The Last of Us is a notable achievement within the games industry with its impactful writing, cast performance, and layered gameplay. However, it came as a surprise to many that Naughty Dog is developing a remake of this PS3 hit, despite not even being a decade old. There’s been natural skepticism in the gaming community following this project’s reveal. Why would Naughty Dog squander their resources and creative talent to develop what many feel to be an ‘unnecessary remake?’ Thanks to insight from Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier, we now know the real reason behind this endeavor.
In a recently aired episode on The MinnMax Show, Jason answers our collective inquiry with, “What else are they going to do?” He explains that hundreds of employees at Naughty Dog have been somewhat idle after the release of The Last of Us Part II. Granted, there has been some buzz surrounding a potential multiplayer standalone, but Jason says that the project isn’t elaborate enough to accommodate the entire workforce. Consequently, while Neil Druckmann and other creative leads plan and prepare for new future projects, these design and development teams need ‘something’ to work on in the meantime. This remake of The Last of Us is a clever solution to get the teams’ productive gears spinning again, plus give them the experience they need to become accustomed to the PS5’s software. Jason states that Naughty Dog’s purpose is to:
Let’s put them on The Last of Us remake, get them used to working on the PS5, which they[the dev teams] hadn’t done before, and let’s make this happen […] It’s something for people to do for the next year or so, while the other things [upcoming games] are in pre-production.”
He mentions that a problem Naughty Dog ran into in the past is a lack of coordination when juggling multiple projects and production teams.
One of the issues Naughty Dog has run into in the past when trying to do this whole multi-project team thing is that they end up with a bunch of people who just need stuff to do. They call it “feeding the beast.” You have all these people and you have to make quick, quick, quick decisions […] and it can lead to really bad practices. You might be making the wrong decisions and have to re-do them later. So… it’s a good solution to have everybody do this thing that is more obvious.”
In other words, Jason explains that in order to keep things organized, it’s best to keep the studio’s crew steadily active on a project to keep everyone up to speed. In this particular case, it’s The Last of Us Remake.
Hopefully, this news settles the uncertainty surrounding this remake and perhaps gives fans something to look forward to — like a next-gen facelift for 2013 Joel and Ellie. What are your thoughts on this upcoming PS5 remake for The Last of Us? Let us know in the comments!
Source: Comicbook.com