The Last of Us Part I

• 1. Introduction

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  The Last of Us Part I, released in 2022, rebuilt almost everything about a famous game and left its story completely alone. Naughty Dog developed it, and Sony Interactive Entertainment published it. It remakes a 2013 game in which the player guides Joel, a man charged with escorting a young girl named Ellie across a ruined United States. The danger comes from cannibalistic creatures, people infected by a mutated strain of the Cordyceps fungus. The narrative of the 2013 original is entirely unchanged. So why spend years rebuilding a game whose plot stays exactly where it was? Who was trusted to lead the work? And did players and critics decide the effort was worth what it cost them?

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• 2. Inheriting the Game

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  Matthew Gallant knew the original game from the inside. He had worked on its combat as a designer, and he later served on Uncharted 4: A Thief's End in 2016. For the remake he became game director, taking the role held on the first game by Bruce Straley.

  Shaun Escayg took the creative director role once held by Neil Druckmann. Escayg had been lead cinematic animator on the original, which was his first game. He then served as creative director on Uncharted: The Lost Legacy in 2017. After that he became creative director and co-writer of Marvel's Avengers in 2020 at Crystal Dynamics. He returned to Naughty Dog in April 2021. The two split the directing duties, and Escayg took charge of the cinematics.

  Gallant said the story landed differently this time, because he had become a father since the original. Escayg described the team's attitude with a phrase that became the project's motto, "a love letter to our fans, to the franchise, and to ourselves as developers". Several members of the creative leadership had worked on the first game.

  The idea had practical roots too. Naughty Dog wanted Part I and Part II to be playable back to back without a jarring jump in technology or visuals. The studio also saw a chance to reach viewers of the television adaptation and new PlayStation 5 owners.

  A spark came from flashback scenes in Part II, where artists had already rebuilt areas and assets from the first game. Gallant recalled colleagues wondering, if "the whole game looked as good as those flashback sequences, how exciting that would be". Work began by moving the game into the engine of The Last of Us Part II, which Gallant had helped shape as lead systems designer.

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• 3. Combat Rethought

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  Eight was the ceiling in the 2013 original. An enemy encounter could involve no more than eight non-player characters, so some of them had to ignore the player whenever others were engaged. On the PlayStation 5, the remake allows up to 128 active characters focused on the player. It also fixed a restriction that kept male and female Infected from fighting at the same moment in certain scenes. The artificial intelligence builds on the technology of Part II. Enemies are more aggressive and tactical, and they investigate and analyze what they find with greater accuracy.

  The old console explained the old compromises. Limits on the PlayStation 3 forced the original team to "hack together" combat sequences, and some of them were pre-scripted. The newer hardware let the developers replace those with dynamic encounters. Gallant found the new technology made the fights more unpredictable.

  The team was just as deliberate about what it refused to import from Part II. It judged the original's combat iconic, so it left the structure largely alone and evolved the melee using tools from the sequel. Going prone was left out, because it would have "broken the gameplay and the combat space" in levels never built for it. The dodge mechanic was dropped as well. It would have demanded reworking enemy attacks and the spaces themselves, and it would have eased the claustrophobia and tension. Gallant put the principle simply: "Joel fundamentally needs to feel different than playing as Ellie".

  The Infected received tweaks of their own, including new Stalker animations and a charge move for Bloaters. New costumes arrived for Joel and Ellie, and an overhauled photo mode added modifiers such as slow motion and infinite ammunition. A permadeath mode, in Gallant's view, raised the stakes of an already tense game.

  A speedrun mode began as a suggestion from a team member who followed the pastime. The developers then consulted professional speedrunners to shape it.

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• 4. Rebuilt Look and Sound

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  Thousands of "micro decisions" were reviewed during the rebuild. Objects judged unimportant or distracting were removed, while others were detailed or redesigned. Escayg wanted every element to leave the player feeling grounded in the world. The team also checked whether any area's design had simply been a workaround for the PlayStation 3. Where it had, the area was rebuilt or given more detail.

  The visual departments studied the original rather than just sharpening it. They focused effort on the scenes and storylines that mattered most. Art director Erick Pangilinan kept reminding colleagues of the purpose behind each scene, since losing track of it could damage scenes later on.

  Art director Sebastian Gromann argued that the original vision had always been about the beauty of the world, not a dark dystopian look. In his view the PlayStation 5 finally allowed that vision, because richer models and shaders supported far more foliage. Polygon counts rose for characters and environments. The original motion capture was reused for the cinematics, while the facial animation was overhauled to match the original performances more closely.

  Some spaces grew. The back offices of the Boston museum gained detail and items, and the university section was reshaped to feel more claustrophobic. Other additions were pulled back. Trees and overgrowth were first added to the military city, then removed once the team decided they were unrealistic for that setting.

  On the console, the game can run at native 4K and 30 frames per second, or at an upscaled resolution targeting 60. With variable refresh rate enabled, both modes can exceed 60 frames per second.

  The sound needed its own overhaul. The game uses the PlayStation 5's Tempest Engine for 3D audio, even in quiet dialogue. Naughty Dog's audio engine was incompatible with that system, so programmers spent more than a year reworking it. Mixing and mastering were rebuilt for clarity. Much of the original sound was kept as iconic, and the actors' original performances were preserved. The newly recorded material included workbench upgrades and murmuration for the Infected, a feature first introduced in Part II.

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• 5. Accessibility Push

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  Brandon Cole, a blind accessibility consultant, flagged a gap while Part II was in production. Visually impaired players were missing environmental context and the unspoken interactions between characters. The schedule left no room to fix it then.

  Gallant, who had co-led Part II's accessibility work, returned to the problem for the remake. Part I's move into the sequel's engine helped, and the team expanded the sequel's features with three presets. Each preset configures settings recommended for players who need hearing, motor, or visual support. Difficulty can also be tuned to change enemy resilience, stealth efficacy, and resource availability.

  For the missing context, the team worked with Descriptive Video Works to create audio descriptions for cutscenes. Writing and recording them proved difficult. Each description had to be brief while still preserving the scene's context and themes. The wider toolkit includes customizable controls, a screen reader, audio prompts, and haptic feedback during dialogue.

  The PlayStation 5 controller does more than assist. Its haptic feedback and adaptive triggers emulate actions such as firing a shotgun or drawing a bowstring. The customizable vibration options were inspired by a review of the Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection from Can I Play That?, which criticized the lack of variability.

  The team also hunted for scenes likely to cause trouble and brought in several consultants, Cole among them. One example was the arcade sequence in The Last of Us: Left Behind. That 2014 expansion, included in the remake, follows Ellie and her best friend Riley Abel.

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• 6. Leak and Launch

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  In April 2021, Jason Schreier of Bloomberg News reported that a remake existed. His report said the project, codenamed "T1X", began at Sony's Visual Arts Support Group studio. It later moved under Naughty Dog's budget after some staff joined in 2020.

  The official reveal came early. A PlayStation Store listing with a trailer and details appeared prematurely on the 9th of June 2022. Later that day the game was announced for PlayStation 5 and Windows at Summer Game Fest. Reactions were mixed. Some journalists and players thought another release after The Last of Us Remastered was superfluous, and they questioned the US$70 price.

  The special editions drew attention of their own. The physical edition includes a SteelBook case and the comic series The Last of Us: American Dreams, first released in 2013, with new cover art. David Blatt, known as Kopfstoff, designed all the key art and covers after becoming known for his fan art of the games.

  The United States-exclusive Firefly Edition for PlayStation 5 sold out within an hour of its announcement. A restock at release sold out within seconds. Several buyers received damaged copies because of poor packaging. Sony offered store discounts or refunds in some cases but no replacements. The Windows Firefly Edition, available in the United States and some European countries, held a digital Steam copy.

  Unlike several earlier Naughty Dog games, development involved no crunch. It ceased by the 11th of July 2022, when the game was submitted for manufacturing. The final pre-launch trailer arrived on the 24th of August, and the game launched on the 2nd of September.

  A two-hour trial for PlayStation Plus Premium members came on the 15th of January 2023, the day the television adaptation premiered. The Windows version, co-developed with Iron Galaxy, was announced at the Game Awards in December 2022. It missed its planned date of the 3rd of March and was delayed in February to the 28th of March.

  The PlayStation 5 version was updated in October 2024 to aim for higher resolutions and frame rates on the PlayStation 5 Pro. A bundle called The Last of Us Complete, pairing Part I with Part II Remastered, arrived digitally on the 10th of April 2025. A physical collector's edition was scheduled to follow on the 10th of July, with a SteelBook case, art prints, and American Dreams.

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• 7. Critics Divided

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  On Metacritic, the PlayStation 5 version earned "generally favorable" reviews. Tom Orry of VG247 called it "one of the best remakes I've ever played", and many reviewers treated it as the definitive way to play. Others asked whether it needed to exist at all, given its price and the earlier Remastered release. Some defended it by comparing it to a film remaster on Ultra HD Blu-ray, an accepted practice in that industry. Critics also lamented the omitted multiplayer mode.

  The absence of story changes split opinion. Jason Faulkner of GameRevolution saw "some huge missed opportunities". Blake Hester of Game Informer felt unchanged narrative beats made the themes look dated.

  The visuals won the loudest praise. Luke Reilly of IGN called the game an effective showcase for the console. Michael Goroff of Electronic Gaming Monthly argued the original matched how players imagined a ruined world, while the remake looks more like the world Joel or Ellie saw: "overgrown and dingy... but it can also be beautiful or even mundane". Sam Machkovech of Ars Technica praised the improvements but said the original did not need a full overhaul like Demon's Souls in 2020. TJ Denzer of Shacknews disliked the fuzzier look of Listen Mode. Dan Silver of The Telegraph thought the new lighting deserved an award.

  Faces were often named the best feature. Reilly and Goroff said the new microexpressions made the acting more effective. Machkovech compared the performances to awarded film work, and Hester found them more accurate and emotive. Denzer wrote that the characters "look far less doll-like and emote far better". Jordan Middler of Video Games Chronicle said the remake captured intentions the original could not.

  The verdict on gameplay was more guarded. Jake Dekker of GameSpot found the encounters more tense and difficult. Kevin Dunsmore of Hardcore Gamer noted that "wonkiness remains", with companions sometimes failing to follow correct paths. Gene Park of The Washington Post praised the realistic gun handling and called Joel's movement "appropriately heavy". Several reviewers judged combat and level design weaker than Part II's, though a big step up from the original. Machkovech said it "still feels like a PlayStation 3 game" at worst.

  Accessibility drew the warmest words. Dekker wrote that it "sets a new standard for accessibility in games". Ben Bayliss of Can I Play That? said it showed "what is possible when a remake is done well", though he noted some mobility problems. Josh Wise of VideoGamer.com felt the controller "added crunch to the combat". Alex Avard of GamesRadar+ found the 3D audio made the Infected more terrifying. Andrew Webster of The Verge played without headphones, and Orry muted the sound entirely.

  The awards followed. The game won Outstanding Visual Effects in a Real-Time Project at the 21st Visual Effects Society Awards. It was nominated for PlayStation Game of the Year at the 40th Golden Joystick Awards, Innovation in Accessibility at the Game Awards 2022, and Technical Achievement at the 19th British Academy Games Awards. PlayStation Blog named it runner-up for Best Accessibility Features and Best Story. Its launch trailer won Gold at the 2023 Clio Entertainment Awards.

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• 8. Port Problems and Sales

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  Minutes before the public release, reviewers of the Windows version were finally given access. That timing set the tone. The version earned "mixed or average" scores on Metacritic, the lowest for any Naughty Dog game.

  Richard Leadbetter of Eurogamer called the port "effectively a beta", citing poor optimization and heavy system requirements. Petter Hegevall of Gamereactor named it the worst optimized PC conversion since Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition in 2021. Phil Iwaniuk of PC Gamer regretted scoring it poorly but said the problems were "a real barrier". Shunal Doke of GamingBolt called it "unplayable". Emanuel Feronato of The Games Machine, by contrast, reported no trouble even on higher settings.

  On Steam, players gave it a "mostly negative" rating across more than 9,000 reviews. They described inconsistent frame rates, crashes, and shader compilation that took hours. Others shared broken character models, vibrant colors, and characters dripping with water. Some players, even on lower-end computers, reported no problems.

  Naughty Dog promised updates targeting shader loading times, instability, graphical faults, and crashes from possible memory leaks. Nathan Ingraham of Engadget saw better Steam Deck performance after the first update, though Valve still listed the game as "unsupported" in early April. Within days Steam reviews rose to "mixed". The game was "verified" on Steam Deck in June.

  Sales told a steadier story. In the United States, the game was the fifth-best-selling title of September 2022, and the fourth-best-selling PlayStation game. In the United Kingdom, it topped the physical chart in its opening weekend. In Japan, 10,954 copies sold in its first week. Within four weeks the Windows version sold 368,000 units and earned US$15.5 million.

  The television adaptation in January 2023 brought a second wave. Weekly sales in the United Kingdom rose 238 percent, or 305 percent with digital sales included. A report by Virtuous and IDG Consulting counted over two million units sold by March 2024, among only two remakes to do so within ten years of their originals. When the game joined the PlayStation Plus catalog in September 2024, players surged 1,225% in the first week, and monthly players rose 29%.

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