the last of us new remaster – Trekking with Dennis

Since I covered the announcement of The Last Of Us Remastered… Remastered last year, I’ve left the project alone. I’m flat-out not interested in a game that’s been remastered or reworked for the second time in just nine short years, especially when the PlayStation 4 version is perfectly playable. I don’t seek out projects that I don’t like with the intention of crapping all over them; there’s more than enough negativity in gaming communities online that I don’t want to add to it.

But a widely-reported remark from a developer/animator (whose name I won’t share to avoid piling on) really pushed me over the edge. The Last Of Us Remastered… Remastered (or whatever it’s going to be called) is a cash-grab. It’s the second remake of a game that was released in 2013 at the tail end of the PlayStation 3’s life, and it’s being resurrected for the second time entirely as a cheap cash-grab by Sony.

After sharing my initial thoughts back when the announcement was made, I was content to ignore this new remaster. I have no plans to buy it – especially not with a ridiculous £70 price tag (or close to £100 for the deluxe version) – so that was that. Comment made, time to move on. But for one of the senior developers to have the audacity to speak about the game in such a brazen and dishonest way… I just couldn’t let it lie.

The Last Of Us is a good game. It was a great way to close out the PlayStation 3 era for Sony, and it was the game that convinced me to buy my first ever PlayStation console. I consider it one of the best games of the 2010s, and even though its sequel struggled under the weight of a clumsy narrative that tried to be too smart for its own good, the original game hasn’t been sullied by that controversy and remains one of the best examples of narrative, linear, single-player adventures.

*The Last Of Us* is undeniably a great narrative experience.

But this second attempt to “update” The Last Of Us for a new console generation is motivated purely by profit. Sony is cheaping out; recycling a game that they already have rather than investing in something new. By reusing things like recorded dialogue and motion-capture performances, and by not having to pay a team of writers to come up with a new story, the project can cut costs compared to making a new game from scratch.

There are remasters and remakes that are absolutely worth your time. Resident Evil 2, for example, was remade a couple of years ago from the ground up, and updating a title from 1998 to bring it into the modern-day with a new engine, new voice acting, and so on was absolutely worth doing. It introduced the title to a crowd of new fans who didn’t play it the first time around – and for whom going back to a clunky PlayStation 1 title would be offputting.

The remake of *Resident Evil 2* feels much more worthwhile.

The Last Of Us doesn’t have that excuse. Not only is the PlayStation 3 version still perfectly playable in its own right, the PlayStation 4 remaster is an iterative improvement, bringing sharper graphics and ensuring that the game can be played on both PlayStation 4 and new PlayStation 5 consoles. As I said when the project was announced last year, I can’t imagine it would be worthwhile to resurrect the game for a second time – not so soon after the first two versions were released.

New video game generations have offered diminishing returns over the years. There was a huge difference between games from 1980 to 1990, and from 1990 to 2000. But even by the turn of the millennium, things were slowing down. The difference in graphical fidelity between a game from 2000 and one from 2010 was less noticeable than it had been in previous decades, and the difference between a game from ten years ago compared to a brand-new game released today can be so small that it’s difficult to spot.

Is this image from the PlayStation 3, 4, or 5?

Grand Theft Auto V is the same game fundamentally as it was when it was released in 2013 – the same year as The Last Of Us – and it’s still going strong. There have been tweaks as the game was brought to new consoles, but those changes have been criticised for being incredibly minor. Skyrim, The Witcher 3, and many other games from the past decade likewise hold up incredibly well and are still a ton of fun to play.

The only reason for a project like The Last Of Us Remastered… Remastered to exist is to be a cash-grab. That’s why it was dreamt up and that’s all it will ever be. It might be a good cash-grab – and with a game as good as The Last Of Us at its core it should be, provided the new team doesn’t screw it up – but it’s still a cash-grab. And I don’t want to claim that the people working on it aren’t working hard – I’m sure that they are. I’m sure a lot of energy and passion has gone into this cash-grab from the developers. As someone who worked in the games industry, I know how passionate developers can be, and even when a game isn’t great, good developers will still give it their all. That’s commendable.

But that doesn’t excuse trying to present a project like this as something it’s not. The Last Of Us Remastered… Remastered may end up being decent with pretty graphics and neat animation work that talented developers put a lot of time, effort, and passion into making. But that doesn’t make it any less of a cash-grab. I genuinely hope that it will be good – because I don’t want the reputation of The Last Of Us tainted by being associated with a sub-par remaster. But this isn’t a fundamentally new or even different experience; anyone who’s played the original game won’t need to play this version.

And that’s what makes it a cash-grab. It’s an attempt by Sony to, well, grab as much cash as possible for as little investment as possible. Without spending the big bucks that would be needed to create The Last Of Us Part 3, or any other brand-new game, Sony hopes to grind out a remaster that will save them some money but still rake in the cash from fans of the original game. And that strategy will probably succeed, if past experience is anything to go by.

For just $100, you can own the “Digital Deluxe Edition!”

Buy The Last Of Us Remastered… Remastered if you want. Or don’t. If you haven’t played the game yet, it might even be worth waiting for the new remaster to get the most up-to-date and visually polished experience. It’s definitely a game worth playing… but I’m not convinced that this version will be, at least not for me – nor for most folks who’ve already played it.

But whether it’s good, bad, or mediocre, and regardless of how hard individual developers have worked on it, The Last Of Us Remastered… Remastered is a cash-grab. Trying to pretend otherwise is either pure and selfish dishonesty or abject self-delusion.

The Last Of Us Part 1 will be released for PlayStation 5 on the 2nd of September 2022, and for PC at an unspecified later date. The Last Of Us is the copyright of Naughty Dog and Sony Interactive Entertainment. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for The Last Of Us and The Last Of Us Part II.

What on earth is going on with these far-too-soon remakes? Not only are we getting the visually disappointing Mass Effect: Legendary Edition later this year, but now the 2013 PlayStation 3 title The Last Of Us is apparently being remade as well. What a stupid idea that is. Evidently Sony, a company celebrated across the PlayStation 4’s lifespan for its great crop of exclusive titles, is creatively bankrupt, running out of ideas and being forced to go back to previously-successful titles desperately looking for games to remake or to produce unnecessary sequels to.

The Last Of Us Part II was released last year, and whatever you may think of its merits there can be no denying it was a controversial title. Rather than expanding the franchise or taking it in a new direction, Sony and developer Naughty Dog opted to revisit the same characters – and tacked on a story that didn’t go down well with many fans. Given the sequel’s controversial reception, I wouldn’t have expected that a return to the world of The Last Of Us would have been on the agenda so soon, but there you go.

*The Last Of Us Part II* was poorly-received by many fans.

Forget about the sequel. The original The Last Of Us is one of the best narrative games I’ve played in a very long time, such that I was even able to see past its horror elements – a genre I don’t usually enjoy. The characters were wonderful, the story pitch-perfect, and the setting unique. Eight years on from its original release, it’s still a fantastic game.

Visually, the game looks great. Its levels are tense and atmospheric, and I once described the game’s world as “hauntingly beautiful,” a description I stand by. By 2013, Naughty Dog and other developers were truly able to take advantage of the PlayStation 3’s powerful hardware, and they created a game that looks just amazing.

This screenshot hardly does justice to the visual beauty present in *The Last Of Us*.

So why does it need to be remade?

The answer, of course, is that it doesn’t. As with the Mass Effect trilogy, The Last Of Us is just too recent to see any significant changes or improvements, either visually or in terms of gameplay. Remastering or remaking the game – which has already been done once, shortly after the PlayStation 4 launched – is simply a cheap way for Sony to make money.

Rather than investing time and money in developing a new game, Sony sees a remake of The Last Of Us as a cash cow; a cheap way to reuse and recycle content it already owns into a “new” package that fans will lap up to play on their new consoles. That is, if anyone has been lucky enough to find one of the approximately eight consoles Sony manufactured in time for last year’s launch.

*The Last Of Us* was remastered in 2014 for the PlayStation 4.

To be totally fair, this applies to Microsoft’s Xbox Series X as well. But the PlayStation 5 launched too soon with not enough stock available, and with no plan in place to keep consoles out of the hands of scalpers and touts. The result has been total unavailability of consoles except to players who are willing to pay double the official price – or more – on sites like eBay. This incredibly anti-consumer move was blamed on the pandemic – as everything is these days – but my response to that is simple: if you didn’t have enough supply to fulfil consumer demand in the run-up to launch, you could have simply delayed the damn launch.

I’m sick to the back teeth of companies across the entertainment industry using the pandemic as an excuse for everything. There’s a worldwide shortage of semiconductors, silicon, and other key components in computer chips and other electronics. This is having an effect on PC components, games consoles, phones, and even cars. The smart, consumer-friendly thing for Sony to have done last year would have been to institute a six-month delay, launching the console later this year when more units had been manufactured. As it is, PlayStation 5s are sold out everywhere, a situation unlikely to change any time soon. But we’ve drifted off-topic.

Good luck finding a PlayStation 5 for its recommended retail price!

With so few games on PlayStation 5 right now, and Microsoft’s Game Pass service seemingly coming from nowhere and catching them off-guard, Sony is scrounging around looking for anything to shove on the new console to make it appear to be a worthwhile purchase for players. PlayStation 5 isn’t close to being worthwhile yet, by the way, so if you haven’t been able to find one, don’t worry. You aren’t missing out on much!

PlayStation 5, like its predecessor console, has serious issues with backwards compatibility. “Most” PlayStation 4 games work on the new system, according to Sony, but older titles don’t. So perhaps they see that as an excuse to give a relatively recent, good-looking game like The Last Of Us a facelift? Except, of course, as I mentioned above there’s already a PlayStation 4 version of the game which should be compatible with the PlayStation 5, so even that excuse – poor though it was, as a lack of proper backwards compatibility is Sony’s own fault – doesn’t hold water.

*The Last Of Us* created a hauntingly beautiful post-apocalyptic world.

This is a naked attempt to squeeze more money out of a successful project, and to avoid taking the risks associated with creating something new. If it hadn’t already been done, making this the game’s second remake, I guess it would have slipped under the radar. But the absolutely ridiculous, kind of pathetic situation of remaking the same game twice in less than seven years just makes it laughably obvious.

Instead of selling a copy of The Last Of Us on PlayStation 3 or PlayStation 4 for less than £10 (the PlayStation 4 version is £7.99 on the PlayStation Store at time of writing) Sony clearly plans to push this “remake” as a big deal and slap a hefty price tag on it – perhaps they’ll even try to get away with making it a full-price title. But what would fans get for that money? How can you make a decent-looking game from only eight years ago look substantially better? Mass Effect: Legendary Edition is trying to accomplish that same task, and when I look at that game’s own pre-release marketing material, I can’t even tell which screenshot is from which version. They look so similar it’s not even a joke.

Promo art for *The Last Of Us*. Remember that this game is barely eight years old.

The Last Of Us is in the same boat as the Mass Effect trilogy, and the fact that it had a PlayStation 4 remaster already actually makes it even worse. I thought this was a joke when I first saw the reports, but apparently this is true. Sony actually plans to remake an eight-year-old game for the second time and sell it as new. I’m glad I don’t own a PlayStation 5 if this is what we can expect from the company this generation.

No matter what they decide to officially title it, I hope we can all agree here and now to only ever refer to this abomination as The Last Of Us Remastered Remastered – so as to emphasise what a stupid idea this truly is.

The Last Of Us is out now for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4, with the PlayStation 4 version able to be played on PlayStation 5. The Last Of Us and The Last Of Us Part II are the copyright of Naughty Dog and Sony Interactive Entertainment. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Tag: the last of us new remaster

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The Last Of Us is being remade… for the second time in less than seven years?