Why don’t you do whatever podcast you’ve got rehearsed and get this over with?
Welcome back to the podcast! Today, we’re going to be talking about The Last of Us Part II, which was the (surprisingly, since we’re talking about it) highly anticipated sequel to one of, if not the most popular game from the PS3. This game is a pretty straightforward followup to the original, picking up where it left off just a few years down the road, and the story has a similarly dark tone. While the original game was mostly driven by it’s characters as well, the state of the world is taken as more of a given here in the sequel, and that bleakness permeates every interaction you have. Underneath the game’s plot, it functions much like it’s predecessor. Arguably too much. It’s a stealth action game where you scavenge items along the way to use to make decisions of what items you want or need in the game’s crafting system and you perform combat where you employ stealth to even the odds against an enemy force that outnumbers you by a significant margin. And all of this is backed up by a signature level of high-fidelity visuals and world design that can be frankly quite breathtaking. We’re going to be talking about controversy surrounding large scale releases, overbearing mechanical similarities, and how your monkey brain feels about whether characters live or die.
Thank you for joining us this week! This was an easy choice for us because our thoughts on the original game were so mixed, the franchise has a really interesting give and take in our minds. What did you think about the game? Did it live up to your expectations? Were you one of the people who thought the game’s plot wasn’t up to snuff? Did you skip the game for one reason or another, and if so, what did listening to the episode make you imagine the game was like? I want to play that game. Imagination games sound nice. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the episode, and be sure to check back in next time, as we’ll be talking about Pyre!