the last of us has always been a game that in some way or other is defined by its tech this is probably not the way its creators want you the player thinking about it they'd rather have you in the moment envisioning this rich vibrant narrative experience at the heart of a tense survival horror stealth action game and don't get me wrong it is that it's genuinely one of the best games ever made in my opinion but to me so much of its lasting success lies in those nuts and bolts as much as it does in the script or the mechanics a great deal of its narrative impact for example comes from those little moments those palpably pregnant pauses where a character won't say anything but an errant glance a broken watch will send all kinds of questions cascading through your head about what that character is thinking a glance whose power whose beautiful ambiguity is arguably only made possible thanks to naughty dog's industry-leading facial animation and capture tech rivaled only by a company like rockstar in the detail on show all this to say that when you have a game whose main pool is its storytelling both in cut scenes and its often frantic gameplay and whose tech was already so core to conveying that moment-to-moment narrative when you go to the lengths that naughty dog clearly has in its upcoming remake of that original game in upgrading the last of us tech in nearly every conceivable way you can't help but fundamentally alter how a player experiences that narrative and look before we go further i understand the very prevalent backlash that this game's eye-watering price tag of 65 quid has garnered i really do further encouraged by developer remarks stating that the gameplay of the original would remain untouched leading many to question in what world that price point is justified i get it and we'll come on to whether you should take the plunge or not later on there are valid reasons as i see it for you to hold off but i have to be honest it speaks to just how substantial these visual and technical upgrades are something i'm usually not super bothered about that as a longtime fan i feel like despite the developer's comments to the contrary the texture the feel of a game i revisited just two years ago has shifted dramatically i've been noticing things in its story i never picked up on before i've been playing in a noticeably different way whatever your thoughts on the commerce side of things it becomes clear almost immediately that the last of us part 1 is a changed entity one that to me as someone who'd bear in mind didn't have to pay for a copy playstation sent me review code i still found to be a remarkably exciting prospect and of course the most obvious place to start with this is in those drastically upgraded facial animations because let me tell you if this stuff was industry leading before here it's reached another level entirely like look i have no problem with video game violence but if you thought that sarah scene was hard to watch before now it's downright distressing the generally pained expression found in the original morphing into all these panicked little looks and twitches as this little girl fails to make sense of what's just happened to her rendering that blank look teardrop and all that suddenly greets her anguished dad all the more stark to paraphrase what my pal jordan medler at vgc said to me it turns out watching the life drain from a wee lassie's eyes in this level of excruciating detail is about as far from pleasant as one can get or tell anyone's eyes for that matter stealth killing an enemy infected or otherwise now treats you to a smorgasbord of truly harrowing facial expressions as they desperately painfully grasp for air until that moment where they just give up those eyes that were previously darting around as sarah's were convincingly searching for any way out just roll to the back of their head as they slump to the ground all rendered infidelity that goes beyond that of even the last of us part two in silky smooth 60 frames per second in all seriousness the last of us was already a game that forced you into uncomfortable proximity with the brutality of this world and the intimacy of violence that resulted from that but whereas before i merely found it interesting how the game incentivized engaging in this violence in killing rather than just sneaking past encounters you know an empty battlefield lets you freely scout for much needed supplies here i found myself actively fighting that mechanical incentive i was all too glad to stealth my way past as many enemies as i could even if it meant less crafting materials down the line because i just didn't want to have to witness this stuff any more than i absolutely had to this is what i mean when i say the visual upgrades change the very nature of the game you know you're pressing the same buttons in order to make your character do ostensibly the same things they did nine years ago but i'd be willing to bet the effect it has on most players will have changed considerably i mean even pressing those same buttons is itself functionally distinct from the original thanks to the controller you're pressing them on indeed aside from its world-class animations the implementation of the dual sense here is immediately top tier with maybe the best use of the adaptive triggers seen in any game amongst sony's lineup fully utilizing the device's potential as a tonal and storytelling aid in the way i've previously discussed my desire for at length see besides the impressive directionality of haptic feedback felt across the controller where say sarah nuzzling into a couch sends a subtle enough buzz through the handles that you get an actual physical feeling of pre-outbreak comfort that's about to be aggressively replaced with the violent judders of explosions and gunshots the triggers during said gunfights require legitimate effort to pool as if you were holding firing a real heavy piece of machinery it's to the point that in amongst the still utterly thrilling chaos of enemies rapidly flanking my position as my best laid stealth plans inevitably went to pot i found early on that i couldn't make certain shots because i wasn't pulling down hard enough in amongst the frenzy and panic the dual sense doesn't let you dilly-dally through encounters humming and hawing about whether you should take your chance on that shot as if you could just effortlessly pile more into that enemy's general direction should you miss instead the game now demands a kind of ruthless confidence in your decision making it demands you inhabit the role of this man hardened by 20 years of cold brutal struggle speaking of which though it really bears repeating just how crucial the rejigged visuals are in conveying that struggle for example in the original i always found it a bit odd how little joel seemed to have aged in the two decades separating the sarah incident from where we later find him perhaps a comment on how stressful life always was as a single dad trying to make ends meet i guess here though you see every one of those 20 years in his updated appearance his hair is comparatively ashen the fatigue from decades of implied horror etched into his facial features like the rings of a particularly gnarled oak tree joel has seen some [ __ ] in his time and the game's heightened attention to detail ensures that even just by glancing at him this is now an inescapable fact but that's the thing too while i typically associate the detail of the original game's animation focused storytelling with this kind of deep longing or abject sadness you know the aforementioned watch scenes getting you to ask all these questions about how that trauma still hangs like a tarpaulin and the mental gymnastics joel is having to do in the moment to hide the effect it's clearly still having on him the increase in fidelity means that this sadness is far from the only emotion being captured through a character's face now it's in that specific eye twitch of exasperation when someone tells you a piece of information you just can't be arsed hearing the slight stretching of the skin as joel exhaustedly rubs his face it's a character becoming convincingly distracted by something in the distance while they're talking to you it's those tantalisingly brief moments where ellie will crack a shite joke and in amongst the barbarity of day-to-day survival joel will allow the slightest of smirks to crack through his lips before quickly returning to cold dad stoicism it's become cliche over the years to say that a game looks borderline photorealistic but i can't remember a title that comes close to matching these immeasurably subtle movements and the sheer volume of information they convey it legitimately looks like real people acting now with all the humanity and disquieting horror that that brings i mean thanks to the new visuals begging me to just stop and stare at everything around me it brought a whole new significance to the game's environment like it only really struck me this playthrough that you enter into the gallery part of the history museum through some kind of art restoration facility underneath all these works left in various stages of completion and preservation left to rot once more as the length of time they've been lying there the elements they've been exposed to as nature starts to claw itself back against civilization all becomes extremely apparent previously i treated areas like this as mere corridors now they're lived in places each room its own character with its own past life all of this stuff is absolutely incredible and yet if what i've talked about so far regarding technology and storytelling doesn't fill you with the same kind of excitement it does me i think you are completely justified in your desire to skip this we live in a world ravaged by ongoing worsening economic instability the price of a ps5 is increasing in many regions and here we have a remake of an already remastered game that isn't even a decade old yet asking for 65 quid that is a lot of money for a game that a hasn't been out long enough to get most people wistfully looking back and clamoring for a more modern way to play and b is still readily accessible still incredible on multiple different systems like i say i get it but as a long time fan i see this remake as more of a boutique product intended for the most hardcore of hardcore fans or people just getting into the game for the first time who want the absolute best experience out of it the last of us remains an utterly vital masterpiece as far as i'm concerned and if you can justify the steep cost of entry part one is now the definitive way to play it thank you so much for watching be sure to like and subscribe check out my podcast and follow me on twitch if you're so inclined these videos are made possible by the support of my wonderful patrons whose names you're seeing on screen now they've also been getting access to more 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and charlie yang and with that this has been another episode of writing on games thank you all so much for watching stay safe and i will see you all next time
