The Final of Us Half II Remastered is just about a “Director’s Minimize” of the 2020 PlayStation 4 sport, and whereas a few of its additions and particular options are questionable (just like the Roguelike mode), one of many extra fascinating inclusions is three playable misplaced ranges that had been reduce from the ultimate sport.
It’s not fairly often we get a peek backstage of improvement like this, so the extra builders are prepared to let gamers take a look at out scrapped materials, the higher. However after taking part in all three segments, I can see why every of them didn’t make the ultimate reduce. Having learn via The Final of Us Half II’s artwork e-book and listened to interviews with the inventive workforce, I used to be conscious of not less than two of those sections forward of taking part in them, and was to see what may have been. On condition that Half II has been already criticized for its size previously, Naughty Canine most likely made the appropriate name with these edits.
The primary misplaced stage is from earlier than the inciting incident of the sport’s revenge tour, and seems to have been a tutorial stage. Ellie hangs out with the individuals of Jackson, taking part in video games with the locals that train you the aiming and Pay attention Mode mechanics, and he or she even chats along with her ex-girlfriend Cat.
We by no means meet Cat within the sport itself, and the model of her we see within the misplaced stage seems to be like a placeholder mannequin, so that’s most likely the factor I want made it into the ultimate sport. However many of those tutorials had been retooled with the perspective-shifting opening, with The Final of Us Half II educating you completely different mechanics as you swap between Ellie and Abby whereas maintaining some momentum.
The second part is extra of an growth of a phase that also exists within the sport. It options Ellie traversing the Seattle sewers as she strikes throughout the town. That is most likely the least notable phase Naughty Canine included in Half II Remastered, but it surely does have one actually affecting second that foreshadows Ellie’s battle with PTSD following Joel’s loss of life.
The third and ultimate phase is one referenced in The Final of Us Half II, however by no means proven. In the course of the sport’s ultimate hours, Ellie has a journal entry that talks a few boar she went searching however left dying after its pained squeals reminded her of Joel’s brutal loss of life. Initially, this hunt was speculated to be playable much like the searching sequence within the first sport’s Winter phase. However having performed it now, the entire thing felt a bit unwieldy and irritating. Finally, between this and the equal PTSD reveal within the ultimate sport, I want the one the workforce went with as a result of it’s much less tedious to get there.
The misplaced ranges aren’t the one behind-the-scenes options included in The Final of Us Half II Remastered, because it additionally has a commentary observe that you could play alongside the sport itself that includes Director Neil Druckmann, Narrative Lead Halley Gross, and actors Ashley Johnson, Laura Bailey, Troy Baker, and Shannon Woodward.