With season 2 of HBO’s The Last of Us in the books, and with no The Last of Us Part III coming in the immediate future, Naughty Dog has come up with an interesting way to funnel all the attention from the show into the game. The studio has released a new, free patch for The Last of Us Part II Remastered that lets you play the game in chronological order. The mode takes Abby and Ellie’s stories and interleaves them in chronological order rather than the nonlinear story of the original version of the game, which used timeskips and flashbacks.
In addition to Chronological Mode, the patch also includes new achievements and skins to use in Part II Remastered’s roguelike game mode No Return. Now you can dress up Joel and his brother Tommy like Naughty Dog’s other pair of visually indistinct, emotionally constipated brothers; Nathan and Sam Drake. Naughty Dog does still recommend that first timers play TLOU Part II normally before tackling Chronological Mode but that, “the team’s hard work has paid off with a fascinating new way to enjoy this chapter.”
Chronological Mode will give players a new reason to pick up the game while awaiting the next season of the show which will dive into events from Abby’s perspective. Season 3 though, will proceed without Neil Druckmann as co-lead. Druckmann, co-director of both The Last of Us games and creative director at Naughty Dog, recently announced that he’s taking a break from the show to focus efforts on the studio’s games including the recently announced, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet.