Naughty Dog is badly named, because Sony has trained its studio very well to do only one thing: impressive action games, but which, by their linearity, boil down to long roller coaster rides. True copy of the original in more beautiful and polished, The Last of Us Part I fulfills the order. But did we need it?
The Last of Us, The Last of Us Remastered, The Last of Us Part I. Since its initial release in 2013 on PlayStation 3, we’re now on the third iteration of Joel and Ellie’s journey across a shattered United States, hoping to find a vaccine against a fungal infection that’s turning people into zombies.
Since the original game was released at the very end of its platform era, one could understand the interest of a version with more stable performance and higher resolution for the PlayStation 4. But the PlayStation 5 being backward compatible with the latter, why put so much effort into redoing what is already there, with a little more foliage and more beautiful characters?
And above all, why return to The Last of Us ? Because this game, adored by critics when it was released, is above all a product of its time, for better and, above all, for worse. At this time in the history of video games, the big-budget studios aspired at all costs to see their products be considered works of art. The result was games that copied the codes of cinema instead of emphasizing the strengths of the medium: systems and interactivity.
How else to explain this shocking scene of the prologue where the daughter of our protagonist is murdered in cold blood while he carries her in his arms? Could Joel take another path? Keep his revolver with him for self-defense instead of lending it to his brother? Was there a better way to negotiate with this murderous soldier in order to perhaps save the life of his child? Reroll a save as much as you want, the player will never be able to do anything about it.
No. We are forced to stand there, helpless, watching a pre-rendered sequence with consequences decided in advance. And those cutscenes set the tone for the rest of the game. Because the sections of the game where control of the character reverts to the player aren’t fundamentally that interactive either.
Certainly, the series of arenas filled with zombies where we must mix discretion and resource management form beautiful puzzles to solve. But how many times have we sighed at what at first seemed like a dead end, only to spot the subtle yellow elements in the environment indicating that this was indeed the way to go? How many dumpsters to move and climb on in order to reach a higher platform? How many boards? How many ladders?
This remake confirms it: The Last of Us has aged badly. In the end, we could very well have been content to replay the remastered version in front of a touch of nostalgia. Let’s hope for Naughty Dog that Sony gives it a little more leash length for its next project. The studio will need it if it wishes to maintain the esteem of the environment.