Fans were very excited by the official announcement that acclaimed PS3 title The Last of Us would be coming to PS4, but the process was apparently grueling for developers Naughty Dog.
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Speaking to Edge Online, series creative director Neil Druckmann explained that porting the post-apocalyptic title to Sony's new console proved extremely difficult, which was apparently expected. The Last of Us Remastered will be in beautiful 1080p on PS4, but the original was so specifically optimized for PS3 that every step was a challenge.
"I wish we had a button that was like 'Turn On PS4 Mode', but no," Druckmann told Edge. "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.
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"These engineers are some of the best in the industry and they optimized the game so much for the PS3's SPUs specifically. It was optimized 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 optimize 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' anymore; that's different. We want to stay faithful while being better."
The process sounds extremely difficult and tedious, but hats off to the team for committing to making the re-release as close to the original as possible. Head over to Edge for more quotes from Druckmann about the process and Naughty Dog's future, and keep an eye out for a specific release date.
