Last Of Us - 2022 Remake (careful with spoilers Plz)

[mushashi]

28 minutes ago, dumpster said:

As said earlier, it's the difference between remake and remaster.  Resident Evil 2 is a remake - they take the general idea characters and story and create the game again with current hardware capability. The result is transformative. 

 

To remaster, all you need to do is upscale it all.  It's not the big ask to remaster with automated tools upscaling everything and a tweak to the engine to make it 60fps.  Or you could redraw it all by hand, redo all dialogue, motion capture it all again... But what would be the point?

 

Bluepoint Games would probably disagree strongly, having done both types of updates in their time.

 

Remastering games the way you heavily imply developers do, by pressing the remaster button essentially seems a very naive interpretation of the effort required.

 

Even merely porting a game to a different system can take a whole lot of effort, the port to button also doesn't exist in real life

[Benny]

There is indeed a huge amount of effort involved. With disappointing or at worse pointless results if it's not done in the right way.

[dumpster]

It has been proven by the hacker community that a number of PS3 remasters simply contained an emulator and ISO on the disk.  I know it's going to vary from game to game and format to format, but in the case of a game like TLOU, a massive amount of the work is already done, to the highest standard it could be.  For example, the motion capture, audio recording etc, all stuff that is already done. £70 is taking the piss.  

[Mystacon]

7 minutes ago, dumpster said:

It has been proven by the hacker community that a number of PS3 remasters simply contained an emulator and ISO on the disk.  I know it's going to vary from game to game and format to format, but in the case of a game like TLOU, a massive amount of the work is already done, to the highest standard it could be.  For example, the motion capture, audio recording etc, all stuff that is already done. £70 is taking the piss.  

Well in that case nobody will buy it and Sony will learn their lesson right?

 

Supposedly this has been rebuilt from the ground up for PS5. Are you implying that this requires a minimal amount of work? Because I don’t remember anyone complaining when Bluepoint remade Demon’s Souls and charged £70 for it. Or is that different somehow? Would it be ok if Bluepoint had developed the remake instead?

[BitterToad]

I think there's a few things at play here but the biggest is something we can't judge yet. How it feels to play. The Last of Us was good! Fine! Alright! A perfectly fine game catapulted to legendary status by the world, the characters and the story. Then The Last of Us Part II came along and just totally blew it out of the water. The new animations and tools made the combat basically best in class for these third person linear action/stealth games. I'd honestly put it up there with Combat Evolved just in the fun you could have with dispatching enemies and the way you could switch between quiet and loud and jump in and out of stealth and back again turned it into a kind of slimmed down MGSV at times. I genuinely thought it was incredible and it totally surprised me with that. 

 

If they've updated the game to play as well as Part 2 I don't really care if the buckles on Joel's bag aren't quite up to scratch texture wise. I think there's a slight issue in Ellie is a much more lithe and limber character and it might look a bit weird to see Joel throwing himself around in the same way but I'm really excited for any opportunity for more of that combat. 

 

£70 though? Fuck off Sony. A double pack for that might, might just about be worth it. But there's absolutely no excuse for a remake of a previously remastered game costing that much money. Even if people say it plays better than Part 2 there's no way I'm going near it until it's £40 at most. 

[Mystacon]

As much as I’m defending it, I totally get why people are upset by the £70 price tag, it IS a lot for a game that’s already seen a remaster.
 

But it pisses me off a bit when we don’t know the whole story of what’s changed and how much work is really involved, and everyone gets in line with their pitchforks. You might think it’s a dick move regardless, but YOU. DO. NOT. HAVE. TO. BUY. IT. Vote with your wallet! Send them a message!

 

And yet in the end I BET there’ll be a bunch of those same people who’ll get whipped up in the hype and buy it anyway.

[mushashi]

People are bitching purely about the 'lack of effort' on the visual update front, but nobody outside of Naughty Dog has much of a clue what they've done to the actual game part of it. It would seem wise to see what alterations they've felt compelled to make to the actual game part of it before complaining about price. And much like any product, don't like it, vote with your wallet*

 

If this has consumed years of manpower at one of the most expensive to run developers going, then unsuprisingly, they are going to charge a premium price for a premium product which has required top talent to produce. It's been in development since ~2019-2020 when Naughty Dog essentially got given all the money to do it after Hermen Hulst wasn't happy with VASG's efforts and the amount of money they were spending on their initial prototype.

 

 

*though given this is a remake of a 10 Million+ selling game, I think management are confident the money will have been well spent on this project.

[Jolly]

10 minutes ago, Mystacon said:

As much as I’m defending it, I totally get why people are upset by the £70 price tag, it IS a lot for a game that’s already seen a remaster.
 

But it pisses me off a bit when we don’t know the whole story of what’s changed and how much work is really involved, and everyone gets in line with their pitchforks. You might think it’s a dick move regardless, but YOU. DO. NOT. HAVE. TO. BUY. IT. Vote with your wallet! Send them a message!

 

And yet in the end I BET there’ll be a bunch of those same people who’ll get whipped up in the hype and buy it anyway.

 

Call it a hunch, but I reckon a lot of people criticising it aren't going to buy it. I'm not sure why you keep presenting that like a option that nobody has thought of. 

 

Of course, it's a bit difficult to not buy it yet, because it's not out. So I guess all that's left to is talk about it. Like what people are doing. 

[Mystacon]

1 minute ago, Jolly said:

 

Call it a hunch, but I reckon a lot of people criticising it aren't going to buy it. I'm not sure why you keep presenting that like a option that nobody has thought of. 

 

Of course, it's a bit difficult to not buy it yet, because it's not out. So I guess all that's left to is talk about it. Like what people are doing. 

You’re absolutely correct, a lot of people criticising it won’t buy it. And they quite rightly shouldn’t. I’m not sure I said anything to the contrary, so I’m glad we’re on the same page.

 

And as for ‘talking about it’, are you implying that I’m saying we shouldn’t? Because I’m not. I’m simply saying it’s a bit much to grab your pitchfork and ‘complain’ about something that you don’t know all the details of. 

[CarloOos]

I see we’re trying to use pin-sharp clarity as some sort of objective measure of ‘good’ video game aesthetics again.
 

I suspect the main reason the clothing looks less defined (in this compressed, pre-release video at least) is because cloth absorbs light, and they’re now using a more physically accurate lighting model for different materials. The second potential reason could be that the characters clothing is now animated where it was previously completely static, combined with motion blur.
 

As for the actual, creative changes in lighting, I suppose we’ll have to see those in context. The golden-hour shadows of the original school gymnasium definitely look a lot more effective in isolation. 

[rafaqat]

14 hours ago, Mystacon said:

As much as I’m defending it, I totally get why people are upset by the £70 price tag, it IS a lot for a game that’s already seen a remaster.
 

But it pisses me off a bit when we don’t know the whole story of what’s changed and how much work is really involved, and everyone gets in line with their pitchforks. You might think it’s a dick move regardless, but YOU. DO. NOT. HAVE. TO. BUY. IT. Vote with your wallet! Send them a message!

 

And yet in the end I BET there’ll be a bunch of those same people who’ll get whipped up in the hype and buy it anyway.

we are sending a message by morning about it online. That’s part of what they use as feedback.  The internet buzz or lack off.  It’s not JUST whether you buy the game or not.  Copies sold is obviously the big indicator for them. 

[Kevvy Metal]

15 hours ago, dumpster said:

It has been proven by the hacker community that a number of PS3 remasters simply contained an emulator and ISO on the disk.  I know it's going to vary from game to game and format to format, but in the case of a game like TLOU, a massive amount of the work is already done, to the highest standard it could be.  For example, the motion capture, audio recording etc, all stuff that is already done. £70 is taking the piss.  

This is absolutely not true for any remaster that’s actually good, and I basically do not believe that a PS3 emulator was ever actually used. 
Naught Dog have outline in a DF interview all the efforts and ground work they covered getting the original TLOU remaster working on PS4. Getting the Multithreaded code written for the Cell actually working on an x86 CPU. 
My background covers remastering as I was involved in the remaster of ODST for the Masterchief collection, and I can ensure you that was no mean feat to get it working and fully tested, ready for consumers. It was a real challenge.  

[Mystacon]

20 minutes ago, rafaqat said:

we are sending a message by morning about it online. That’s part of what they use as feedback.  The internet buzz or lack off.  It’s not JUST whether you buy the game or not.  Copies sold is obviously the big indicator for them. 

Well can you not at least wait and moan about it once the final game is released? Or will that not allow you to fulfill your moaning quota for the month?

[rafaqat]

18 minutes ago, Mystacon said:

Well can you not at least wait and moan about it once the final game is released? Or will that not allow you to fulfill your moaning quota for the month?

 

Hmm.  I didn't feel like I've posted in this thread having a moan. I was more just responding why people would feel like both approaches are valid.   Not sure why you're having a go at me over that observation that I have moaning quota that I'm reaching for.

[Mystacon]

11 minutes ago, rafaqat said:

 

Hmm.  I didn't feel like I've posted in this thread having a moan. I was more just responding why people would feel like both approaches are valid.   Not sure why you're having a go at me over that observation that I have moaning quota that I'm reaching for.

Apologies, it was meant as more of a general comment on those that are moaning about it rather than targeted specifically at you.

[deerokus]

Only positive comments allowed!

 

70 quid is too much for *any* game. Without exception. It's just even more egregious in this case.

[mikeyl]

If we have to keep referring to this game as £70 even though a £50 link was posted right at the start, then we aren’t allowed to say Gamepass is £1 a year or whatever.

[Benny]

It's actually £0 a year if you have MS reward points

[Ferine]

You don't have to be excited for the game, or ever intend to buy or even play it. If you want to actually talk about creative or financial decisions, go right ahead.

 

However, the vitriolic tone of this thread literally stifled me from discussing the remake. Wading into that was such an exhausting thought I've half-written and deleted posts a few times; the disparity of effort required to make baseless, negative comments and counter such claims is both draining and all too familiar. Isn't that a bad sign if you genuinely want to discuss games in good faith?

 

Anyway, I'll try to keep things structured and concise.

 

What's in the trailer:

• Every graphical asset is new, of comparable quality to Part 2.
• Lighting is entirely redone; likely required as they'll be using physically-based materials this time.
• Facial animation is redone. The original was hand-animated based on reference footage, so they're doing another pass befitting the higher fidelity models.

 

What isn't in the trailer:

• The game will have the sequel's impressive raft of accessibility options.
• They are making mechanical changes to combat and traversal, currently unspecified.
• “[M]ore intricate environments and creative reimaginings of familiar spaces”, presumably to accommodate the above.
• Neil Druckmann mentioned AI changes on stage.
• DualSense features, for those interested. (Me.)

 

What is the context of the remake:

• The project was initially pitched and worked on by one of Sony's support studios, the Visual Arts Services Group. It was then shifted to Naughty Dog as Herman Hulst reportedly wasn't happy with its progress.
• The HBO TLoU show will release next year, potentially bringing in a new audience.
• The game (and presumably sequel) will also be coming to PC for the first time.

 

Note that most of the comparisons in this thread are comparing cutscenes, which were prerendered on PS3/PS4 using higher quality assets and lighting. Naughty Dog shifted to doing everything real-time from Uncharted 4, so it seems fair to assume that will be the case here.

 

Here are a few comparisons of in-game scenes. They're scavenged shots so the quality's not the best, but they highlight some of the key differences:

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

Don't think what they're making is worth £70? Totally understand, I'm not going to be buying it at launch myself. But judge the remake for what it actually is, not some strawman that's been constructed to get annoyed at.

 

[Broker]

I’m sure they’re spending a lot of time and effort on this, probably as much as they would on a new game so I get why they’d sell both for £70. Other than raking in the cash though, I’m not sure why they’d rebuilt a game from the ground up that already looks so good. It was easily the best looking game on the PS3, and the PS4 remaster is gorgeous. Their facial animation is the best in the industry. And the game is easily playable on current hardware. It all seems a bit creatively bankrupt. 
 

Demon’s Souls I feel made more sense as it was trapped on PS3, unplayable through BC and ugly as fuck. 

[scoobysi]

16 minutes ago, Ferine said:

• The HBO TLoU show will release next year, potentially bringing in a new audience.

I’m surprised they didn’t actually align with the cast in the TV series, I thought that might have been a decent selling point. Assuming it’s the same characters, which I’ve no idea if it is.

[Benny]

Oh but can you imagine the internet wailing and gnashing of teeth if they did that?

[Thor]

7 minutes ago, scoobysi said:

I’m surprised they didn’t actually align with the cast in the TV series, I thought that might have been a decent selling point. Assuming it’s the same characters, which I’ve no idea if it is.

It is the same characters, they even have Merle Dandridge reprising her role as Marlene.

[scoobysi]

10 minutes ago, Thor said:

It is the same characters, they even have Merle Dandridge reprising her role as Marlene.

Ah, so it is the same people for Ellie etc.? That’s cool.

[Thor]

15 minutes ago, scoobysi said:

Ah, so it is the same people for Ellie etc.? That’s cool.

The TV series? Same characters, not the same actors. 

[PaB]

56 minutes ago, scoobysi said:

I’m surprised they didn’t actually align with the cast in the TV series, I thought that might have been a decent selling point. Assuming it’s the same characters, which I’ve no idea if it is.

I’m think they may have struggled to convincingly cast a 38 year old as a 14 year old . 

[PaB]

3 hours ago, deerokus said:

Only positive comments allowed!

 

70 quid is too much for *any* game. Without exception. It's just even more egregious in this case.

For you, maybe. Not for me . 

[scoobysi]

2 minutes ago, PaB said:

I’m think they may have struggled to convincingly cast a 38 year old as a 14 year old . 

Ha ha yeah, I meant put the TV actors into the game initially.

[scoobysi]

I’ve just upgraded to the UC Legacy Of Thieves Collection on PS5 and UC4 looks stunning plus being able to get back into a game within a few seconds using the activity cards is brilliant. I’m suddenly more interested in this, not £70 more interested but definitely interested to see how much it’s been upgraded.

[bear]

I was wondering if they should have done some sort of time limited upgrade offer for people who own the PS4 version and if that would help or hinder the games overall performance. Do something like 50% off if you upgrade to the PS5 version inside the first three months of its release. Sure you'd make less per sale but you'd also probably get some people who wouldn't otherwise be interested to pay for the upgrade as they'd be getting a deal. 

 

I'm just posting this to get the idea out of my head.