In the recently released , 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Naughty Dog revealed that the 2020 PS4 hit originally took inspiration from an unlikely source: Bloodborne. In an effort to make the game as distinct as possible from the original, the team stripped out ranged combat entirely, turning the sequel into a melee focused game set in an open world that the player would have gradually gained access to over time. Given how similar Part 2 ended up being to Part 1, it's wild that Naughty Dog started development following a North Star that, seemingly, led in the opposite direction.
If you've never played 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Bloodborne, you might not understand how big of a change this would be. From gameplay footage alone, Bloodborne looks close enough to 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Last of Us. They're both third-person action games with methodical combat. In practice, though, they're entirely different. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Last of Us Part 2 is largely a game that moves its characters forward. Ellie starts in Jackson, then goes to Seattle, then journeys deeper into the city. Abby starts at the WLF Stadium, explores Seattle, then eventually ventures out to the Seraphite Island. Both end up in Santa Monica for the final chapters. These locations don't become hubs that the characters will return to; they're one-off levels designed to crescendo in a culminating set piece, before the game drops them and moves on.
There are bits of The Last of Us Part 2 that, if you squint, you can see sort of resembling Bloodborne — at least in its approach to world design. The theater that Ellie and Dina hole up in once arriving in Seattle is a key location that Ellie returns to throughout the game - not unlike the Hunter's Dream in Bloodborne, or the lamp you light early in Central Yharnam - then circle back to as you unlock various shortcuts. It’s easy to imagine Seattle becoming a post-apocalyptic Yharnam, and Ellie as a vengeance-seeking Hunter gaining mastery over this strange city.
I love the shape that The Last of Us Part 2 ended up taking. It ended up being experimental and influential in its own way. Though in some ways it’s just a bigger, longer riff on the gameplay of The Last of Us, its approach to dual protagonists felt new, and was adopted (less successfully, in my opinion) by 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:God of War Ragnarok and, to a lesser extent, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. Having multiple protagonists isn’t new — Grand Theft Auto 5 did it the same year as the first TLOU — but the wa𒀰y TLOU2 folded them into one coherent campaign felt fresh, surprising, and helped justify the 30-hour length which, for a single-player linear game, could be a slog if not structured correctly.
But, the scrapped idea of Naughty Dog taking inspiration from FromSoftware feels like a sad sliding doors scenario; a peek into another world where Sony’s more experimental Japanese studios (which, to be clear, don't include FromSoft) weren’t sacrificed on the altar of the gritty, cinematic triple-A formula that The Last of Us popularized. It’s tough to imagine one of Sony’s big studios taking a swing that audacious in 2024, to imagine Santa Monica Studios or Guerilla Games making something as player unfriendly as 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Elden Ring. Though that game's success has proved that Souls-likes can be as commercial as anything this side of Call of Duty, it’s difficult to imagine Sony letting its most acclaimed and reliable studio go that far off the beaten path.
It’s ironic, thinking back, that The Last of Us was such a trendsetter in 2013. It was building on the structure of the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Uncharted series, incorporating stealth mechanics that had been around since the '90s, and making them robust with the inclusion of a crafting system popularized by PC survival games. It was the sum of many familiar parts. But, it was also incredibly influential on the decade that has followed, with its success radically shifting the tone of the God of War series, laying the groundwork for Ben Studios' Days Gone, and informing the tone and storytelling of many other games. It's hard to imagine a big Sony game having that much room to set trends any more. Most of them are content following the ones The Last of Us already set.

2024 Is The Year Of Beating The Games That Beaꦕt Me
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