Editor's Note: This article is pretty much dependant on you having seen E3's The Last of Us demo. So, watch it below before reading...
The Last of Us made quite the impression this week when it closed out PlayStation's E3 press conference with a dramatic seven-minute demo.
So, I was a bit disappointed when Naughty Dog started the same demo
behind closed doors. That is, until the seven-minute runthrough
blossomed into a 17-minute showcase. While Naughty Dog focused on
beating the hell out of people head-on at the Sony show, it turns out
you can tackle The Last of Us in a number of different ways.
The first change was an innocuous one. In the conference demo, Ellie references a movie poster for "Dawn of the Wolf," and Joel blows past it. In the behind closed doors demo, he doesn’t. Instead he stops and has a conversation about it. Naughty Dog told me that these moments are there for gamers who want more of the story -- who want to get to know these characters. In this instance, Ellie asks Joel if the girl gets "gutted" at the end, and Joel scoffs, telling her it's a "dumb teen movie." Ellie asks Joel why he saw it then, he grumbles, and the group is off. In another interesting change, Joel looked at the bridge before Ellie asked him about it in the private demo, so the conversations from the conference never happened.
OK, so you know how in the conference demo Joel and Ellie immediately went left in the old hotel? That wasn't how it went in my private demo. They scavenged more and that ladder wasn't there. The duo had to find a way up to the stairs to continue moving through the hotel. After scoping the place out, Joel spotted a ladder, rolled over a laundry cart, and boosted Ellie up on it to grab the tool. If Joel hadn't spotted the ladder but still boosted Ellie up, she would've announced her discovery.
When Ellie asked Joel if he wanted to go around the looters last time, he seemed to do just that. This time, he went straight at their location. Rather than go through the doorway, Joel ran up to the broken windows and waited for the enemies to disperse. Then, he hurled a beer bottle into the room on the far left and waited for a guy to come investigate. Joel hopped in, took him hostage, and choked him out. Rather than engage the rest of the enemies, Joel and Ellie took off in a new direction.
Here's where I can't show you screengrabs. The pair was into uncharted territory and eventually cut through a bathroom containing the body of a woman who took her life years ago. When Ellie comes upon it, her and Joel have this conversation about this being "the easy way out." Joel tells her it's far from easy.
After seeing both of these demos, there's a part in the conference footage that stands out to me. After Joel tosses his Molotov cocktail and burns a man alive, Ellie exclaims "S***, Joel!" In the heat of the original presentation, it didn't seem out of character -- it was her reacting to the situation. But after watching the 17-minute demo -- where that scene never happens -- Ellie's line doesn't sound like she's freaking out about the situation but more about Joel's action. It sounds like she's responding to him acting way more aggressive than he normally does.
After the dead body, the pair continue their way through the building. Joel finds a pipe (probably the one the enemy used on him in the other demo) and bandage (a bandage he could've combined with the bottle he threw and some alcohol for a Molotov). Here, Joel's more like you'd imagine a survivor to be. He's quiet, calculated and looking for anything that could keep him alive.
Of course, the duo does run into that second round of bad guys from the first demo. They brawl and shoot, but this time the fight features Joel on the defensive. After taking a shot, Joel uses the bandage he found to wrap his bleeding arm. (It's a live inventory system, so enemies keep coming as Joel dresses his wound.) There's a pipe beatdown and some shooting, and when the final enemy falls, Ellie comes out of hiding and reacts to the bleeding body at your feet.
With the bad guys dead, Joel and Ellie move on -- past where dude bro's head got blown apart. They open an elevator shaft, climb onto a suspended car, and then jump to its also suspended sister. Ellie gets up, but before she can help him up, the car gives way and Joel tumbles with it to a watery basement. Holding his side in pain, he clicks on a flashlight, calls up to Ellie and begins swimming into a debris field beyond the doorway.
The first change was an innocuous one. In the conference demo, Ellie references a movie poster for "Dawn of the Wolf," and Joel blows past it. In the behind closed doors demo, he doesn’t. Instead he stops and has a conversation about it. Naughty Dog told me that these moments are there for gamers who want more of the story -- who want to get to know these characters. In this instance, Ellie asks Joel if the girl gets "gutted" at the end, and Joel scoffs, telling her it's a "dumb teen movie." Ellie asks Joel why he saw it then, he grumbles, and the group is off. In another interesting change, Joel looked at the bridge before Ellie asked him about it in the private demo, so the conversations from the conference never happened.
OK, so you know how in the conference demo Joel and Ellie immediately went left in the old hotel? That wasn't how it went in my private demo. They scavenged more and that ladder wasn't there. The duo had to find a way up to the stairs to continue moving through the hotel. After scoping the place out, Joel spotted a ladder, rolled over a laundry cart, and boosted Ellie up on it to grab the tool. If Joel hadn't spotted the ladder but still boosted Ellie up, she would've announced her discovery.
When Ellie asked Joel if he wanted to go around the looters last time, he seemed to do just that. This time, he went straight at their location. Rather than go through the doorway, Joel ran up to the broken windows and waited for the enemies to disperse. Then, he hurled a beer bottle into the room on the far left and waited for a guy to come investigate. Joel hopped in, took him hostage, and choked him out. Rather than engage the rest of the enemies, Joel and Ellie took off in a new direction.
Here's where I can't show you screengrabs. The pair was into uncharted territory and eventually cut through a bathroom containing the body of a woman who took her life years ago. When Ellie comes upon it, her and Joel have this conversation about this being "the easy way out." Joel tells her it's far from easy.
After seeing both of these demos, there's a part in the conference footage that stands out to me. After Joel tosses his Molotov cocktail and burns a man alive, Ellie exclaims "S***, Joel!" In the heat of the original presentation, it didn't seem out of character -- it was her reacting to the situation. But after watching the 17-minute demo -- where that scene never happens -- Ellie's line doesn't sound like she's freaking out about the situation but more about Joel's action. It sounds like she's responding to him acting way more aggressive than he normally does.
After the dead body, the pair continue their way through the building. Joel finds a pipe (probably the one the enemy used on him in the other demo) and bandage (a bandage he could've combined with the bottle he threw and some alcohol for a Molotov). Here, Joel's more like you'd imagine a survivor to be. He's quiet, calculated and looking for anything that could keep him alive.
Of course, the duo does run into that second round of bad guys from the first demo. They brawl and shoot, but this time the fight features Joel on the defensive. After taking a shot, Joel uses the bandage he found to wrap his bleeding arm. (It's a live inventory system, so enemies keep coming as Joel dresses his wound.) There's a pipe beatdown and some shooting, and when the final enemy falls, Ellie comes out of hiding and reacts to the bleeding body at your feet.
With the bad guys dead, Joel and Ellie move on -- past where dude bro's head got blown apart. They open an elevator shaft, climb onto a suspended car, and then jump to its also suspended sister. Ellie gets up, but before she can help him up, the car gives way and Joel tumbles with it to a watery basement. Holding his side in pain, he clicks on a flashlight, calls up to Ellie and begins swimming into a debris field beyond the doorway.
Athens Time
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