For players like myself, The Last of Us Part 1 is a gorgeous modernization of one of the greatest survival horror games ever made, but for some of the developers who worked on the original game, the remake is a "sour spot" because it straight-up replaces many of the assets and systems they created. At the very least, it's still a major pain point for original Last of Us combat designer Benson Russell, who gave an impassioned explanation in a recent interview.
Russell, who was senior game designer at Naughty Dog when he left in 2015 after eight years with the studio, recently sat down with Kiwi Talkz and opened up about what it was like to see a ground-up remake of The Last of Us.
"When they put out The Last of Us Part 1 where they reworked the game and they used The Last of Us 2 tech to re-do the combat encounters and other things, that really fucking pissed me off, and it still does," says Russell. "That one's a sour spot for me."
These days, anyone wanting to play The Last of Us can still play the 2014 remaster, which hasn't been pulled from the PlayStation Store. It's also worth noting that the remaster is bundled into the PlayStation Plus Premium plan, so it's not like Sony is ignoring it entirely. That said, if you're looking to play The Last of Us on PC, your only option is the remake unless you want to mess with emulators. Naughty Dog has also billed The Last of Us Part 1 as "the definitive version" of the game, something that exacerbates Russell's contention with how the remake was handled.
"It is literally taking my scripts, pushing delete, and putting all new scripts in," Russell says. "So that's taking my actual work, the spawners I placed in the editor, what I called them, putting in the actual scripts that I wrote to make the combat work the way it's supposed to ... That was a fuck load of work, and so when The Last of Us Part 1 comes out and like, every single combat encounter is re-done, I'm like, uh, yeah."
Russell also pointed out that the original artwork on 2013's The Last of Us was completely re-worked for the remake, which is definitely an inherent sacrifice in most video game remakes, but Russell's disagreement seems to come from the fact that Naughty Dog advertises the remake as the best way to play the game.
"Seriously, it still irks me to the point where I'm like, 'fuck you guys.' There's no greater slap in the face to people that put their blood, sweat, and tears into something than to say, you know what, 'we're gonna recreate it.' And, it's not just that you're re-creating it. This is the version you're pushing now. You're like, 'this is the definitive version of this experience.'"
Russell acknowledged that different artists and game devs will feel differently about having their work recreated, saying he doesn't have a problem with remasters that simply upscale existing assets, but he draws a line at ditching stuff altogether and then pushing the newly remade game.
"'Well, your work is what led up to this'. I'm like, 'fuck that.' No. No, no, no. I don't care if you were inspired by the original combat I did. You deleted my work. You deleted it. You took it out," Russell says. "Yeah, so, that's a sour spot for me. That's the one time I came to realize, like, no, you can actually have your history erased out of a game."
I'm reticent to editorialize much here as someone who's never been a part of making a game, but I get the impression that Russell's feelings toward remakes are more nuanced than a wholesale distaste. Kiwi Talkz host Reece Reilly brought up the Resident Evil remakes as examples of "totally remade" games that exist separately from the original games and aren't intended to replace anything, and Russell nodded in agreement that the situation with The Last of Us is different. Although the remaster is still available, its future definitely isn't as certain as iconic retro games like Resident Evil 1 and 2, which will almost certainly be preserved on storefronts like Steam and GOG for decades to come.
