After initially being teased a couple of years ago, Neil Druckmann and the rest of Naughty Dog finally reveal some of the gameplay for the upcoming Last of Us Part II. The third-person, survival-action game was the premiere showcase of Sony's E3 press conference this year, and it literally left a lot of gamers speechless after it was over. The new trailer for Last of Us Part II focuses entirely on Ellie, showcasing the heroine getting well in over her head as she encounters some rather dangerous foes.
The near 12-minute demo for the PlayStation 4 exclusive debuted at the very beginning of the press conference, but for those who didn't sit through the hour long presentation, Sony made it conveniently accessible through the Sony YouTube channel.
The trailer starts with Ellie at a party in Jackson, the city where her and Joel had settled down at the end of the original The Last of Us. During the party Ellie dances with her romantic partner Dina, a new character introduced into the fold. As they kiss the trailer fades out to a time that's about four years into the future when Ellie is killing a man by stabbing him in the neck with a knife.
She then begins to stealthily sneak around the forest, and we see a religious cult capturing and killing a man after they string him up and gut him.
Ellie proceeds through an underpass where she begins to stealthily take out more of the enemies, and here is where the gameplay begins to shine. We see that the characters struggle during combat a lot more compared to the first Last of Us.
However, Ellie's stealth antics don't last for long and she's soon spotted and the enemies begin swarming around her. Here we get to see the new damage system in play when Ellie gets clipped by a rifle and she holds her arm and begins fleeing from the combat area.
She manages to run and hide under a car, and here we see the AI begin to search for her. This ties into the new AI overhaul Naughty Dog worked on for The Last of Us Part II, as Neil Druckmann and the other lead designers from Naughty Dog revealed during the Coliseum that the AI are a lot more aggressive this time around. They will search for the player, check under objects and check around objects, which we see take place in the trailer.
In fact, the enemy AI spots Ellie and yells out for help, which is part of a new NPC AI mechanic, where the team utilized dynamic audio calls for the characters. This will see characters consistently calling out to their comrades as well as giving them directions. We see this take place later on in the trailer after Ellie gets shot with an arrow and shows sustained damage from the hit, and the enemy AI continue to keep searching for her even when she goes to hide.
Naughty Dog also revealed that the maps will be larger, so you don't have to just go and hide in the building in the full game. You will have options in how the combat unfolds. New to the game is explosive arrows, and we see Ellie craft the arrows on the fly and lob them at her foes.
The clip ends with Ellie finally taking down a sub-boss character after a vicious melee fight with him, and she manages to decapitate him at the end. Some people noted that Ellie looks a lot different in The Last of Us Part II as the clip ends, and that's because creative director Neil Druckmann revealed that the team took the original Ellie model render and then combined it with 40% of the real-life likeness of Ellie's performance actress, Ashley Johnson.
Unfortunately, there's no release date set for The Last of Us Part II, but it will be coming exclusively for the PS4...when it's done.
