Naughty Dog Celebrates Last of Us Part 1 Release with Dev Insights

After much speculation and wonder about how it would be different, The Last Of Us Part 1 is now out on PS5 for everyone to get. You’ll get to see the “highest quality version” of the game as developer Naughty Dog would say, and they’ve been very adamant about the work and effort that went into making this title. From a gamers’ perspective, that isn’t really saying much because they should have to work hard in order to make a game look and play well, right? But it’s more than that. With the release of the game, the PlayStation Blog talked with the team to learn even more about how the remake got done.

One of the key things that the team asked themselves before they even started the title was “how do we remake what was already liked?” As they told themselves correctly, the original version of the game was the “most beloved” game they did, ever. Uncharted was great, but it didn’t compare to this, and now they wanted to do a full-on remake less than 10 years after the original release. That’s a tall order. But, the creative director gave them the answer that would push everything forward.

“We build on it. We double down on areas we thought would heighten the experience or get deeper into the storytelling of it, taking all our abilities and skill and applying them faithfully to this rebuild. Just reimagine everything.”

That’s another tall order right there, as The Last Of Us had a lot going on in it even when it was on the PS3. So to just “reimagine everything” was not something that most people would be either up for, or capable to do. Yet, they pushed forward anyway. The good news for them was that they had an ace in the hole via the PS5 and what it was capable of doing.

For example, one of the things that they did, as they started to think about how to improve the original game, was play it and look at how the scenes came out back then. One of the things they quickly noticed was that the lighting could be improved upon. Not just to make the scenes prettier per se, but to add more of a sense of emotion to them. To use certain colors and shadow effects to emphasize the mode of what was going on at the time.

They also worked to flesh out the audio even more to make the world feel more alive. But arguably the best thing they did was ensure that they had limits. As in, they knew when to stop pushing things and to be happy with what they had. Based on early reviews of The Last Of Us Part 1, they succeeded in “reimagining everything.”

Source: PlayStation Blog