No, survivor is locked until you beat the game. But it is unlocked by finishing it on any difficulty.
I just took a shower, and was thinking about why I enjoyed TLoU's combat so much, beyond the things I mentioned. The real thing that makes it stand out for me is that I feel like it shares it's sense of game difficulty with my taste.
I don't want to die in a game, it's pointless. All it does it take you out of the experience, and surface what is lost by failing, which is normally the last thirty seconds or whatever. I want to feel like I could die at any minute (and with TLoU's one hit kills, it has that constantly). I want the stress of being in a bad situation, but not the punishment for fucking it up, because it'll just hamper it.
When I approached an encounter in TLoU, I'd get a rough sense of how many people there were, and where to start taking them out, start off stealthy until it kicks off. But inevitably, something would also go wrong, and if I was going to die, I could just reevaluate the encounter, but that's shit, TLoU felt like I had to live with my mistakes, because it wasn't so punishing, I'd die for making them.
That's not to say I didn't die, there were probably ten or so encounters in the game I didn't finish first time, but for the vast majority of that game, it was the perfect situation of everything going to shit, and managing to still escape, even though I'd frequently come out of it with less supplies than I'd be comfortable with, which just rolls that tension on into the next encounter.
I have a real issue with the concept of game difficulties. In my experience, they don't make a game harder, they make it slower (a few exceptions of course, StarCraft 2 for example). It doesn't actually require you to be of greater skill, just more patience. That's the very worst kind of waste a player's time in my opinion.
