The Last of Us Part II‘s biggest villain is so fierce that even weapons can not kill her. It is at least according to UK-based mud Speclizerwho used mods to experiment with different ways to break Naughty Dog’s PlayStation 4 swan song to put some long-standing player-held “myths” to the test.
Spoilers follow The Last of Us Part IIwhich was published two years ago.
First published two years ago, The Last of Us Part II is a sequel to Naughty Dog’s apocalypse survival game The last of usthat broke ground as a narrative tour de force in 2013. Part II starts years later and shows the characters’ calm idyll, but quickly kills Joel, the character you play as in (most of) the first game. To Part II, you play as Ellie, the second protagonist from the first, on a quest for revenge. Your goal is to kill a woman named Abby who is directly responsible for killing Joel.
Halfway through the game, at the point where you think the narrative is fast approaching the finish line, perspectives change. You play through the events you just played through from Abby’s point of view, which essentially doubled the length of the game. (This creative decision proved to be controversial at the time; guidelines prohibited reviewers from revealing the twist, so many players were taken by surprise.) At the end, Abby and Ellie meet. It is, to say the least, an emotionally confusing scene.
Speclizer’s first test: Can you actually kill Abby in the final battle? (In the normal, immature game, she always survives.) To find out, they modified weapons into battle. Shoot Abby again and again with an automatic rifle? Invincible. Put an ax in her trapezius? She gets up immediately. No: Abby is actually immortal.
Another myth tested: Can Ellie save Joel? Speclizer has Ellie no-clip into the room where Joel dies before he’s officially finished, but the handful of space-dwelling NPCs in there do not even notice that Ellie joins rounds for them. (Must be Abby’s cousins.) Later, when Abby is trapped by a sniper (who happens to be Joel’s brother), Speclizer flashes Abby to the sniper’s post. He too is invincible. Do you sense a pattern?
Maybe the framing of the video itself is a little strange. (Why are these myths “myths” at all in the first place? It’s not that modding could … change the narrative results of a game, especially one as rigidly made as The Last of Us Part II.) But the results are nonetheless fascinating.
Speclizer, which did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication, said in a comment that they are considering making this a series. My voice? Against The horse into a unicorn.