One skilled The Last of Us 2 fan recently took to social media to share a remarkable speedrun through a particularly tough section of the game, the final stretch of "The Seraphites" level. Their feat was even accomplished in The Last of Us 2 Grounded mode, the game's highest difficulty setting which makes enemies significantly deadlier.
The Last of Us 2 Grounded update released over two years ago as part of the first major patch for Naughty Dog's hit PS4 exclusive. The mode addressed a common gameplay complaint about the game being too easy. But even the vanilla experience still had some challenging sections, with "The Seraphites" chapter being considered one of the toughest among the fandom. This level pits Ellie against the titular cult, whose members—also called Scars—are warring with the Washington Liberation Front over control of post-apocalyptic Seattle.
YouTuber Just5MoreMinutes has now demonstrated a quick way to bypass Scars in the final section of the chapter, starting from the last, forest checkpoint. In just over a minute, the player managed to cover a massive amount of ground, sprinting into the urban remnants of Seattle while cleverly distracting Scars, causing maximum mayhem with minimal resources. While Grounded mode already removes most HUD elements in The Last of Us 2, the gamer disabled the rest manually, meaning this miniature speedrun was accomplished without so much as a digital crosshair in the way of assistance.
The feat took between 100 and 200 tries, according to the YouTuber. Entering the final room was arguably its riskiest part, as it involved booby-trapping a scripted ambush spot with a trip mine and then surviving its explosion after triggering an event that has one of the Scars bash through a doorway.
Grounded mode has an extended end credits sequence to reward players who manage to power through its significantly amped-up difficulty. It also contains other secrets, some of which might still be undiscovered, as evidenced by the fact that new hidden details exclusive to Grounded mode keep coming out even today, more than two years since its release.
While The Last of Us 2 isn't a particularly popular title in the speedrunning community, its latest any-percentage world record was only set last month and currently stands at under 3 hours and 55 minutes. The game is also likely to attract many new players and potential speedrunners once HBO's live-action The Last of Us series debuts next year.
The Last of Us 2 is available now on PS4.
