The Last of Us Part 1 Performance Review

ign.com:

Naughty Dog has returned with a reimagining of arguably its greatest work to date. Not quite a ground-up remake but much more than a remaster, The Last of Us Part 1 on PlayStation 5 is an extremely effective meld of the old and the new.

The story of Joel and Ellie needs no introduction, and nothing has changed here on that front. What has changed is the experience, thanks to the updated Naughty Dog engine that powered the sequel. This reinvigorated PS5 version has benefited greatly – but it is not a case of simply porting things over, as this is likely based on the PlayStation 4 Remastered code, which has been updated with the latest rendering technology within the updated Sequel’s engine. Today we’ll be digging into the improvements in the new version, the performance modes available, and how everything looks and plays compared to the original version.

Many new rendering techniques have helped bring The Last of Us up to date, such as the oil painting-like materials in the world, impeccable character models, and skin rendering complete with movie-level physically-based shading. This is the single biggest leap from either of the previous two editions, and many of the models are the ones we saw in the sequel. The animation and bone rigs of faces have also been improved with significantly better vowel forming of mouths and a wider emotive set of facial expressions. Some characters have also been redesigned from scratch, with Tess standing out as a drastic shift from the original. Changes to faces can be subjective, but the increase in detail, photorealism, movement, and sheer fidelity cannot be argued. The quality here is exceptional and nearly brings Part 1 in line with its 2020 sequel.

The “nearly” is because not