After having its planned announcement at this year’s Summer Game Fest spoiled, The Last Of Us Part I is continuing to leak all over the place. this time with new screenshots and a clip from the upcoming remake of developer Naughty Dog’s 2013 hit on PlayStation 3. These leaks arrive shortly after the upcoming remake has gone gold, and just ahead of its September 2 PlayStation 5 release date.
The Last Of Us Part I isn’t the first time Naughty Dog and Sony have revisited the PlayStation 3 megahit. As you may know, the PlayStation-exclusive survival horror seems to be competing with Resident Evil 4 and Skyrim for the title of “games we’ll never stop fucking seeing.” In 2014 it received its first remaster in the form of The Last Of Us Remastered for PlayStation 4. This “new” version has been, according to at least one trailer, “rebuilt from the ground up for PlayStation 5,” and features some new gameplay tweaks to bring it up to par with 2020’s popular but controversial sequel. It also features prettier graphics, if that floats your boat.
Thanks to leaks that started popping up on Twitter and YouTube yesterday, we’re getting another preview of the visual changes. In a video titled “The Last of Us Part I - Leaked First PS5 Gameplay Clip,” a critical, spoilery moment in the remake’s opening is available for all the world to see, new graphics and everything.
Twitter account Naughty Dog Central also shared some screenshots of the remake, with direct comparisons to the original. And while no one’s going to deny these do look prettier, a quick glance at the tweet’s comments reveals the tenor of some of the sentiment surrounding this latest remake project.
“Yeah, no, this is OUT OF LINE!! Especially for naughty dog. I am NOT paying 70 bucks on a simple graphic enhancement with NO MULTIPLAYER” read one reply. “Simple graphic enhancement” is certainly a gross oversimplification of the real labor going into this project, but the remake is indeed a refresh of a nine-year-old game without its original multiplayer, and Sony is charging a full 70 bucks for it. There has been pushback from Naughty Dog against describing it as a “cash grab,” but it’s easy to understand folks feeling underwhelmed about the project.
People have never stopped obsessing over the changes George Lucas made to the original Star Wars movies, if for no other reason than it sort of ruins the “moment in time” that those movies inhabited in the ‘70s and ‘80s. I feel the same about The Last Of Us. It was a cool enough PS3 adventure and a nice way to wrap that generation up. A sequel felt somewhat appropriate, but I now feel like the “moment in time” of the original is now spoiled a bit thanks to this unnecessary-feeling remake trying to make itself relevant.