
You actually feel the emotions Joel is going through as he treks a harrowing journey across the country. The level of detail in each character model just feels alive with its more realistic approach subsurface scattering to the skin is fleshed out stupendously, which brings the player closer to the character than ever before.

Fast forward 9 years and here we are.Įvery facet of this game has been redone in ways that shouldn’t exist – the physical based rendering made every revoking moment feel beyond the immersion factor the original could ever achieve. I couldn’t help but hope that one day Naughty Dog decides to remake The Last of Us in this level of fidelity. When I played Uncharted 4 for the first time, I was taken aback the level of commitment Naughty Dog put themselves through to deliver us one of the best looking and playing games ever. The labor of love Naughty Dog decided to do for us is nothing short of magical and one that needs to be recognized because The Last of Us Part 1 is undeniable in delivering one of the best experiences ever made. This is what Naughty Dog did with The Last of Us Part 1 – it is a rework so immeasurable that it makes the game feel entirely brand new, even for someone like me who has beaten the game multiple times on the PS3 and PS4, obtaining the platinum trophy to both. That’s what happened with The Last of Us PS3 to PS4 – same character models, environmental details, animations, particles, physics, rigging – but with better resolution and fps.Ī Remake in a video game is rebuilding all of its assets from scratch within an entirely new rendering engine that means character models, environmental design, lighting engine, pipelining, textures, shadows, adding next-gen technology like GPU accelerations to particles, volumetric smoke, ambient occlusion, light bounces, refraction, screen space reflections, updated animations across the board etc., has been handcrafted to a degree that makes the game almost unrecognizable. Sometimes textures get a rework here and there to better fit moods, but still within its legacy engine.

It is not a remaster of a remaster, not even close.Ī Remaster in video games utilizes the assets that’s already present but increases its resolution and perhaps frames per second. Now, while the conversation about pricing is definitely warranted, let’s not confuse or undermine what The Last of Us Part 1 is – a complete remake, from the ground up, of one of the biggest games to ever grace our time that launched almost 10 years ago for the PlayStation 3. The biggest conundrum is the price point of $70 USD for a game that’s been remastered for the PS4 back in 2014 – and with the absence of Factions multiplayer, said conundrum is further solidifying the argument for players. The conversations surrounding The Last of Us Part 1 has been entirely divided since Naughty Dog’s reveal earlier this year.
