The Last of Us

Its just a stinky move after that overpriced remake of a remaster of a game that didn't really need an upgrade. In isolation this would be fine.

Heck announcing the multiplayer would have been a baller move. Instead I can now pay 80 dollars for TLOU as-it-could-have-been because I got a preorder day 1 when it was 70 dollars.

Yay. I know the answer isn't sell the game for free. The real lesson here is never Day 1 video games because a better version one year later is inevitable these days.

I guess I should be less harsh since they're restoring some lost levels.

Edited by FOFD on Nov 18th 2023 at 10:17:36 AM

"This franchise now has more remasters and remakes than original titles" indeed.

Actually it looks like physical editions can be updated for 10$ as well, just to a more limited degree or something?

Edited by Dirtyblue929 on Nov 18th 2023 at 11:44:23 AM

I mean, I kinda... or I would have if it were coming to PC. If they were making a PC port for Part 2, I wouldn't be surprised if that just would get dropped on PS 5. Why not? You're just widening the net of potential sales at that point if the effort of PC->PS 5 is cheap enough.

I'd expected Part 2 would be getting a remaster to come out some time within the next year or two for Season 2 of the show (granted, S2 got pushed back because writer strike, but still).

I just expected... y'know, it would be released for PC. I've been wanting to play Part 2 for ages now, especially after the TV Show and playing the Part 1 remake on PC. I started Part 2 on a friends PS 5, but I moved after a break up and it's unlikely I'll ever finish it.

So same as the Witcher/Cyberpunk/ games then, just with a $10 cost rather than free. But since there's new content I'd count that as DLC cost.

Still, ND better have been working on something else to show off as it's been three years since a proper new release.

So as someone aware of The Last of Us mainly through this website, and got re-acquainted through the 2023 Tv adaptation, I have always wondered about a few things about the Infected of this series.

Like, how do they fair in cold weather? Even if the Cordyceps can handle high heat now, surely if the body was exposed to -55 degree weather, that would have an effect, wouldn’t it?

Also, what do they eat, and how do they keep their energy up? I’m just kinda wondering how their numbers don’t go down.

Its all a plant brah. Good vibes never die.

The Infected hold up surprisingly well. In parts 1 and 2 there's entire hordesduring the winter.

There's a lot of artistic license taken with Cordyceps as it bumps up against genre convention.

My understanding of Cordyceps is that it pilots the host into situations that best infect more subjects; either by flinging themselves off a high location as to send spores as far as possible or by carrying the host back to the colony and then dying as the death will cause spores to spread that way. Self-preservation is not a priority when it comes to cordyceps and it seems to be fairly fast acting; I don't think the host takes on sleep or food while being piloted so the host is limited to whatever resources they had at the time of infection. As far as I'm aware, irl cordyceps doesn't feast on other individuals or otherwise attack them.

This "die where spores can propigate" idea is best represented in the game when zombies die and kinda just grow into the walls and floors of locations; the spaces where Joel needs to put on a gas mask.

Ergo, I would imagine cordyceps would be an extremely hot flash of a zombie apocalypse; many would be infected extremely quickly but the infectees would also subsequently die off extremely quickly. Within a week, the piloted hosts would start dying off simply because their bodies aren't intaking energy via food or sleep. You'd of course still see people becoming infected via spores and the like, but I'd imagine the frequency would decrease as time goes on.

And, yeah, cordyceps would have weather based issues. Cordyceps can't jump to humans because our internal body temp is too high for the infection to take hold. If it were to make the evolutions needed to survive 98.8, we'd see human infection. But even that might not work out well for, say, locations where the natural weather is much greater than 98. For example, I can't imagine cordyceps doing well in locations like Phoenix, Arizona where the temp can shoot well past 110 degrees and shade won't make much of a difference to that heat. Alternatively, humans can freeze and especially if we're already low on food and energy keeping the body going; cordyceps would probably have issues in high cold climates like the North.

But, well, if you follow all of those rules, you don't end up with a lot of genre conventions the story wants to have. You wouldn't have the time skip they want. You wouldn't get the sequel taking place years after the end. You wouldn't have a decimated fractured society we expect of zombie media.

I could be wrong on some of these things; I'm not an expert in cordyceps or anything. I'm just working off my cursory understanding of how it functions.

So, it's not bad, it just is a different flavor of zombie really.

That's...a bit insane. Especially when you take into account just how depressing the series is as a whole, both in and out of the game.

I really think ND would benefit from their next game not being TLOU3. Because if I walked a mile in any of the developers' shoes while making TLOU2, I would've begged to either work on a palette-cleansing game or just flat out quit.

Jak and Daxter 4. Fucking do it! (Yes, I'm aware there are a couple spin-off Jak games on the PS handhelds. My understanding is they ain't nothing special? But I can't say myself.)

Edited by diddyknux on Nov 24th 2023 at 11:49:32 AM

No return mode trailer.

...I kind of want this?

Funny because I skipped Part 2 anyway, so on principle I'm against it, but I'll be damed if it don't look fun.

The gameplay is legit the funnest part of 2, so yeah, I'm glad that it's getting its own mode to shine without the preachy storytelling holding it back.

The Last of Us Online has officially been canned.

Passed on. No more. Ceased to be. Expired and gone to meet its maker.

I don't know if anyone was looking forward to this, but people probably worked hard on it, so to hear it get canceled must not have been great.

Now go do Jak and Daxter 4!

Edited by TargetmasterJoe on Dec 14th 2023 at 7:08:15 AM

My Reaction, and the reaction of most people really, in a nutshell:

Honestly same.

I'm honestly of the same mood. After two main entries, three remasters, and a premium TV show, it somehow feels like we have an overexposure of TLOU stuff.

Really doesn't help how freaking bleak it is. Both in the series and behind the scenes. (*thinks back to the drama regarding the making of TLOU2*)

How do you feel about The Last of Us Parts 1 and 2 as video games?

I have a question about the WLF leader Isaac. Am I the only one who thinks he had something to do with the death of the old WLF leadership? The collectables and wanted posters show him as third? in the WLF until the two founders were killed by FEDRA and combining that with the note in the ambushed convoy it makes me very suspicious of Isaac. It wouldn't have been hard for him to leak the location of the old WLF leaders to FEDRA and then cover his tracks by killing all the FEDRA leaders. He was talking to a FEDRA officer and promised he'd let the guy defect, instead he got shot with the rest of the FEDRA leaders fleeing Seattle leaving no witnesses.