Originally published at: The Last of Us: Part II will be remastered only three years after release | Boing Boing
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I would love to see Naughty Dog come up with new IP Or maybe make the teased sequel at the end of A Thieves End
The only thing I can even imagine that would keep this from being an just-plain-nonsense timeline for a remaster is if there were some specific concessions made for the PS4 that they really didn’t love even at the time and are looking to kill off.
Still doesn’t imply that it’s necessarily a particularly compelling buy; but going from targeting the Jaguar-based CPUs, GCN-era GPU; and 8GB of RAM of the PS4 to Zen2/RDNA2, 16GB of RAM; and significantly better baseline storage performance is a pretty big jump; probably a bigger one than 3 years of average-PC spec drift.
What’s less clear is exactly what PS4 baggage they are looking to kill that would justify a remaster: My understanding is that Part II did actually successfully launch on the PS4; so this isn’t a Cyberpunk 2077 situation; where the game’s rehabilitation basically required admitting that it was never actually a PS4 title; and the version that’s actually worth playing is the current gen only one.
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Oof. If this is actually involves significant improvements, it suggests the cost of making a AAA game just went up substantially. If it doesn’t, it’s just a way of milking an existing game for more sales.
I rolled my eyes at the reference to “lost levels.” They weren’t “lost” - they were deliberately not put in the game, either because they were unnecessary and/or weren’t working out. (Probably not because they didn’t have the time/resources to finish them, given the enormous time/resources that were spent making the game.)
The ever-decreasing gap in between the release of the original game and the “remaster” isn’t a good sign for the game industry, really. It indicates desperation, if nothing else.
Given how much they spend making games ($220 million for The Last of US 2), the risk involved in making something new would be prohibitive.
I don’t know what’s going to happen to the AAA portion of the industry - as costs continue to rise, there will be fewer and fewer new IPs, and old IPs will eventually produce a sequel whose sales will be low enough to sink the franchise. Studios would have to start off making sub-AAA games, then scaling up sequels if they’re popular enough. For that transition to work though, the studio has to have the institutional knowledge of how to make AAA games before they made any.
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