I learned a lot from The Lost Levels in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered. While the developer commentary itself is messy and overstuffed with voices telling anecdotes over the top of one another, The Lost Levels are more refined, with one individual person interacting at set points to explain specific choices that were made to get the level to this point, and why it was ultimately cut. However, insightful as it is, it's not perfect.
Firstly, that's because of what's there - only one of the three levels (The Sewers) has any significant gameplay, and that's a puzzle and traversal section that doesn't feel all that engrossing out of context, and offers commentary on a purely mechanical level that can feel a little stale. The other two, Jackson Party and The Hunt, offer more artistic and thematic insight, but have little in the way of gameplay.
It leaves the whole experience a little stilted and safe - despite Druckmann appearing in a short video before each level warning us that what we're about to see is an unfinished work, there's a high degree of polish to all of this, suggesting that we aren't so much seeing how the sausage is made but merely the sausage before it's cooked. While they perhaps aren't up to the cutting edge standard of the rest of the game, these levels have visuals most games would be proud of even today, let alone four years ago when they were cut. It feels too selective - only showing us what is near perfect rather than showing us what is most interesting.
It may well be that less finished versions weren't playable outside the confines of a dev build - but marketing these as a look behind the curtain doesn't quite ring true either.
Abby most represents the squandered potential of The Lost Levels. Despite the game being split 50/50 between Ellie and Abby, all three of the levels we get belong to Ellie. With Abby a new character to the series and having the arc from Joel's killer to becoming a sympathetic character in her own right, as well as likely being the star of the third game (168澳洲幸运5开奖网:hopefully with Lev), she also poses more difficult questions. That a fairly dull sewer puzzle was cut on the basis that it was a bit too slow for the admittedly impressive mechanical tricks it required is far less interesting than what was trimmed from Abby's story.
It's hard to comment on what that might have been, because we don't know. That's the whole point. However, when we look at Jackson Party, we see Ellie more grounded in the life she had before it was shattered by the events that drive the game forward, and get a look at the wider world-building 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:through a game of Clicker Tag, as well as learning 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:the origins of Ellie's tattoo. The Hunt, meanwhile, takes place in between Ellie and Abby's theatre fight and The Farm, and gives us another angle on Ellie's trauma, as well as putting us immediately back into Ellie's shoes while we hunt a wounded pig, showcasing not only Ellie's endless cycle of violence but giving us back control of our 'hero' to act out less than heroic deeds.
I don't know what Abby's version of these are, but I know they must exist. Was her vulnerability always shown through a fear of heights? Were there interactions with Lev and Yara cut, did she also have an open roaming section like Ellie's first day in Seattle, was her opening ever different, did Santa Monica once unfold in other ways? What's more, the answers probably don't lie in these questions. I never would have asked “did Ellie once hunt a pig immediately after her fight with Abby to raise the tensions over Dina's fate, show she has changed in the face of violence and trauma, and so that the player could feel the lack of heroism in Ellie's finger on the trigger?”.
The Lost Levels may have interesting commentary, but it's hard to imagine these were the three most significant cuts made to The Last of Us Part 2 during development. And if they weren't, it takes away the meaning in the first place. These purport to be a look at the choices made during development, but they don't represent those choices - they're just the three that were cut last in the process and therefore look the best. It doesn't mean they are the most interesting just because they survived the longest, and in fact the most interesting ideas are probably the ones that swing for the fences and then end up getting cut as the characters are refined. I want more from The Lost Levels, and maybe I'd never entirely get what I wanted - but it feels like having at least one look at Abby's journey should fall under the price of admission.
