past an LGBT flag without saying anything but if you go to the right spots you can see a rainbow crosswalk (these exist in capital hill in Seattle) and if you go into the bookstore after seeing that, you can discover that the bookstore is a gay bookstore and Dina points out some LGBT erotica and you can read the raunchy description on the back of the book. The line that sets off this series of events comes from Dina saying "what's up with all the rainbows?" Thanks, Thom from Seattle

Thom Blackburn

Finished the game and absolutely loved it. Something that really stood out to me is Joel's death. There are some that don't think this was a good narrative choice. I have to disagree, I can't think of any other way this game can justify it's existence without making a bold choice like this. Killing a beloved character takes balls and in my opinion it paid off. Following his death I was all in on Ellies quest for revenge. How did you guys feel about this choice? Really looking forward to discussing the rest of the game!

Just wanted to say I think the best improvement for me over the first game is that pretty much every time I've dropped into an area and said "oh there's going to be a fight here," there pretty much hasn't been. It's clear ND looked really hard at how to seed "chest high cover" all throughout the world and make it seem more natural. Loving the game, and the dive!

Benn & the double N's, Just a few details I want to highlight: - Did anyone else think that the Randy Styles character collector's card you find is meant to be a nod to Bruce Straley? Not only does the character art resemble a bearded Straley but the profile on the back mentions working with Dr. Uckmann and then disappearing, only to reappear in various spots around the world where help is needed. I couldn't find anything about what Straley has been up to in my very meager attempt at research - does anyone know if maybe he has been doing humanitarian work since bowing out from Naughty Dog? I also could be totally wrong on this... - I first noticed the habit Ellie has of wiping her face with her shirt sleeve when she was walking through Joel's house after his death. It seemed like she was wiping tears at the time but I have noticed this same motion fairly consistently since - has anyone on the panel noticed the same thing? - The last detail I'll limit myself to (I could go on for hours about details in this game) is the performance and presentation of Ellie when she comes back from the moment with Nora in the hospital. Man. She is beaten, bloody, practically cannot speak, and looks completely untethered from her humanity. The juxtaposition of younger Ellie from the flashbacks to the Ellie in Seattle does such an effective job of emphasizing the erosion of her playfulness, humor, and optimism and I felt like this moment when Ellie returns to the theater and can barely utter the phrase "I made her talk" was the culmination of how this revenge trip has left Ellie just utterly vacant of her former self. Thank you guys so much for doing this Deepest Dive! All of my friends who are playing this are even further back in the game and I have been bursting at the seams to be able to talk about and hear what others think about so many of these moments.