The Last Of Us Part 1 Just Went Gold - So Where's The Gameplay?
‘Going gold’ is a phrase that hasn’t quite broken into the gaming mainstream yet. For devs it’s a major milestone, for journalists it’s one of the most significant news stories pre-launch, and for the hardcore crowd it’s one of the best ways to dial up hype. For most players though, they’re rarely aware it has even happened, and they understand what it means even less. Essentially it means the game is finished, but there’s a bit more to it than that. The Last of Us Part 1 just went gold much earlier than expected, so it’s probably worth digging into it.
When I say it means the game is ‘finished’, that’s never really true these days. In the old days where games were made, scanned onto discs, and then sold in shops, going gold meant they were ready to be scanned. These days, it doesn’t quite work like that. Games are still scanned onto discs, but an increasing number are sold digitally, plus even physical copies are subject to day one patches and various tweaks down the line as devs spot (or players report) bugs and glitches that either weren’t detected internally or weren’t judged to be game-breaking enough to cause a delay when the opportunity to patch is right there.
Related: It Doesn’t Matter If The Last Of Us Remake Is A Cash Grab
The Last of Us Part 1 going gold means Naughty Dog is fully committed to the launch date and sees no chance of a delay, so is going to start making the discs. The devs won’t stop working, but at this stage it’s the refinement (refining on refinement, given the task at hand) portion of the development that a day one patch fixed. During the review period for Horizon Forbidden West, the game was patched to stop the texture pop-in, and then patched again at launch for a bug sweep. Subsequent
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