The Last of Us Part I

Synopsis

Twenty years after an infection caused by Cordyceps led to the collapse of civilization, survivors live between military quarantine zones, isolated communities, hostile groups and territories overrun by the infected.

In Boston, Joel, a smuggler marked by the first hours of the catastrophe, receives an unusual assignment: secretly escort a fourteen-year-old girl named Ellie out of a quarantine zone. What was meant to be a relatively short journey quickly takes on a much greater significance when the girl turns out to be connected to a hope many believed had disappeared.

Joel and Ellie then begin a journey across the United States, crossing abandoned cities, wilderness and communities that have developed their own ways of surviving. Over the miles, a mission born out of necessity becomes a far more complex relationship, in a world where remaining human can sometimes require more than simply staying alive.

Overview

Few recent games illustrate the difference between remastering and remaking a work as clearly. The Last of Us had already been enhanced on PlayStation 4 with The Last of Us Remastered. The Last of Us Part I goes much deeper into the foundations. Naughty Dog rebuilds its 2013 game using technologies developed over the following years while preserving almost entirely its narrative structure and the progression of its adventure.

The change is immediately visible in the characters. Faces, glances, movements and micro-expressions now have enough detail to convey reactions that once relied more heavily on voice acting and direction. Joel and Ellie remain the same characters, say essentially the same lines and experience the same events, but their body language carries far more nuance.

The environments undergo a similar transformation. Abandoned buildings, deserted apartments, streets reclaimed by vegetation and once-inhabited areas tell with greater precision what may have happened there before the collapse. This evolution particularly suits a game that has always used its environments to tell stories its characters may no longer even notice.

The gameplay, however, retains the architecture of 2013 much more clearly. Exploration, resource gathering, crafting, melee combat, firearms and stealth still form the core of the experience. Controls and behaviors have been modernized, but Part I does not try to retroactively turn the first game into The Last of Us Part II.

That faithfulness is precisely what makes the remake interesting to discuss. Part I almost completely rebuilds the way The Last of Us presents itself to the player, far less the way it is designed. That is both its strength, its limitation and probably the reason why the relevance of this remake depends so heavily on who is discovering it.

Key takeaways

• This is a remake, not the PS4 remaster. Naughty Dog rebuilt the original experience for PS5 with new models, environments, lighting, animations and gameplay improvements.
• The story remains the one from the 2013 game. Joel and Ellie go through the same fundamental journey, and the remake does not attempt to rewrite its narrative to artificially align it with its sequel or the television adaptation.
• The gameplay is modernized without being completely reinvented. Combat, stealth, exploration and resource management remain built around the principles of the original game.
• Left Behind is included directly. The chapter centered on Ellie and Riley, originally released as an expansion for the first game, is now included alongside the main adventure.
• Accessibility is one of the major evolutions. Cinematic audio description, assisted navigation, sound cues, visual and audio settings, customizable controls and dedicated vibration options greatly expand the ways the experience can be adapted.

PANACHES review

The Last of Us Part I asks a slightly strange question: at what point does a game that is still perfectly understandable become old enough to be rebuilt?

Only nine years separate the original game from this remake. In between, a remastered version had already made it possible to play The Last of Us under better conditions on PlayStation 4. Part I therefore cannot rely on the disappearance of its source material or some insurmountable technical incompatibility. The old game was still doing just fine.

The reason for the project has to be found elsewhere.

It appears first in the faces. The Last of Us has always placed enormous importance on what happens between two lines of dialogue: a diverted glance, a hesitation, a character who does not answer immediately. In 2013, Naughty Dog was already remarkably skilled at creating this illusion. Part I reduces the distance even further between the actors' intentions and what we perceive on screen.

That precision matters because The Last of Us is less interesting when it talks about monsters than when it observes what human beings do to one another while trying to survive. The infected create the world. Joel and Ellie give it meaning. Their relationship develops slowly, often through ordinary conversations, silences or gestures the game sometimes refuses to underline.

The remake also strengthens one of the environments' essential qualities. Abandoned cities are not merely combat arenas covered in vegetation. An apartment, a child's bedroom, an abandoned note or a shop turned into a shelter can tell the story of one small disappearance among millions of others. The visual reconstruction gives more substance to this everyday archaeology.

It is when control returns directly to the player, however, that the project's limitation becomes more visible. Encounters are cleaner, enemies more believable and the overall experience smoother, but the skeleton remains that of a game designed a decade earlier. Spaces are often structured around a very recognizable sequence of exploration, combat and transition, while certain environmental puzzles reveal their age rather quickly.

That is not necessarily a flaw. Deeply altering those elements would also have changed the rhythm of a work whose staging relies precisely on this structure. But it creates a curious contrast: the world sometimes seems to belong to a more recent generation than the game living inside it.

And then there is the question of the price of memory.

For someone discovering The Last of Us for the first time, Part I is probably the most coherent entry point today. For someone who already knows every street, every encounter and every silence, the proposition naturally becomes harder to measure. A reconstruction can be remarkable without producing a new work.

That may be the best way to look at this remake. The Last of Us Part I does not try to prove that the 2013 game needed to be replaced. It shows how far a work can be restored when its appearance is rebuilt without trying to rewrite its memory.

The result is not essential for everyone. But what it preserves remains powerful enough that, beneath this new skin, Joel and Ellie's journey retains exactly the same ability to make the player uncomfortable when they realize that surviving and doing what is right do not always mean the same thing.

Good to know

• The Last of Us Part I was released on September 2, 2022 for PlayStation 5. It is a complete remake of The Last of Us, originally released on PlayStation 3 in 2013.
• It should not be confused with The Last of Us Remastered, the enhanced version of the original game released on PlayStation 4 in 2014. Part I rebuilds the experience using Naughty Dog's more recent technology.
• A PC version was released on March 28, 2023 on Steam and the Epic Games Store. It marked the first appearance of a The Last of Us game on PC.
• The additional adventure Left Behind is included in The Last of Us Part I. It notably explores part of Ellie's past and her relationship with Riley.
• Unlike the original game and its PS4 remaster, The Last of Us Part I has no multiplayer mode. The experience is entirely focused on the single-player campaign and Left Behind.
• Naughty Dog brought back the extensive accessibility options developed for The Last of Us Part II and expanded them further. The remake notably introduces audio description for cinematics and the ability to convey certain dialogue through the DualSense's haptic feedback.
• The PS5 version also makes use of DualSense features, including haptic feedback and adaptive triggers.
• The Last of Us Part I and The Last of Us Part II Remastered were later brought together in The Last of Us Complete on PlayStation 5.
• SensCritique currently displays an average score of 8.5/10.