The last of our part II gets its first major update this week, with developer Naughty Dog adding a whole new visual and audio effect modification, optional cheat codes and two new difficulty settings. The update will be available for free to all owners of the game on August 13, and it should add a bit of much-needed replay value for those who want to try the existing option of the New Game Plus or for players who are still interested in trophy hunting.
The biggest part of the update is a set of new visual and audio effects, in addition to cheat codes, that can be created The last of our part II a much trippier and less stressful affair. For example, you can give the game an 8-bit retro aesthetic like a hand-drawn one that counts towards Telltale Games’ The walking Dead series. There are at least 20 filters you can add, including basic filters like cool and warm or really intense like “blood” red and “fire” orange. There are also modes that radically change the whole visual aesthetic, such as “pop-poster” for putting on bright fluorescent color schemes and “void” for turning the world into something like that Matrix-style simulation.
As for the cheats, all the default options are there. You can enable infinite ammo, infinite crafting, and a one-shot cheat that allows you to shoot down any enemy with one bullet. But there are some other really interesting ones, like the ability to reduce the time to 25 percent speed while aiming and ‘mirror world’, which flips the world version horizontally to make everything feel just a little different. The cheat menu also has audio effect options such as “8-bit audio” and “helium audio”, which Naughty Dog says “sets the audio down, as if the atmosphere were full of helium gas.” (It makes everyone sound like they’ll just suck the air out of a birthday balloon.)
Finally, the new settings for difficulties are not two separate options, but one mode with a special setting nestled inside. The mode is called ‘ground’, and it’s an even more gruesome and bare bones twist on the game’s victory mechanics. In ground mode, players will lose access to HUD elements such as ammo counting, and listener mode is very limited on top of the hardcore damage and limited resource settings of the previous most tricky option.
And if you enable permadeath, a basic mode setting option, you have to endure an even more extreme restriction. Following Naughty Dog’s highly accessible options, even in permadeath mode, are the settings you can customize, such as resetting the entire game back to the beginning of the current act when you die or reset the entire game. Each option sounds like a challenge only the most dedicated players will attempt.
Naughty Dog says there will be two new trophies added to it The last of our part II – one for completing the game in ground mode and another for dealing with a version of permadeath enabled. Also, there will be no requirement to reach Sony’s coveted platinum trophy, which in this case requires you to unlock only the initial set of trophies that arrived with the game’s launch back in June.
