The Last of Us Part 1 is an action-adventure game developed by Naughty Dog that came out in 2013. The main characters are Joel, a smuggler, and Ellie, a teenage girl that Joel has to smuggle across the United States. However, the U.S. has collapsed as a fungus has created cannibalistic creatures out of unfortunate humans. The tale of Joel and Ellie was well received, and there was a sequel created as well: The Last of Us Part 2. Now the team is working on a remaster of the first game in an attempt to bring fans an upgraded version for the PS5.
In the clip below, we are shown a sort of rolling before and after one scene. The video titled “The Burning Barn Comparison” shows the characters driving by the burning barn as the driver narrates. The clip seamlessly slides between what it looked like before on PS4 and what it will look like on PS5. The previous version shows the house or barn clearly on fire, but the outer walls of the building are still intact. The fire is mostly contained inside before bursting upward through the roof. However, in the remastered version, the fire is much bigger, closer to an inferno. We can see it bursting through the windows and illuminating the whole yard. As they drive past, we see the front of the building has almost been completely consumed in flames. It’s a dramatic upgrade to the scene.
The reception to the idea of a remaster of The Last of Us Part 1 is a bit divided among fans. For many, the decision to remaster The Last of Us Part 1 while it’s still relatively new feels like a cash grab. Some fans have joked about the price being upgraded as well as the game. Others have brought up a valid point that if the remastering of a PS4 game on PS5 looks amazing, imagine what the remaster of the PS5 game for the PS6 will look like, the joke being that the same game can continuously be remade.
The developers have tried to address this from multiple angles. One angle is the upgrade to actual gameplay. They want to show you all of the cool new moves you could do, or the new equipment being introduced. But the second angle feels just as valid, if not a little more so. They wanted to recreate the first game so that it matches what they wanted to do originally but could not. In a video posted on PlayStation’s YouTube channel in July 2022, the creators of the game sought to explain why they wanted to do this remaster.
Neil Druckman, Co-President of Naughty Dog, was the first to speak on the video. He mentioned that the idea began while the team worked on The Last of Us Part 2. As they were working on the flashback scenes, it occurred to them how cool it would be to update the old game to be as good as their new one. Druckman said, “we could come even closer to our original vision of what the first game would’ve been had we not been constrained by technology.”
The idea of revisiting a work years later is not new or unique to the gaming world. Any Stephen King fans may remember that The Gunslinger was originally written when King was just 19 years old. He later revisited the classic novel after writing a few more of the books in The Dark Tower series because he had gained the skills to do it justice. Druckman’s comment feels similar. It shows that he and his team are really proud of their games, and they want to realize their vision now that the tech is there to make it happen. Some fans of The Last of Us Part 1 have echoed this sentiment! You don’t only play games for the novelty of it. Sometimes a game is a comforting, nostalgic experience for you, and if you’re a fan of the story, why not see it get a glow-up?
