“It is hoped that we will be able to reach this level”: The review of The Last of Us Part II from Microsoft employees leaked online

Among those caught on the network against the background of a trial between Apple and Epic Games documents Microsoft netizens found a curious file created by employees of an American corporation exclusively for internal use.

There are two employees in the document Microsoft under the names Mike and John representing the team Xbox on working with internal and third-party developers, describe the dark action in detail The Last of Us: Part II from the studio Naughty dogsharing your own impressions as part of a full-fledged review. Apparently, later this text was used at internal meetings of the unit. Xbox in order to carefully study the developments of competitors and a general analysis of the gaming market.

It is noteworthy that “overviewMicrosoft on the The Last of Us: Part II turned out to be predominantly positive. The text notes an expressive and effective approach to storytelling, atypical directorial techniques for games, an outstanding game pace and variety of locations, serious gameplay improvements against the background of the original game, as well as an “unrivaled level of visual quality in all aspects and directions” that significantly surpasses “any development by other studios on consoles and PCs. “

Moreover, some of the components The Last of Us: Part II were criticized by the Xbox team. In particular, the experts did not like the way the shooting was implemented in the game – Mike and John are convinced that the Naughty Dog studio could not implement a good combat system tied to the use of firearms in any of their projects. Nevertheless, the authors of the text make a remark that for the second part of “The Last of Us” such a defect is not critical, since the main focus of the game is still given to stealth segments.

Additionally, Microsoft’s Mike and John were disappointed with the weapon switching system in The Last of Us: Part II. In their opinion, switching weapons through the d-pad of the gamepad is not the best solution, since the player has to temporarily move his thumb from the left stick of the controller, which can negatively affect the gameplay, and the game supposedly does not represent alternatives, such as quickly changing weapons. Curiously, this claim made a factual mistake – you can also change weapons in The Last of Us: Part II using the R1 button, which allows you to quickly switch between the available arsenal without touching the crosspiece.

At the end of the review, Mike and John admit that The Last of Us: Part II set a new benchmark for the industry as a whole and that in the future of the team Microsoft will try to achieve it along with the arrival of new console systems (Xbox series x and Xbox series s).

“The players definitely have the right to independently determine their attitude to the plot decisions made by the Naughty Dog team, to the idea of ​​having two diametrically opposed protagonists in the project, as well as to the general guidelines of the final episodes. But if you look at this game from the perspective of people who are not indifferent to the development of the narrative language in interactive works of art, then, discarding all the details, most important is the true skill with which Naughty Dog told the exact story they wanted to tell… Not every game can match the visual quality of this project, and not every company can boast of the resources and talents necessary to implement this level. This development sets a completely new bar, and for now we can only hope that we will be able to reach it with the arrival of a new console generation.“, – reads one of the paragraphs of the internal Microsoft review of The Last of Us: Part II.

Premiere The Last of Us: Part II took place last summer only on Playstation 4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXl9GI1p_Os

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