The last of us
Naughty dog
We’re approaching the release of The Last of Us Part 1 Remake on September 2nd, in which Naughty Dog returns to one of its most treasured wells for the third time. This time it’s not a remake, it’s a remake, and as such it comes with a certain… dose of controversy.
This past week, there was a “leak” of gameplay from the game that was released before it was copyrighted, and the idea is that the game “doesn’t look as good” and doesn’t include gameplay improvements, just visual changes.
As for what the game looks like, I feel like I’m more inclined to trust actual, official footage of it rather than a leak from a single player, and it seems as a response Sony has released a new feature that has a lot of footage showing the gameplay looks good. I mean, maybe it won’t be quite on the level of The Last of Us Part 2, but I don’t think it was reasonable to expect 1:1 parity in a completely different generation, remake or not.
“Gameplay improvements” are debatable. The new video shows how the game has done a lot of new haptic things with DualSense, which some might consider gameplay improvements, but no, it probably won’t have the exact same UI/functionality as TLOU Part 2.
Before all of that, there was the “money grab” argument, which I don’t… really understand what that means in this context. Like, of course, Sony greenlit this project because they thought it would… make money. If anything, they’re taking a pretty big risk that players want a third shot at the game after the original and the first remasters. And it’s a risk to price it at $70 as a brand new game, but I don’t see how that’s “offensive”.
It’s kind of the ultimate “if this sounds like too much, don’t buy it” situation, and I feel like the types of people who keep using the $70 price tag as a stick are mainly Xbox console warriors trying to take offense to the name Sony players don’t seem to care that much. Either you like the series and will pay for it, or you don’t care that much, and the difference between $60 and $70 probably wouldn’t tip you over the edge either way. (I maintain that Sony’s push for $70 games in general isn’t great, but that’s a debate for another day).
I just don’t understand why this game is so controversial. If the remake doesn’t deliver enough for that $70 value, it will fail, and that’s a mistake that hurts no one but Sony and Naughty Dog. But my guess is that they bet correctly that there are enough Last of Us die hards or new players who missed out the first time around to make it worth it. Considering we’re dealing with three generations of Grand Theft Auto 5, I don’t think it’s the craziest idea in the world for Sony to have three versions of one of its most beloved games of all time.
We’ll see how it pans out once it’s in the wild, but I really haven’t seen or heard anything about it so far to justify all the fights I’m seeing for it, many of which feel pretty disingenuous.
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Take my science fiction novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
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