![]() ![]() From it’s graphical fidelity, animations, acting, story telling, and presentation, The Last of Us Part II is leagues ahead of not only Days Gone, but much of the gaming industry. And I think that’s generally a good model, especially as they expand the scope of their semi open world sections.I’ll jump into this piece acknowledging full well that The Last of Us Part II is a technically superior “zombie” game than Days Gone in many regards. I think Naughty Dog in particular is going a different route, where the important parts of the story are satirically linear, but within that you have moments where you can feel free to explore. It definitely breaks immersion when the cutscenes and story around the missions demand urgency but the player goes off and spends hours between them doing random side quests or finding collectibles. Everyone who has played open world games, even good ones like Assassin’s Creed 2 or Red Dead Redemption, has had those times where they roll their eyes because a character talks in a cut scene about having never visited location X despite the player having just killed 30 people there in a massive brawl just before starting that mission, and so on. The big problem with telling a strong, linear story in a pure open world setting (by pure I mean a true open world, to distinguish from the semi open world segments in God of War or Uncharted 4), is that the gameplay is non-linear. I'm sure TLOU2 will continue (and even improve) this trend. It's clear the designers were paying close attention to detail and I feel like I discover something new every time I explore an area again. ![]() The maps are pretty moderately-sized and you have to navigate them linearly, but they feel completely authentic and immersive. That's one of the (many, many, many) great things about The Last of Us. What's the point of having huge stretches of open land to explore if it's mostly repetitive landscapes/buildings/NPCs with the interesting parts spread out in remote locations? Don't get me wrong, they can certainly be done well and add a lot to the experience (I'm thinking of Horizon Zero Dawn), but I'd much rather have a smaller area to explore that's filled with tiny details and environmental storytelling and truly feels immersive and lived-in. I haven't played many open world games, but I usually feel like the worlds are too empty. I can’t possibly be the only one craving more Naughty Dog story-telling. But, I’m quickly realizing how excited I’m getting for The Last of Us: Part II. You want to fall in love and feel for this new cast of characters, yet you have to ride around aimlessly doing bounties and fetch quests that add little/nothing to the game’s narrative.Īgain - I’m enjoying Days Gone for what it is. And that’s a great thing! A lot of the tepid review response/reaction to Days Gone is because it’s a ‘tired open-world.’ What reviewers really mean is that the game doesn’t know what it wants to be. Yes, I know The Last of Us: Part II will push some wider levels (at least that’s the obvious Naughty Dog trend since Uncharted 4 and The Lost Legacy), but it won’t be completely open-world. There’s Naughty Dog telling us the story they wanted to tell. The Last of Us is an exceptional game for too many reasons to list, but near the top is the story-telling. Nothing against open-world games (I love me some AC and FarCry), but it’s soooo hard to do a story well enough to care about, let alone push the platform of video games forward. The main point of this post is something that became VERY OBVIOUS when playing the first few hours of Days Gone: be super happy The Last of Us: Part II isn’t going open-world. If you like the dark, dreary post-apocalypse, you’ll enjoy Days Gone for its setting, alone. My wife (not a gamer) saw me playing Days Gone this morning and said ‘is this the new Last of Us?’ I got a nice chuckle out of that. ![]() First and foremost I want to say - I’m enjoying the hell out of Days Gone. ![]()
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