Sony and Naughty Dog have finally announced what must be the worst kept secret in gaming this year: The Last of Us Remastered, a PS4 re-release of last year’s apocalyptic smash hit. Rumours have been circulating about it since the PS4’s launch, and were been given extra credence when Playstation’s Eurasian Software Market Manager Sercan Sulun let slip about the upcoming remaster in an interview, met with a suspicious silence by Sony. Soon after, a listing for the increasingly-less-mythical port showed up on the website of Spanish retailer XtraLife. Then just yesterday, a NeoGaf user found this come up with a broken link on PSN:
After the word went round, and scores of other Playstation owners also found the ad on PSN, it seems that Sony and Naughty Dog finally decided that the cat was well and truly out of the bag and it was time to spill the details. Quoth the blog post:
“Moving our efforts to the PS4 has allowed us to remaster an already phenomenal looking The Last of Us in 1080p with a list of upgrades including higher resolution character models, improved shadows and lighting, upgraded textures, along with even more improvements.”
At this stage the remastered version has been confirmed to include:
- The Left Behind single-player expansion;
- The Abandoned Rerritories and Reclaimed Territories multiplayer packs;
- Commentaries for all cutscenes featuring Creative Director/Writer Neil Druckman, and lead voice actors Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson.
All up, this is looking to be a similar package to the excellent Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition and a smart move by Sony. There are a ton of PS4 owners who defected from other platforms (I should know, I am one of them) who never got to play The Last of Us on its initial release. This title has been my personal gaming white whale in recent times, a game I was so desperate to play I probably would’ve bought a PS3 for it if I hadn’t already been saving to fund a PS4 pre-order. Getting to finally play it with remastered 1080p graphics and the DLC? I’m in there like swimwear.
There’s been no announcement of a price yet, but with the accidental PSN posting quoting $60 we’re probably safe to assume that it’ll be a full-price deal. Ditto with the release date: The blog post only cites ‘Summer 2014’, though the XtraLife’s listing of June 19th as the release date makes some sense. With Drive Club turning into Chinese Drive-ocracy and The Order: 1886 still several months out, Sony are running the risk of going into E3 without a freshly-minted AAA exclusive to boast about. A graphically-boosted re-release of their most critically lauded game in years, on the new hardware and hitting the anniversary of the game’s initial release, could be a good buzz-generator that allows them to somewhat dodge the whole ‘lack of games’ conundrum.
Whatever their plans, here’s hoping this thing lands soon.