I watched it too because I'm a curios scumbag and can avoid comments on YouTube through Smart TV.
Druckmann "spoiled" the premise / introduction of the game which I almost guarantee we'll learn of in the first minute when we pop the disk in so no sad loss there. He explained a few factions and "spoiled" a few locations you'll go to. Seems like another cross country trek across a few seasons is a staple of the series now because it's coming back and I'm glad.
I get the idea that Pittsburgh from TLOU is a heavy inspiration for this game because a lot of it will take place in a derelict and unpopulated Seattle.
Gameplay-wise,
Open exploring
It looks like you can go through a few open areas kinda like Uncharted Lost Legacy. They showed an example where Ellie has a rope to repel down to a lower level. I guarantee you won't always be equipped to fully explore an area if you've exhausted resources. Pair up the likelihood of missing things with the linear progression of The Last of Us (and Uncharted for that matter), you'll likely have good reason to replay the game and see everything.
Druckmann also mentioned that sometimes you'll have companions but he didn't specify who. I hope its a good mix between lone wolf and friends following you around. TLOU has a pretty generic zombie story, but it was those little moment in-between with Ellie exploring that essentially makes the game for me. For example, when you roam through the Suburbs of Pittsburgh and Joel explains to Ellie and Sam what summer barbecues were like or how kids used to chase after ice cream trucks. Not entirely sure if that sort of DNA can be inserted to these open exploring areas without more context. All that said, upon replaying TLOU a million times, I can do with less of these stop n chat moments. It really takes away from replay value. Hard to tell if it'll be a lonely game with a lot of Ellie's time being spent alone in silence or whether you'll be alongside buddies. Too hard to tell at the moment.
One complaint about TLOU - I think the game is too sluggish. I felt liberated when Uncharted 4 came out and movement was sped up again. Since TLOU in 2013, we have had: The Evil Within 1 & 2, Resident Evil 2, and hell, even Metal Gear Solid V has sharp movement for a stealth game. I put TEW2 as the gold standard for survival horror shooters and your character movement in that game is quite sharp after a few upgrades. I have concern that these open exploring areas in TLOU Pt II will pad out the game by 4-5 hours just based on movement speed alone. I think about moving floating palettes throughout TLOU and how slow and cumbersome those moments are. Even Ellie says stuff like, "Wow we're doing this again?" when you do it for thousandth time. I hope this stuff is actually fun rather than a chore because it's a chore to climb things, move ladders, swim, and move dumpsters in the original game.
Combat
They took a queue from Uncharted 4. Combat areas are layered with narrow areas, open areas with some cover, side buildings, multiple floors of a building. Fights can go outdoors to indoors at the drop of a dime. It was hard to tell from the demo but it seems like these combat areas can be quite huge themselves. Ellie could have gone any number of directions and the fight felt quite dynamic in the sense that things started slow, then went loud like a shootout, then she sprinted away, and they followed her, but didn't know where she went. So enemies kept pooling into one area rather than aimless running around the combat area. The AI seems more direct and purposeful in TLOU Pt II.
One thing I noticed was that Ellie has a knife and the shiv system is gone. Thank goodness! I get the impression we have unlimited stealth kills now.
The combat seems to be a natural evolution of what Naughty Dog has been doing since Uncharted 2 in that they are layering their combat zones to make for good asymmetrical level design with a variety of options. They keep building on this idea and I think they're really good at it now. The bread and butter of combat looks the same though. Ellie is basically a god-tier killer, you fumble around in the backpack, you shoot and take cover. This doesn't deviate much from what we know The Last of Us for.
Presentation
This is some of the best in-game animation I've ever seen. In the Kotaku tell all about Naughty Dog, some veteran employees who spoke anonymously stated that this game could have shipped a year sooner with a more experienced team, but it was tough to get newcomers to animate to the degree Naughty Dog supervisors require. It shows. Despite the fact an army of new animators were crunched to make this game look great, it looks... G R E A T. There is so much natural movement and momentum in these animations. I wish I knew how to make a GIF but when Ellie holds a guy at gun point, the natural momentum of her direction and the way she grabs him looks like real life.
That said, this feels more like The Last of Us we know. Whereas the original "gameplay" demo we saw at E3 a few years ago looked unreal (the one with Ellie hiding under a truck, then she's sneaking around a store). That old demo seemed too good and there was all of this dynamic camera movement and the lines between gameplay and cinematic seemed blurred. This current gameplay demo was nothing like that. The camera was the way it always has been, the animation looks fantastic but not unbelievably good like that original demo. I think there was some bullshit going on there because this just looks and plays less exciting than that first demo.
It's hard to fully appreciate it until I play the real thing but the sound design seems to be a lot better here. Guns sound as good as they always do but I think about the whimper of that dog getting burned up. You don't even see it but it sounds equally as horrific hearing it. Same goes to the treatment of the infected. They had something nice with the original TLOU but it did get kinda repetitive and less scary with time. These new infected enemies look and sound way scarier.
