I thought this was a pretty big thing that needed its on thread its quite interesting
Naughty Dog has also increased the brutality of fighting for your life in another, more thematic way: Every human enemy in Part 2 is named, so characters will often call out to each other by name as they discuss tactics or shout orders. Kill someone, and their friends will call out their name in anguish. The same goes for the dogs; it seems you'll hear a lot of pained cries from dog owners as you kill their companions in Part 2. Hearing your enemies react in emotional pain (in addition to physical pain) is a jarring addition that Newman said emphasizes the core thematic thrust of the series--and it's meant to be unsettling.
"A big part of the theme of the game are the parts of your humanity that are lost or potentially stripped away when you pursue justice," Newman said. "The lengths that you go for justice can have a very high human cost to you personally. And one of the ways I'm really excited about that we're kind of bringing that to life is our named enemies. ...Not only does it show how intelligent they are that they're able to coordinate, but by naming them, they become that much more of a real human."
"I think the game is kind of a conversation about the cycle of violence, and I think as you play through the game, it becomes clear that the pursuit of vengeance has tremendous cost, not only against the people you're exacting vengeance on, but on the player themselves," Newman explains. "And I think one of the really interesting ways we're playing with that is with our named NPCs. All of the human enemies in the game have names, and they'll refer to each other by name when they're co-ordinating, like when one is telling one to flank, or to search a building, and they'll also react in anguish and call out each other's names when they see one of their friends die. +
"I think that's like, beyond just our great AI and voice acting and animations, that's one whole new level of dimension of humanity that we're able to give these human enemies. I think that makes it clear that these aren't just faceless goons that you're fighting against, these are real people who care about each other, and you are committing these heinous acts against them. I think that through the gameplay, this is what's so awesome about video games as a medium, this is something you couldn't do in film or in any other way. You are complicit in these horrible acts, and it really drives home what this high cost of humanity is."
The naming system assigns each NPC a name as they spawn, when they're born, rather than allowing them to choose random names when they call out to each other. This way, if you happen to die after killing Sean, for example, Sean will still be Sean when you load up a checkpoint and try again.
"Originally we were experimenting with systems where they would be dynamically named as you played, but what we realised is that if you die, and then you respawned, then if the guy in the hat was Lee before and he's Stephen now, that's not great," Newman tells me. "There's a lot of really interesting things under the hood, but it's an extraordinary technical accomplishment to have these named NPCs. When we first came up with the idea, we thought it was this ridiculous pipe dream, but we decided to take it on and they figured out a way to make it work."
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