After 300 hours, one Last of Us Part 2 player has discovered a very strange shambler that releases an interesting set of purple spores. Shamblers in The Last of Us Part 2 fire off a distinctive mist of spores when threatened, but this particular one has a more unique color to it.
Shamblers were first introduced in The Last of Us Part 2, and were generally well-received by players. There wasn't a huge amount of new enemies added with the sequel, but the shambles certainly offered a breath of fresh air to the game's combat. They don't play a huge role, but they're there enough to pose a threat whenever they are encountered by players.
Redditor Fast_Barnacle_8914 made the discovery, showing it off in a short clip. Interestingly, after a moment of purple mist, it turns back to its more natural dark green color, which definitely fits in a lot better with the world of The Last of Us Part 2. The player claims to have not seen this before in 300 hours of gameplay, so whether it's a glitch or not, it's clearly something that's an extremely rare occurrence.
Gamers in the thread had a variety of plausible theories about the purple mist. The most popular is that it's a glitch in The Last of Us Part 2 that causes the material for the mist to be temporarily inaccessible. In many game engines, empty texture files are displayed with a solid purple color, so this would also explain why it turns back to the green color once it resolves itself. Another suggestion is that it could be an accessibility setting, but given the normal fog afterward, this seems unlikely. Others simply took the opportunity to compare the shambler to a shiny Pokemon, which is certainly fun but not much of a genuine help.
Both games in the Last of Us franchise have had a bump in popularity lately. The success of The Last of Us adaption on HBO has meant that the franchise has become recognizable in the mainstream, even to non-gamers. With changes planned for The Last of Us Season 2, it will be very interesting to see how the show handles the plot of The Last of Us Part 2. Upon release, it was considered to be extremely controversial for a number of storytelling reasons, and it is yet to be confirmed just how faithful the adaptation will be for the sequel.
The Last of Us 2 is available on PS4.
