The rumored, then debunked, then accidentally revealed, then denied, now officially announced remastered version of The Last of Us will be hitting the PS4 soon. Sporting a new REMASTERED subtitle, along with all DLC (including the recently released Left Behind episode) it is alleged to be available this June via PSN as a Day 1 Digital release, and retail.
Now, I really don’t have a problem with the remastering trend in general. Our last console generation made a great case of upscaling every great game we didn’t have the technology to experience in a full HD res, and it was a safe gamble, with details popping out of our newfangled flatscreens in a way that CRT screens were remiss to.
However, though the end of any console generation contains that transitional moment when we realize just how much we were suffering all along, I’m having a hard time making that exact same case for The Last of Us: Remastered. Aside from it having been out less than a year, the game was already gorgeous, a masterclass of late-gen technology only Naughty Dog and the likes of Rockstar North’s Grand Theft Auto V can muster.
While a game like Shadow of the Colossus pushed the PS2 to limits only its remaster made clearly apparent, that clearly isn’t the case here. Even if you increase the resolution to a full 1080p, and double the frames-per-second to 60, it won’t fundamentally change the core experience that already earned TLoU hundreds of game of the year awards. The same core experience that has helped the game sell more copies than there are PS4s currently in homes worldwide. The experience that is still currently selling healthy in this gen. Why, before the nostalgia can even set in? Why are you necessary?
The first trailer seems to have trouble answering that question too, being content to do little other than rattle off the hundreds of awards the game has gotten, along with a brief 10 seconds of unremarkable cutscene. That is at least, unremarkable from the perspective of an audience possibly waiting for the same justification for this repeat.
…Don’t you say “Game of the Year” edition.
