The Last of Us Part II Remastered is pretty much a “director’s cut” of the 2020 PlayStation 4 game and includes some of its additions and special features are questionable (like the roguelike mode), three playable lost levels removed from the last game are one of the more interesting additions.
It’s not often that we get a look behind the scenes of development in this way. So the more developers are willing to let players try out material, the better. But after playing through all three sections, I can understand why not every one of them made it into the final version. Read through The Last of Us Part IIAfter looking at the artbook and listening to interviews with the creative team, I knew at least two of these sections before playing them and was excited to see what could have been. Given that Part II has been criticized in the past for its length, Naughty Dog probably made the right decision with these changes.
The first lost level dates from before the inciting incident of the game’s revenge tour and appears to have been a tutorial level. Ellie meets with the people of Jackson, plays games with the locals where she teaches you aiming and the mechanics of listening mode, and she even chats with her ex-girlfriend Cat.
We never meet Cat in the game itself, and the version of her we see in the lost level looks like a placeholder model, so that’s probably what I would have liked to see in the final game. But many of these tutorials have been retooled with the perspective-shifting opening The Last of Us Part II Teach yourself different mechanics as you switch between Ellie and Abby while maintaining some momentum.
The second section is more of an extension of a segment that still exists in the game. It shows Ellie navigating the sewers of Seattle as she moves through the city. This is probably the least notable segment to feature Naughty Dog Part II Remasteredbut there’s a genuinely moving moment that foreshadows Ellie’s struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder following Joel’s death.
The third and final segment is referenced in The Last of Us Part II, but never shown. In the final hours of the game, Ellie has a diary entry about a boar she went hunting but left to die after its pained squeals reminded her of Joel’s brutal death. Originally, this hunt was intended to be playable in a similar way to the hunting sequence in the winter section of the first game. But having played it now, the whole thing felt a bit clunky and frustrating. Ultimately, between this and the corresponding PTSD reveal in the final game, I prefer the one the team chose because it’s less of a hassle to get there.
The lost levels aren’t the only behind-the-scenes features included The Last of Us Part II Remasteredas there is also a commentary track that you can play alongside the game itself, starring director Neil Druckmann, narrative lead Halley Gross and actors Ashley Johnson, Laura Bailey, Troy Baker and Shannon Woodward.
