We've been playing through the finished The Last of Us Part II product for both preview and review purposes. And while we're still a while out from being able to deliver our full review, we've been given a green light inside the review embargo to post up some impressions from a specific section of the game. This hands-on piece is spoiler-free, and features comments from narrative lead, Hally Gross, so to remain clandestine where story and beats are concerned while interviewing the person leading the game's narrative... well, we're pretty proud of ourselves, if we do say so.

Here's a snippet from our hands-on:

The available section of narrative we’re allowed to talk about here took -- on Survival -- roughly two hours for me to punch through, and without a heavy arsenal of gear, fully clearing areas of all baddies was a 50/50 affair, which left some stones unturned. There are collectibles in the game, as well as important gear and ingredients, and there’s an upgrade system tied to multiple facets of Ellie’s basic requirements for successful survival, married alongside scavenging, but we don’t want to spoil how any of this works, because the very nature of the game is a moment-to-moment experience. You’ll learn early on that Naughty Dog has a clear idea of what you should be doing, when, how and why. “Wide linear” is what Hally referred to it as, but that doesn’t mean the game is locked down to a corridor experience. Agency comes in how you tackle the stealth sandbox moments, all while ensuring the carrot on the string is what drives you, and Ellie, forward.

Click here for our full hands-on preview.