14 DAY TRIAL // The PlayStation 4 version of The Last of Us might be the definite incarnation of the video game from Naughty Dog and Sony, but those who pick it up and play it should not expect to see any sort of tweak made to the core gameplay of the title.
The studio has focused on updating the visuals of the experience, allowing gamers to see the entire world they have created in a new light, and there is extra content that players can explore in order to better understand the story.
Neil Druckmann, the creative director working on The Last of Us at Naughty Dog, tells Edge that the decision to keep gameplay unchanged was a hard one, but they felt it was a sign of respect to the game.
He states, “Bruce and I always laugh about this. We have a really hard time playing the game, because we constantly see things and think, ‘Oh, man, I could’ve done that better, I could’ve written that better, that animation pop over there, that transition…’ but once you start going down that road, where do you stop? At what point are you making the experience just different or worse?”
Some fans of The Last of Us will be disappointed to learn that the difficulty level is also unchanged, which means that those who pick up the title on the PlayStation 4 will experience the same frustration as those who played it on the PS3.
Druckmann says that the video game industry has a long and checkered history when it comes to remakes and his team tried to make sure that it did not change their title for the worse.
He adds, “That’s what we put out there, that’s the final experience – now it’s just about a locked frame rate and all the hi-res textures and assets our amazing artists created. I would like to say the game is the game, so I’d like to just bring it over to the PS4 and get a more solid version of the same experience.”
The Last of Us on the PlayStation 4 will be delivered during the third or the fourth quarter of this year.
At the same time, Naughty Dog is working on two other projects for the Sony next-gen console, one of which is an entirely new Uncharted title that will redefine the core ideas of the series and might arrive in 2015.