The Last of Us Part 1, a ground-up remake of Naughty Dog’s critically and commercially acclaimed video game, was officially unveiled during last night’s Summer Game Fest stream. (Well, it was leaked by Sony about an hour before, but let’s forget about that for Geoff Keighley’s sanity). Since then, a lot of the conversation online seems to be saying one thing: why?
It’s actually pretty obvious why. The answer is money. But more broadly, it’s the chance to hit a new audience. Not only is the series arriving properly on PS5 for the first time – The Last of Us Part 2 is playable, the PS4 version – but it’s launching ahead of the HBO TV series adaptation. It’s also coming to PC at a later date.
This means it will grab those people who are tentatively interested in the TV show – which is helmed by Chernobyl’s Craig Mazin and will probably be incredible – as well as PC die-hards and people who jumped from Xbox to PlayStation at the start of the generation. It makes business sense and will probably sell another 10 million copies. Maybe more.
Then there are all the accessibility innovations created for The Last of Us Part 2, which are also being added to this remake. That’s a whole new audience of people who couldn’t play for health reasons when it originally launched. Hopefully, now they can.
Outside of all of that, it’s just a good call. It’s a top-ten game for many people, mainly because of the character writing and the performances. The remake will take advantage of new tech to get us closer to those performances, doing the actors more justice with modern facial animations. Look at the side-by-side between the remake and remaster, it really is night and day.
Then there’s how it plays. The first game had barebones stealth systems and AI that was dumber than the bricks you toss at their heads. The Last of Us Part 2 made human enemies scarier than the fungal threats trying to eat your face off, adding verbal callouts to every decision they made, getting across the illusion of being hunted by a coordinated team. It also expanded upon the stealth mechanics, allowing you to go prone, instead of only hiding behind conveniently placed waist-high walls.
A leap in console generation, a leap in visuals ✨ #TLOUP1 pic.twitter.com/zO5we8eWQ9
— Naughty Dog (@Naughty_Dog) June 10, 2022
Look back at the first combat encounter in the original The Last of Us now and see how much of an obvious arena it takes place in. It doesn’t fit into the world in a natural way at all, which is another thing Naughty Dog improved with the sequel. In The Last of Us Part 2, there’s an extended sequence that takes place in a museum. It’s a flashback and there’s no combat in the scene at all, but you still find crafting materials and throwables, tricking you into anticipating combat that never comes.
A similar trick is used to make you feel safe before suddenly plunging you into combat with a certain crafting table jump scare. It’s smart and it shows how much the studio has learned over the last ten years. The prospect of the team applying all their experience to a classic game is exciting. We should be excited about it.
It’s not as if this is taking anything away from the studio, either. It’s still working on an unannounced game. Its standalone multiplayer game based on The Last of Us Part 2 is deep in development and growing in ambition, scope, and size. Instead of one thing to look forward to from Naughty Dog, we’ve got three. And one of them is coming this year.
I know it’s cool to dunk on the popular thing – you’re all extremely cool and sexy, honestly – but there’s a reason people like these games. I don’t personally understand why anyone enjoys watching wrestlers pretend to punch each other, but there’s no judgment here. You do you. As last night’s showcase proved, there’s plenty of other stuff to focus on if you’re not interested in this – especially if you happen to like sci-fi horror games, which are seemingly having some kind of renaissance – so maybe rein in the snark until we’ve seen how it actually plays.
The Last of Us Part 1 is out for PS5 on September 2.
Written by Kirk McKeand on behalf of GLHF.
