The Last Of Us: Part I

Development was led by game director Matthew Gallant and creative director Shaun Escayg, who replaced original directors Bruce Straley and Neil Druckmann. Part I was rebuilt to take advantage of updated hardware, requiring new animations, art direction, and character models to align with the vision of the original development team. The visual departments analyzed the original cutscenes and narrative beats to identify crucial storylines and their original direction and purpose. The team expanded upon the gameplay, technology, and accessibility features of The Last of Us Part II (2020), using its game engine and building upon it with the updated technology. The cutscenes feature audio descriptions, for which the developers collaborated with Descriptive Video Works. Part I supports 3D audio, as well as the haptic feedback and adaptive triggers of the DualSense controller.

The Last of Us: Part I

Naughty Dog hoped the remake would allow Part I and Part II to be played sequentially with no technological or visual discrepancies. They felt new audiences, such as viewers of the television adaptation and new PlayStation 5 players, could be reached. The remake was partially inspired by Part II's flashback scenes, for which the team rebuilt areas and assets from the original game: Gallant said that several team members pondered if "the whole game looked as good as those flashback sequences, how exciting that would be".[28] Development began by transitioning the game to Part II's updated game engine.[28] The game was rebuilt to use the PlayStation 5 hardware, requiring new art direction, animation, and character models.[22] The technological and graphical enhancements were intended to align with the vision of the original game's team. Escayg wanted each element to make the player feel grounded and immersed in the world.[6] The team re-evaluated thousands of "micro decisions" during development, removing objects deemed unimportant or distracting and detailing or redesigning those that required improvements.[27] Areas were re-evaluated to determine if their designs were a result of the PlayStation 3's technical limitations; where appropriate, some areas were rebuilt or further detailed.[27]

Additionally, the standard and digital deluxe editions of The Last of Us Part I are still available for pre-purchase. All pre-purchases will receive bonus supplements and bonus weapon parts for their adventure, while the Digital Deluxe Edition includes early in-game unlocks, cosmetics, and more. Make like a Runner and head over to the following storefronts to pre-purchase your copy now:

In April 2021, Jason Schreier of Bloomberg first reported that a remake of The Last of Us was being secretly developed by Naughty Dog for the PlayStation 5. He noted that the project was originally being developed by the Sony's Visual Arts Service Group studio, however, Sony grew dissatisfied with the studio's progress on the game. Sony reconfigured them into a support studio and tasked Naughty Dog with developing the project, partially due to their other planned titles being at various stages in pre-production and a lack of familiarity with the PS5's hardware.[3] The remake was helmed by game director Matthew Gallant and creative director Shaun Escayg.[2]

Among the most noticeable changes are the facts that foliage is denser, destructible objects are more abundant, and reflections are a standout. The soft lighting is also absolutely stunning, and it\u2019s brimming with details so granular you\u2019ll miss them if you don\u2019t look closely enough. The way rain drizzles down Joel\u2019s rifle and snakes down his wet shirt before dripping realistically off the bunched parts of his sleeves had me stopped in my tracks, as did how the light picks up airborne dust and spores in the dankest levels. It\u2019s an absolutely top-shelf visual showcase of what the PlayStation 5 is capable of.

There have been some moderate redesigns for a couple of key characters, too \u2013 most notably Joel\u2019s smuggling partner, Tess. I\u2019ve seen some resistance to the updated Tess, but I think it\u2019s a minor but smart change. Crafting a Tess that more authentically appears to be a woman in her 40s rather than her 20s paints her more as a generational peer of Joel\u2019s, rather than a woman younger than his own daughter would have been 20 years after the outbreak. The faint hint of a relationship between the two that perhaps hasn\u2019t always been entirely platonic makes way more sense in this context, and the later bond between Joel and Ellie is made all the more special when it\u2019s clearer it\u2019s not the kind of connection Joel could\u2019ve made with Tess previously.

I did grow to miss the larger and regularly more vertical levels of Part II; with a few exceptions Part I\u2019s levels are generally more intimate and compartmentalised, no doubt thanks to their origins of being designed to run on hardware that first debuted when Beyonc\u00e9 was still 33% of Destiny\u2019s Child and Netflix was still only renting DVDs via the post. I also missed the improved melee combat of Part II; Part I doesn\u2019t feature the useful dodge move implemented in the sequel, nor the ability to go prone and crawl. The latter doesn\u2019t feel like a huge loss considering the levels weren\u2019t designed to ever require it in the first place, but the lack of a dodge feels odd considering bringing Part I\u2019s gameplay more in line with Part II\u2019s was a stated aim.

Finishing the story still takes about 20 hours, factoring in Left Behind\u2019s two-and-a-half-hour campaign, and when you do it unlocks a pretty extensive set of outfits, visual modes, and gameplay modifiers. Messing around with costumes isn\u2019t something I particularly value, although if you find adding a bit of individuality to your second playthrough attractive you may feel differently. I guess even I was temporarily distracted at the idea of making Ellie a Gran Turismo fan. I wouldn\u2019t expect to get much mileage out of the visual modes, either. The comic-style filter, which flattens out the detail and throws a black outline on characters and key objects, is perhaps worth a look \u2013 but the bulk of them are simply coloured filters I can\u2019t imagine playing through. The Last of Us but green! The Last of Us but red! The Last of Us but... dark red!

The gameplay modifiers, though, are easily the most appealing as far as I\u2019m concerned, as they\u2019re good old-fashioned cheats (a concept that is sadly virtually extinct in the modern games industry). Infinite ammo and crafting ingredients, slow motion, one-hit kills \u2013 all very neat to experiment with. Blasting infected and bandits to bits with unlimited exploding arrows may seem a bit off-brand in The Last of Us, but it\u2019s bloody fun and more than a little cathartic after being on the run from those bastards for so long.

Nevertheless, The Last of Us Part I manages to more than justify its own existence. This remake improves upon an already masterful game in just about every department. The Last of Us has never looked or played better than it does here on PS5. For newcomers especially, this remake is utterly essential. Read on for our full The Last of Us Part I review.

If you're not familiar with the setup of The Last of Us, the game takes place in a post-apocalyptic United States, where a mutated cordyceps infection that has destroyed society as we know it. The last remaining humans are spread across small camps and quarantine zones. These survivors live in fear of not just the infected, but also hostile groups of raiders, who are willing to resort to extreme measures in order to survive.

The Last of Us encourages people to scrounge around and find items that can aid them in their journey. Crafting is a huge part of the game and a mechanic that players should definitely interact with if they want to survive the trials and tribulations lying in store for them.

Shooting in The Last of Us Part 1 is a major part of the gameplay. Given the limited amount of ammunition in the game, players need to be wary while using their bullets, with a single missed shot being a huge waste of ammo in some instances.

A huge part of The Last of Us Part 1 is roaming around environments and picking up as many ingredients for crafting as possible. Suffice to say, this can become a grating task after a point... which is where accessibility options come to the rescue once again!

Above you see a yellow scan for items and things you can interact with, followed by a red scan for enemies, and lastly, the result of an enemy scan with them glowing red and the reticle targeting them. Using this workaround proved tremendously helpful in situations where I found myself being overwhelmed or when there were simply enemies all over the place and I wanted to be able to pick off the nearest ones even though I was unable to hear them.

This standard version grants you bonus supplements and weapon parts that can be used for increasing your max health, boosting your crafting speed, and upgrading your guns. Most of this gear can be found while playing through the game, but having it from the very beginning gives you a good leg up for the brutal horror game experience that lies ahead.

Late last week Naughty Dog revealed the recommended PC specs for The Last of Us Part 1, with a surprising amount of detail provided in their blog post - down to the exact hardware necessary to obtain 4K 60fps at ultra settings. While the blog post is in some ways self-explanatory and straightforward, reading between the lines there's actually a fair amount we can discern about the port. That's exactly what we did in DF Weekly #102, where PC nerd trio Alex, Rich and Oliver espoused some interesting possibilities ahead of the game's release on PC in almost exactly two weeks' time.

First up, the presence of DLSS and FSR 2.2 is a huge deal for PC players, as it means that users of any modern GPU will be able to play the game at higher frame-rates - particularly important for 'heavy' AAA games like this one - but perhaps equally as important, as it means that there will be a higher-quality alternative to the game's usual TAA, which exhibits some break-up and shimmer on PS5. If these upscaling techniques are used at their maximum quality setting, then we'd expect a cleaner and more stable presentation overall, which would be a nice bonus. 041b061a72