There are now rumblings that Naughty Dog’s next project, in addition to its flailing Last of Us Factions multiplayer game, is a remaster of The Last of Us Part II.
This was pulled from a LinkedIn profile of a Naughty Dog employee listing the remaster of the second game as part of his work history. And it seems to blend with earlier reports from Insider Gaming’s Tom Henderson that this was in the works.
The question, of course, is why.
The Last of Us Part II was released barely over three years ago. While yes, that was on PS4, it already has gotten a 60fps performance patch for PS5. The game also already looks like this:
At this point, Naughty Dog doing remasters of its own work has become almost a parody of itself. Between Uncharted and The Last of Us, we have seen I think four remasters so far, and The Last of Us Part 2 would be a fifth.
Just, no. There is no reason on earth that this game needs to be remastered for this console generation. It’s barely three years old, it was one of the best looking games in existence at the time it was released, and it still looks and runs incredible now, especially after the PS5 patch. We routinely see new releases in this generation that still do not look, run or play as good as The Last of Us Part 2. (And god, I don’t know if I can handle a second round of discourse about the game).
One theory is that in addition to you know, trying to make money in general, that this remaster may be planned in time for the release of the second season of The Last of Us on HBO, which will indeed cover at least the first half of Part 2 of the game. I would argue I would rather see them make The Last of Us Part 3 in time for uh, season 4 of the show in a few years, but whatever.
Naughty Dog seems to be in an odd place right now, doomed to infinitely remaster their own, already good-looking games, and now tasked with a large live service offering that has already resulted in layoffs and project paralysis. Supposedly a new, sci-fi IP is coming from the studio much later, and perhaps TLOU 3, but right now, things feel thoroughly bizarre, and I hope this remaster idea turns out to be a rumor rather than fact.
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