The Last of Us Part I

[DisturbedSwan]

God, what a load of shite this thread has descended into lol.

[Snaggletooth]

Based on first reveal and pictures I was of the same mindset of questioning whether even ps4 game looked better. Particually the shots of joel and detail on shirt. 

 

But watched DF compatison and dont know why didnt see it at first but its a nigjt and day difference. 

 

 

 

However the problem still is its a game that now been released on 3 generations and some of those subtle differences while impressive im not sure warrant another full price release, especially that its on an already established engine. 

 

Not saying its not worth full list price but as seen here cant imagine the majority will want to pay that much again. 

 

This should have been a game set with a £40 rrp in mind. 

 

I certainly wont buy it again above that price. 

[HandsomeDead]

9 hours ago, mmmark said:

@HandsomeDead

 

 

Okay, I'll bite.  I've made my point but I don't mind getting in the weeds.

 

The gif of Tess reminds me of the lighting discourse around the recent Mass Effect remaster and how the more realistic lighting was actually a detriment to the scenes.  I kinda think the same here since on a subjective level I prefer the lighting of the original.  There's these filmmakers who prefer to utilise natural light instead of lighting rigs and I think this is like that.  But here it's like if you could somehow remove the lighting rigs and use the natural light in a film retroactively.  In this case I think Tess looks worse.  She's covered in shadow on the side the eye is drawn to*, which ironically makes here reaction harder to see even though the fidelity on her is increased and would have been clearer if it was still lit like before.  It's not realistic in the original, but to me TLoU never had a realistic aesthetic, it had the aesthetic of a prestige TV show and I liked that about it so I'm less won over by the new lighting, though I'm sure it will be better in-game (another reason I'm baffled they're not showing that).

 

So, with all that in mind I don't understand that joke with bubble-gum boy as it should be the other way round.  The PS5 doesn't have the stylised, unrealistic lighting and lower fidelity that give the image more character (I'm being generous here, 360 avatars are dumb pics).

 

*TBH I think Naughty Dog knows this so I'd be interested to know what the decision making is around this weird damn version of the game.

[DisturbedSwan]

It'll be very interesting to see the reactions when ND drop a gameplay trailer. I think there will be some crow being eaten (or those doubling down to avoid admitting they were wrong ) who knows.

 

There's not much to go on at the moment, I completely get why many think an already Remastered game which is good enough graphically, being remade is pointless and that they won't spend their money on it. I get that, it's obviously up to each of us to make that choice. 

 

But, the reaction is a little silly and premature I feel considering we've not seen hardly anything of the game yet aside from a 2 minute trailer, screenshots and some 10 second clips. Why are we bringing up XB avatars in a TLOUP1 thread? So you can make some logical leap that the two are the same thing or some bollocks? It's just utter nonsense I'm afraid.

 

I think the fact remains that people hate that this exists in the first place and wish ND had concentrated on something else, which I get completely. But Neil in the SGF interview said they're now a multi-team studio, they're working on Factions 2.0, they're working on his new game (hopefully a new IP) alongside this Remake (which if rumours to believe was handed to them after being briefly worked on by a small group of devs inside PS HQ). 

 

At the end of the day Sony have taken a page out of Nintendo's book, who often release a game 8-10 years after release, put it out in HD with a few new features and bob's your Uncle. It works for them and going by how quickly the Firefly Edition sold out, it'll work here. 

 

If folks don't like the deluge of Remakes, Remasters et al. and perceived money grabbing then don't buy them ultimately.

[one-armed dwarf]

I mean I wouldnt be eating crow cause the gameplay improvements are to me the only reason to be interested here

[DisturbedSwan]

To be fair, they're the main reason I'm interested too because the TLOUP2 gameplay is *chef's kiss*.

[mfnick]

32 minutes ago, DisturbedSwan said:

If folks don't like the deluge of Remakes, Remasters et al. and perceived money grabbing then don't buy them ultimately.

Thing is time and time again it’s show theirs a lot of idiots out there easily parted with cash. See Mtx, lootboxes, GTA Trilogy, Cyberpunk etc. So myself not buying it makes no difference. You need to make other people aware of why they shouldn’t buy it and shame them so they don’t.

 

Feel ashamed!! 
 

 

Before I receive serious replies. This is mostly a tongue in cheek post BTW. & ultimately it’s just a game I’m not that bothered. 

[one-armed dwarf]

Cant really lump Cyberpunk in with all the other stuff tbh

 

GTA trilogy though? I never saw why people thought that initial trailer with the fucked up graphics looked good lol

[HandsomeDead]

@DisturbedSwan I brought in the Xbox avatars to make a joke.  Just a silly little observation, it's no big deal.

 

And I won't be eating crow because I've never said the game will be bad or anything like that.  I've only commented on what they've chosen to show.  Hell, there's been a number of occasions I've been sceptical of something, maybe said why but the game turned out to be great.  I love it when that happens, I wish it happened every time and I certainly don't feel like I should be ashamed of that if my initial scepticism was justified.

 

People don't have to stay silent until the game comes out.  If ND or anyone else doesn't want this kind of engagement and just have it judged on the full game then shadow drop it.  But no, they do want discussion, and it comes with warts and all.

 

If you just want to wait for the final game and judge that, that's totally fine, but don't get a bee in your bonnet when other people are discussing content they've chosen to release on a forum for discussing games.

[one-armed dwarf]

3 minutes ago, HandsomeDead said:

I wish it happened every time and I certainly don't feel like I should be ashamed of that if my initial scepticism was justified.

Damn straight, reminds me a bit of the Death Stranding stuff on here before that game released. It looked like boring shit to me but turned out to be great, nothing wrong with coming to a different opinion when you actually can get an informed one. Which you can't get from looking at trailers. It's not a competition to be correct all the time

[mfnick]

39 minutes ago, one-armed dwarf said:

Cant really lump Cyberpunk in with all the other stuff tbh

Why not? It was a broken mess but sold millions regardless. Might be ok now but it shouldn’t have sold the numbers it did to start with. 

[Maryokutai]

The Nintendo comparison is a bit far-fetched, considering their re-releases are the only official way to play these games in a higher resolution than 480p/576i, which in itself is a good enough reason to pick one of those up if you enjoyed the original.

 

I also wonder how they're going to rework the gameplay of Part I. It's been a while but form what I recall combat encounters took place in comparatively small and narrow areas, whereas the reason Part II worked so well was mostly down to having big areas with multiple ways of approach. I wonder if reworking the entire level design is something financially worthwhile here, or if they're just adapting the AI and player options but won't touch the rest.

 

The character models I'm kind of indifferent about. Joel now looks like his instagram filter broke down, Tess looks like she got kidnapped by aliens and dumped on earth 10 years later – and I think both of these things fit the post-apocalyptic setting to a degree. Ellie looks roughly five years older but I just went to the wikipedia page and it says she's supposed to be 14 in Part I which she didn't look at all in the original, so I guess it's fine.

 

 

[AndyKurosaki]

I’m definitely in the “this has no reason to exist” camp. Does it look slightly better than the PS4 Remaster. A little. Im not exactly creaming my jeans over the difference. Is it worth £70? Is it fuck. 
 

It won’t be a bad game, as TLOU is brilliant, I far prefer it to the “when is this shit going to end” Part 2. But the only reason they’re even bothering with this, is to milk the tits off the cash cow until the HBO show comes out. 
 

Naughty Dog can say “We are composed of several teams” all they like. But the fact remains, they’ve spunked time and resources on what is easily one of the most unnecessary remakes in the history of gaming. 
 

Even if this inevitably ends up on Plus, I couldn’t be less interested. 

[DisturbedSwan]

 

[Maf]

I’ve seen a few devs on Twitter over the past week saying “You don’t understand the work going in to this” and “you don’t understand how hard this project is”. Some working on the game directly some just in defence of other devs in their field

 

I don’t doubt they’re working hard I just don’t see what the point is. I’m sure ND are putting every effort in to this what sort of comes of like a vanity project. Except not one has managed to explain why it’s necessary. Outside of bringing it in line with the sequel. 
 

I was feeling the same with the Resident Evil remakes. When the news was out they were remaking RE4 it was like why? Remake a game in the same style? No. But playing it actually yes a remake to update it makes sense. Even then they’re going to go above and beyond and fully remake it. Building a newer version of RE4

 

TLoU doesn’t have that. It just feels like a facelift. I saw some comments that they’re changing the gameplay to match Part 2. Well if they’ll do they’ll need to change the levels, the AI, the weapons, etc. which if true they should have led with instead of “look at this fucking face and all the motion capture and all the money”.

[one-armed dwarf]

I think the reason it exists is to keep a more junior team on payroll onboarded by more experienced members, so they can get up to speed for more ambitious long term projects for PS5 later on.

 

So I'm in two camps on it I guess, I do think small scale projects like this make a lot of sense. But in this specific case I don't think it's providing a lot of real value outside of the fact it is also coming to PC so TLOU1 will finally be preserved on a platform that doesn't need a company to create constant remasters and backwards compatibility updates

 

But yes the map design is one of the biggest parts of why TLOU2 played so well, TLOU1 was pretty standard in that respect. Right now I'm sorta expecting a Twin Snakes style update, where they put MGS2 gameplay features back into MGS1 and you end up with things like where you can sidestep Ocelot's ricocheting bullets in FPS mode, or hanging as a mechanic is completely useless and stuff like that. If they go back and redo all the maps and AI and encounter design and have the thing where individual NPCs will piece off into pairs to hunt you down and talk to each other then it would actually be an incredibly cool remake, but the fact they haven't chosen to show that stuff yet makes me sort of expect Twin snakes, or Crash Twinsanity Trilogy

[HandsomeDead]

40 minutes ago, Maf said:

I’ve seen a few devs on Twitter over the past week saying “You don’t understand the work going in to this” and “you don’t understand how hard this project is”. Some working on the game directly some just in defence of other devs in their field

 

This kind of shit is annoying and does avoid the main criticism.  I'm the same, there's no doubt in my mind real work is put into it.  Social media gives a megaphone to all kinds of clowns that come in with uninformed and sometimes bad faith feedback.  But... so there is that scene in the film The Nice Guys where Gosling's character is describing what he does on his job as a private investigator and one part is he "interviews people and translates fuckwit into English" and I think that's an important skill for dealing with feedback.  I know devs have talked about this sentiment before so I dunno why this shit happens on social media.

[Maryokutai]

4 hours ago, HandsomeDead said:

shit happens on social media.

 

Yes.

[DisturbedSwan]

I think there's a lot of armchair game developers out there that think certain things are easy to do or think we know certain aspects of game development whereas the vast majority of people know fuck all.

 

It's good to have a younger team of devs coming through, cut their teeth on a project like this, even though I think any aspect of development is far from easy, doing something like this rather than starting on a new IP from scratch with whole new assets to work with must be significantly 'simpler' so to speak I'd imagine. It makes sense that that would be the case at least, I don't actually know anything about game development.

[one-armed dwarf]

Neither do I, I'm only speculating on that stuff. What I think tho is people think about resources and time here in a very unflexible and rigid kinda way, when it's pretty likely in a lot of game dev that talent gets cycled in and out all the time

 

Game dev isn't just the technical nitty gritty. Now they say they got this product out without inducing crunch, but ND still have a pretty poor reputation for crunch, as do a lot of developers, but ND especially. Which would impact employee retention. You do hear often that 'greybeards' will sort of migrate into more people management/project owner kinda roles, or out of the industry entirely into more boring but balanced and stable software dev jobs for big enterprise companies. You can't just go from a huge epic length development of something like TLOU2 then right into Part 3, not possible with how some of these things are put together and the way talent is built up and passes through all the time

 

But I wish they could spend this time on a Jak and Daxter game instead lol