No spoilers, gameplay only topic.
So I'm 20 hours into TLOU 2 on survivor and the aspect of it that has surprised me most is how enjoyable the actual gameplay is. Gameplay has always been a contentious topic for TLOU. The first game always had complaints of having "terrible" gameplay and one of the major reasons was lot of people played it on normal which is the default setting. I've always been of the opinion that survivor was the best way to play for a multitude of reasons. Tonally it makes more sense in the first place because it actually makes you explore and scavenge for ammo/supplies. On normal you get way too much of everything so you end up decked out like you're a one man army in every fight. On survivor with limited ammo the whole overall experience is more tense/visceral because every bullet counts and you really have to think about a stealth approach while maximising your resources. It's one of those games where difficulty almost dictates the genre the game is.
With TLOU 2 Naughty Dog has doubled down on the accessibility by adding a bunch of difficulty sliders for individual elements that lets you customise exactly. Listening mode isn't even disabled on survivor this time around either. This is obviously a good thing because it lets you customise exactly how you want to play and gives more people the chance to finish the game. I'm already planning on doing a second run with the ammo slider turned up so I can run around blasting fools left right and centre without worrying. Even so I can't help but think playing on normal or even hard minimizes a lot of the improvements in gameplay mechanics and level design. Along with the issues that it introduced in the first game it also dumbs down the AI (which received a major improvement IMO), prone isn't needed much (a game changing addition to stealth) and it doesn't encourage you to take advantage of the level design with alternate approaches. Again it almost turns the game into a third person shooter which isn't terrible thanks to how good the gun feedback and hit reactions are but it's not what makes the overall gameplay great to me. You just don't have feel the same intensity or constant sense of dread when you you have almost endless supplies and less fear of dying. Exploration isn't required either but I suppose that could be seen as a good thing for people who just want to move to the story beats as quickly as possible.
I'm aware that a AAA story driven franchise designed for the masses would likely never have a default mode as hard as survivor as opposed to something Dark Souls where the mechanics/difficulty is the main appeal. The accessibility and plethora of options on offer was absolutely the right decision but it's a shame that a lot of people will just play the game once on the default difficulty and then never realise how much depth and variety there is to the actual gameplay. Would the gameplay resonate more critically in an alternate world where survivor is the only difficulty and you had to deal with it?
So I'm 20 hours into TLOU 2 on survivor and the aspect of it that has surprised me most is how enjoyable the actual gameplay is. Gameplay has always been a contentious topic for TLOU. The first game always had complaints of having "terrible" gameplay and one of the major reasons was lot of people played it on normal which is the default setting. I've always been of the opinion that survivor was the best way to play for a multitude of reasons. Tonally it makes more sense in the first place because it actually makes you explore and scavenge for ammo/supplies. On normal you get way too much of everything so you end up decked out like you're a one man army in every fight. On survivor with limited ammo the whole overall experience is more tense/visceral because every bullet counts and you really have to think about a stealth approach while maximising your resources. It's one of those games where difficulty almost dictates the genre the game is.
With TLOU 2 Naughty Dog has doubled down on the accessibility by adding a bunch of difficulty sliders for individual elements that lets you customise exactly. Listening mode isn't even disabled on survivor this time around either. This is obviously a good thing because it lets you customise exactly how you want to play and gives more people the chance to finish the game. I'm already planning on doing a second run with the ammo slider turned up so I can run around blasting fools left right and centre without worrying. Even so I can't help but think playing on normal or even hard minimizes a lot of the improvements in gameplay mechanics and level design. Along with the issues that it introduced in the first game it also dumbs down the AI (which received a major improvement IMO), prone isn't needed much (a game changing addition to stealth) and it doesn't encourage you to take advantage of the level design with alternate approaches. Again it almost turns the game into a third person shooter which isn't terrible thanks to how good the gun feedback and hit reactions are but it's not what makes the overall gameplay great to me. You just don't have feel the same intensity or constant sense of dread when you you have almost endless supplies and less fear of dying. Exploration isn't required either but I suppose that could be seen as a good thing for people who just want to move to the story beats as quickly as possible.
I'm aware that a AAA story driven franchise designed for the masses would likely never have a default mode as hard as survivor as opposed to something Dark Souls where the mechanics/difficulty is the main appeal. The accessibility and plethora of options on offer was absolutely the right decision but it's a shame that a lot of people will just play the game once on the default difficulty and then never realise how much depth and variety there is to the actual gameplay. Would the gameplay resonate more critically in an alternate world where survivor is the only difficulty and you had to deal with it?
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