The Last Of Us Part 2’s AI deserved as much attention as its storytelling

In one of his routinely excellent newsletters a good while back, Nathan Brown quoted RPS’s own blame-eater Graham Smith saying the following: "People say they want good AI in shooters, but they don’t. If FPS AI was perfect then it would be just like playing online against the people at the top of the leaderboard. It would be awful. When people say they want good AI, what they mean is they want to fight enemies that make them feel smart when they beat them."

Well, I’ve never seen the top of an FPS leaderboard, Graham, so I’m just going to stick with the opinion that The Last Of Us Part 2’s AI is very good. Oh, alright. Apparently my job is "contingent on caring about what words mean." Fine. What I actually mean is that TLOU 2’s AI has been doing a great job of making me feel deeply unsafe at pretty much all times. The fact that only a really smart cookie like me can deal with that level of pressure is irrelevant. I’ve been playing it over the last week or so, partly to knock it off the pile, and partly to chip away at the mount of karmic debt I hold with the spunked cost pantheon for buying a PS5 solely to play two Final Fantasy games.