Advance publicity materials promised the game had been rebuilt from the ground up to take advantage of the PS5’s processing power, and it’s difficult to overstate how much the new background textures, character models, and animations add to the immersive experience. Ultimately it's sad a cynical commercial decision will overshadow Naughty Dog’s artistic achievements because in many respects The Last of Us Part 1 is an aesthetic and technological triumph. Even newcomers are unlikely to consider this the no-brainer purchase it should be. This frankly short-sighted cash grab will force fans of the series to think long and hard about whether they can afford yet another version of a game they likely already own at least once, no matter how much they'll enjoy it. Despite the game’s PS3 heritage, The Last of Us Part 1 comes with a hefty PS5 price tag – and while it's easy to see where the money has been spent in every pristine pixel, £70 would still be an audacious ask even if its audience wasn’t caught in the middle of a crippling cost of living crisis.
It’s even harder to defend Sony’s pricing strategy. Although that argument holds less sway here when you consider The Last of Us has already sold over 20 million copies, is yet to blow out the candles on its tenth birthday cake, and is still perfectly playable on any of the 100 million-or-so PlayStation 4s currently in global circulation. The preservation angle is arguably more weighted in videogames’ favour given that, in this post-digital age, it’s rare that cultural artefacts from other media are rendered obsolete by the demands of the hardware required to access them.
But in contrast to most videogame ventures, remade films and TV shows tend to require a fraction of the time commitment from the consumer, and typically bring something creatively new to the table beyond shot-for-shot symmetry. Other entertainment industries readily revisit classic content too, of course. And that, evidently, is part of the problem.) (In my defence, this is my third playthrough of the game, having already endured and survived the post-apocalyptic odyssey in both its original PS3 incarnation and also its PS4-era remastered form. Does the videogame industry have a problem with the repackaging and preservation of its past? It's a poser I found myself returning to more than once while playing this cutely rechristened revision of Naughty Dog’s 2013 masterpiece, The Last of Us.
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