As rumored, developer Naughty Dog is adding a permadeath mode to The Last of Us Part II.
Both permadeath mode and the grounded difficulty are included with the latest update. It goes live on August 13, so you won’t have to wait too long before you can try it out for yourself.
The new update also includes two new trophies. One of the trophies is awarded for beating The Last of Us Part II with permadeath enabled. The other is for completing the game on grounded difficulty. Neither of the new trophies are required in order to earn the platinum trophy, though.
Here are more details from PlayStation Blog:
For veteran The Last of Us fans, Grounded difficulty represents the ultimate test of skill. This difficulty raises the stakes by not only making enemies deadlier and ammo, upgrade, and crafting materials incredibly scarce, but also removing invaluable tools for survival, such as disabling Listen mode, deactivating elements of the HUD, and more. Beginning with the update, Grounded will become one of the base difficulty options available when starting the story, so you won’t need to have beaten the game once already to access it.
As an additional layer of challenge, we’re also introducing a brand new Permadeath mode. With this custom mode enabled, there are no second chances — you must complete the entire game without dying or start over from the beginning. However, if taking on the whole game is too daunting, you can choose to enable Permadeath mode with checkpoints on a per-chapter or per-act basis. In other words, if you die at the end of Day One, you’ll have to play the entire day over again.
That’s not all. The update has a bunch of other features, too. For instance, the developers have added a number of graphics modifiers to give the game a different look and feel. Click here to learn about all of the features included in the new update.
The Last of Us Part II launched in June. The game sold more than 4 million copies in three days, making it the fastest-selling first-party title on PS4. If you haven’t already done so, be sure to read our review.
