The Last of Us Part 2’s roguelike mode is a playable identity crisis
The Last of Us Part 2’s No Return is so good it makes you wonder why Naughty Dog even bothered with making a story. A bonus mode that comes with The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered, No Return transforms the acclaimed 2019 game into a full roguelike experience. It’s a well-rounded, engrossing rework that shows off the game in a new light, while also underlining the identity crisis at the heart of Naughty Dog: the version of the studio that excels at top-flight action-adventure games, and the Naughty Dog that strives to tell uncompromising, mature interactive stories.
Unlike the recent, similar roguelike experiment from Sony Santa Monica’s God of War: Ragnarök, No Return has no narrative justification. It’s a pure arcade experience: You select your difficulty, your character — each with their own playstyle — and any available modifiers, and try to make it as far as you can, until you die and start all over again.
Roguelike fans and the roguelike-curious haven’t been hurting for options for a very long time now, but big-budget, marquee dalliances in the genre are still quite rare. No Return is more than an expensive novelty, though — the mode is a challenging yet accessible approach to roguelikes that shows off every flavor of The Last of Us Part 2’s tense, violent action by breaking it into pieces, relishing in the multiplicity of options and all the satisfying fiddly bits for upgrading weapons and characters present in the main game.
A generous cadence of unlockable characters, costumes, and game modifiers keeps adding variety in the early going, even if you spend your first few runs eating shit — a vital way to avoid the biggest roguelike hurdle, which is demanding mastery before doling out rewards. Juxtaposed so much more closely together, the different feeling of controlling Ellie, Abby, and others is more pronounced, making character selection feel like more than an aesthetic choice. Each character has a different starter weapon and upgrade track (Abby, for
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