The Hidden Stories In The Last Of Us Part 2 Are Some Of Its Best

There’s a scene in The Last of Us Part 2 where, after approaching a workbench and dismantling your gun, you are mauled from behind by a group of rogue assailants. They have the upper hand, having quietly arranged a tactical formation on the dilapidated building’s upper floor–they take cover behind sofas, kitchen counters, and half-open doors. But this shocking scene isn’t all that surprising–or at least it wouldn’t be, if you’d been reading the handwritten notes sporadically dotted across the surrounding town.

The Last of Us Part 2 weaves together a grimdark narrative filled with colour and noise, and yet, it teems with quieter, often untold stories contained within the pages of its virtual journaling. A man loses two sons to a radical religious cult because he was too afraid to leave the safety of their aquarium hideout, and dies sitting in the chair they berated him for never leaving; a parent passes away beneath the crumbling roof of a flooded factory, with medicine he never got to deliver to his sick family; a soldier whiles away his final hours behind the blast doors of a bank vault, dying to protect something that was not his own from a group of thieves seeking to capitalize on the maelstrom induced by the cordyceps outbreak. These are the quieter tales that The Last of Us Part 2’s world is founded upon.

The stories of Ellie, Dina, Abby, and Lev are essential to The Last of Us Part 2’s overarching narrative, but not necessarily to the construction of its wider world. They mirror it in unique ways and react to it at different times with distinct emotional responses, but their tales are likely no more significant than those we don’t play through. This can be said of most stories: Just because Frodo bears the One Ring doesn’t necessarily mean that his particular hardships are greater than those of anybody else–something that is particularly resonant in J.R.R. Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings books, where Saruman returns to destroy The Shire, taking the lives of the nameless and unwritten in the process.

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Iron Man VR Adds New Game Plus And Several New Weapons

If you’ve already finished Marvel’s Iron Man VR but aren’t ready to leave the world of Tony Stark, developer Camouflaj has just what you need. The game has added New Game Plus as a free update, and that isn’t the only new feature included in the newest version.

Starting the game in New Game Plus mode will let you keep any unlocks you’ve acquired on your armor as well as any unspent Research Points. You can only activate this mode once you’ve beaten the game, of course, and there is a new harder Ultimate difficulty mode to try out, too. As you can now skip a few of the side missions and can skip cinematics–all with faster loading times in the game itself–it should be less-frustrating to play through the game again.

You can find eight new armor decorations in the Armor Station of your garage, though you need to complete challenges first. The launch-week-exclusive Iron Patriot is one of them, as well.

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Fall Guys Creators Want An Official Lego Set

Lego is no stranger to video game sets, having just released the incredible Lego NES and several Super Mario Bros. products, and it regularly receives requests for future sets via its online portal. One such request was made to turn smash-hit game Fall Guys into a building set, and the developers are completely supportive.

YouTuber Ashnflash made the request for a functional Fall Guys obstacle course set. His idea would contain several different obstacles, including the spinning Whirlygig, the infuriating See Saw, and Door Dash. As the titular Fall Guys attempt to pass these obstacles, they’ll inevitably fall off the edge to their doom. Of course, this is the whole point, and the pitch images Ashnflash submitted look almost exactly like the actual game.

More than 2,500 people have already said they support the petition thus far, but more importantly, the official Fall Guys Twitter account took notice.

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Apple Says Epic Wanted Special Deal For Fortnite, Epic Says Apple Is Misleading

One of the latest developments in the ongoing Epic vs. Apple legal battle has turned the controversial antitrust lawsuit filed by Fortnite developer Epic Games into a public “he said, she said.” A recent legal filing from Apple reveals that Epic had originally reached out with a request to introduce features which would allow it, among other things, to circumvent Apple’s 30% fee on Fortnite microtransactions back in late-June. Despite Apple’s rejection of Epic’s request, Epic went ahead with its plan in August, which Apple characterizes in the legal filing as a “deliberate choice” Epic made to “cheat Apple.”

The way Apple presents Epic’s request from June characterizes the studio as expecting special treatment for its IP before enacting a “calculated decision to breach” the App Store’s policies when not given its way. But Epic CEO Tim Sweeney has spoken up on social media about what he refers to as a “misleading” characterization of Epic’s original request.

“Apple’s statement is misleading,” Sweeney stated in a tweet. “You can read my email in Apple’s filing, which is publicly available. I specifically said in Epic’s request to the Apple execs, ‘We hope that Apple will also make these options equally available to all iOS developers…'”

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