The last big hurrah of the PlayStation 3 era, The Last of Us launched on June 14th, 2013 – five months before the arrival of PS4. A technological masterpiece for the era and a crowning achievement for Sony first party development, there’s a strong argument that developer Naughty Dog pushed the ageing hardware to its very limits – a fitting send-off for the console by one of its most accomplished developers. Almost seven years later to the day, the studio is set to repeat the trick with the imminent arrival of The Last of Us Part 2.
Preview coverage for this title is a little tricky. While we’ve played the game, what we can explicitly comment on is highly limited and the only assets we can share from this slice of the game have already been shown on last week’s State of Play. But what we can confidently share is that, put simply, The Last of Us Part 2 does not disappoint. From a technological standpoint, there’s a clear path of progression from The Last of Us Remastered, through the still-stunning Uncharted 4 and the often overlooked Lost Legacy, right up to this latest Naughty Dog showcase.
Some of the basics are easily covered – essentially remaining unchanged from prior trailers and indeed Uncharted 4 before it. Rendering resolution on PlayStation 4 Pro is still 1440p, backed up by the firm’s clean temporal anti-aliasing solution. Performance is solid at 30fps, with few deviations, and actually improved overall compared to Uncharted 4’s showing on PlayStation 4 Pro. In terms of image quality and frame-rate, we don’t anticipate many complaints.
However, just as The Last of Us saw the Naughty Dog engine evolve over the Nation Drake titles on PS3, so we see a very different aesthetic in The Last of Us Part 2, with the emphasis on indirect lighting again coming to the fore. Joel and Ellie’s story takes place in a world where most areas of the game are illuminated only by the sun, with only select environments seeing any other form of lighting. The way light interacts with the rich geometry and the high quality materials is first class, producing some beautiful but often bleak results. The sheer density is also remarkable. This is the world reclaimed by nature and accurately portraying organic elements isn’t easy, especially with the sheer amount of grass, foliage and trees in any given scene.
The emphasis on lighting and fidelity was also a focus with the first The Last of Us except that going back to the PS3 original and its PS4 remaster now, everything looks more flatly shaded – more cartoon-like even. It’s this focus on realism that really shines through. Naughty Dog has the horsepower to massively improve material quality and light interaction over its predecessor, while ambient shadowing plays a key part in ensuring that everything sits comfortably and consistently within the presentation. Water rendering and reflection quality is also excellent. In fact, you can isolate individual parts of the game’s visual make-up and note their effectiveness, but it’s when they all combine that even the less complex areas of the game still manage to look remarkably impressive.