'The Last of Us Part I' directors explain why the game stayed so true to the original
Aside from whether The Last of Us Part I is worth the $70 asking price, the question surrounding this remake is how much the original 2013 game was going to change. Would developer Naughty Dog treat this as a total do-over, changing the level design, gameplay mechanics and player upgrades? It has become obvious over the last few weeks, as Sony released a handful of preview videos ahead of today's release, that that wouldn’t be the case. Instead, the goal was to bring massively updated visuals and a host of quality-of-life improvements to a game that would otherwise stay true to its roots.
“This is a unique project for Naughty Dog. It’s the first time we’ve taken on a full remake,” said creative director Shaun Escayg in an interview. “We knew that we wanted to stay true to the original game as closely as possible, [to] add what we think will heighten and enhance the experience but not fundamentally change the experience.” That mindset permeates the game, from everything you can see in the environment down to the battles against both humans and the Infected.
“We didn’t feel like these combat encounters were dated and there wasn’t really anything we were looking at saying ‘we want a do-over here,’” added game director Matthew Gallant. “We love the combat in The Last of Us. We think those spaces are really iconic: They’re really strong, they afford a ton of different options for moving around and fighting. What often was dated was perhaps the technology underlying some of these fights.”
Gallant, who was a combat designer on the original The Last of Us, says the game could only handle eight AI “brains” at any given time, despite fights that often had more enemies than that. This meant that they had to reactivate and deactivate
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