Naughty Dog: PlayStation 4-versie The Last of Us was een hels karwei

Begin vorige maand kwam het goede nieuws voor PlayStation 4-gamers dat ontwikkelaar Naughty Dog bezig is om een PS4-versie van The Last of Us te maken. Het ontwikkelteam wil niet zomaar een simpele port maken en dat blijkt een hels karwei, zo vertelt creative director Neil Druckmann:

I wish we had a button that was like ‘Turn On PS4 Mode’, but no. We expected it to be Hell, and it was Hell. Just getting an image onscreen, even an inferior one with the shadows broken, lighting broken and with it crashing every 30 seconds… that took a long time.

These engineers are some of the best in the industry and they optimised the game so much for the PS3’s SPUs specifically. It was optimised on a binary level, but after shifting those things over [to PS4] you have to go back to the high level, make sure the [game] systems are intact, and optimise it again.

I can’t describe how difficult a task that is. And once it’s running well, you’re running the [versions] side by side to make sure you didn’t screw something up in the process, like physics being slightly off, which throws the game off, or lighting being shifted and all of a sudden it’s a drastically different look. That’s not ‘improved’ any more; that’s different. We want to stay faithful while being better.

The Last of Us Remastered heeft nog geen concrete releasedatum. De kans lijkt groot dat Sony de game tijdens de E3 gaat tonen en een releasedatum zal onthullen.