There’s been no shortage of news regarding The Last of Us Part II since Sony revealed the release date for the game — February 21, 2020 — during last month’s State of Play stream, and during a recent interview with the PlayStation Blog, Neil Druckmann, who is the game’s co-writer and creative director, gave us more news about what players will experience while in combat with human enemies.
According to Druckmann, combat against humans in The Last of Us Part II will be grim and realistic, and from what the devs have shown in their gameplay demos, it does look like there will be a more realistic approach to combat against non-infected enemies in the highly anticipated sequel.
“We want to treat violence as realistically as we can in an action game,” said Druckmann during his chat with the PlayStation Blog. “One example is that every human enemy in the game features a unique name, such as Omar, or Joe. For Naughty Dog, implementing this was a nontrivial task. The way they communicate is much more sophisticated. We do that in order to make you feel it’s not just like an NPC or braindead obstacle.”
An example of each human NPC having a specific name was included in Naughty Dog’s most recent gameplay reveal, as when Ellie took out an enemy with a Molotov Cocktail, another human called out to the man on fire in horror. So, according to Druckmann, that’ll happen when Ellie takes down a human who is standing in her way.
Druckmann also talked about how infected enemies will now work together to circumvent Ellie’s attacks, which is something completely new. In the first game, the infected didn’t have much of a strategy, as they’d just charge at you when they were made aware of your presence.
There are also new crafting options for Ellie in the upcoming sequel, as the bow and arrow will no longer be the only silent weapon in the game because, in The Last of Us Part II, players will be given the option to craft silencers for their weapons.
It’s also been revealed that the sequel will be twice as big as the first game, which means that it might take somewhere between 25 and 40 hours to complete. Also, for now, the game will only be a single-player experience at launch, but rumor has it that a multiplayer mode will be added to the game when the PlayStation 5 launches next winter.
