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The Last of Us Part 1 - PlayStation 5 - The Digital Foundry Tech Review

Stuart360

Member
Not keen on how much older everyone seems to look in this remake, including Ellie.
I was watching a comparison vid the othe day and Tess honestly looks 20 years older than the orig game, and Joel looks like a 70yo man now lol.
 

Whitecrow

Banned
60 fps mode is 1440p locked at all times. No dynamic res unlike what the menu says.

Basically the same as TLOU2's BC patch. I am not sure how a game that looks pretty much identical to TLOU2 with smaller levels, is built on the PS5 SDK is only able to double the PS4 Pro's framerate. The PS5's 10.2 tflops is more like 13 polaris tflops. It has a much better CPU than the Pro. Way higher ram bandwidth. Cerny's super secret magic sauce. I dont even know what to say anymore.
They changed assets, not the engine,which for sure, is not optimized for ps5.

If the engine was built around certain ps4 specs, then it wont be optimal for ps5.

10 tflops are still finite. You cant just throw in every bell and whistle you know, and still expect it to run 4k 60 fps like nothing.
 

Popup

Member
Just watched the video. Great work from John, objectively putting to rest all this recent conjecture. I hope the devs see this video.
 

Hunnybun

Member
John will never call out a developer the way he should. He always finds a way to sugar coat something or frame it in a way that doesn't make the dev look bad. Plus if there are no real improvements there's not much worth comparing.

Ps5 exclusive and this is what ND is proud of this? They've lost it man.

I think the theory that this project by the VA group or whoever they were was going nowhere and that ND were drafted in to quickly salvage something has to be close to the truth.

I'm guessing they're stretched pretty thin developing this new multiplayer game and whatever big new project Druckmann is doing next.

Unless Schreier is completely wrong - which is unlikely - then we know it was originally started by an external developer. And that it had a large budget due to the development of a new next gen engine specifically for it, and that Hulst wasn't too keen on that idea. And now we know that it obviously didn't end up using a new engine.

So yeah, reading between the lines, the original development was in trouble, scope was reduced and ND brought in to get something half decent out and fairly quickly and cheaply.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Not keen on how much older everyone seems to look in this remake, including Ellie.
I was watching a comparison vid the othe day and Tess honestly looks 20 years older than the orig game, and Joel looks like a 70yo man now lol.
Yep. Tess sounds way too young and it simply doesnt match her new face. Id say at least 10 years older than her voice suggests.

Ellie also looks too old and a lot of the scenes where she is supposed to look like an innocent child hurt by Joel's words or David's sexual advances no longer work.

Joel looks fine aside from that one bizarre model. He looks his age in cutscenes. Sounds ok too and is well animated. I dont like just how much he was changed in some scenes, but thats a minor complaint. He has to have a bigger jaw. The 'It is over Tess' line really doesnt hit as hard. I also saw the comparison of the scene where they find the blocked highway in Pittsburgh, and his face lacks the hard look on his face. Same thing in the Ranch scene when Ellie opens up to him and he shuts her down. That look is gone because the new character model is smaller and softer. I love this game, and these small things just bug me to death. Why cant he have a big jaw.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
I think the theory that this project by the VA group or whoever they were was going nowhere and that ND were drafted in to quickly salvage something has to be close to the truth.

I'm guessing they're stretched pretty thin developing this new multiplayer game and whatever big new project Druckmann is doing next.

Unless Schreier is completely wrong - which is unlikely - then we know it was originally started by an external developer. And that it had a large budget due to the development of a new next gen engine specifically for it, and that Hulst wasn't too keen on that idea. And now we know that it obviously didn't end up using a new engine.

So yeah, reading between the lines, the original development was in trouble, scope was reduced and ND brought in to get something half decent out and fairly quickly and cheaply.
Jason actually goes into a bit more detail about the project when it was in VSG's hands. Sony refused to give them a bigger budget/more resources and kept the team small. Almost the entire studio was tasked to work on helping ND finish TLOU2 after it got delayed. So the director of this game simply didnt have any resources to achieve his true vision. Whatever that was, we will never know.

After ND shipped TLOU2, Neil and Evan Wells had nothing for them to work on. The MP team was always separate and didnt have any work for the ND artists and programmers so thats why they started taking more of an interest in this remake. At which point the director at VSG quit along with other leads in protest over ND's meddling and then the project simply fell into ND's lap. I think they simply took over the project and pushed it over the finish line. The engine was always going to be the PS4 TLOU engine. Had ND been involved from Day 1, they probably wouldve tried to do a lot more with the PS5 hardware. At the very least, I think they wouldve included the original E3 2018 visuals and motion matching animations. It's possible the game took longer to finish than they had anticipated. I wouldve expected them to make major improvements to their TLOU2 engine in 2+ years but I guess they never intended it to be a 2 year project when they took it over 2 years into its dev cycle.

I wouldnt be surprised if ND shows off a true next gen only single player title next month and manages to achieve Matrix quality visual fidelity.
 

ChiefDada

Gold Member
Nearly all PS5 games have near instantaneous loading. Even if the PS4 loading times were improved, the PS5 loading times should be way better thanks to the PS5 CPU, IO and SSD. Locking resolution at TLOU2 PS4 Pro's 1440p for performance mode, not being able to reduce file size, and now this? Not a good look. This is supposed to be built from the ground up on PS5. Kojima was able to double the resolution of the PS4 Pro from 4kcb to native 4k while doubling the framerate to 60 fps when he used the PS5 SKU. A 4x increase in pixel budget while ND is settling for 2x. He was also able to add higher LODs, PC quality ultra textures and other PC graphics upgrades and still managed to reduce load times to virtually nothing.

I think it's time for Cerny to call up ND and find out just wtf is going on. Third party devs have been able to do a better job with Cerny's IO than ND. Uncharted 4's remaster was also just 1440p 60 fps. Are they running these games in BC modes? or in a PS4 emulator container? Is that why the load times are the same and file sizes are so large? I have no idea what they are upto.

Yeah Slimy, completely ignore the increased asset and texture size gap between the different apps. And your DS comparison makes no sense. Output resolution and framerate has zero to do with load times, and the DS asset variety and quality do not compare to this remake, no matter what PC quality label you want to apply.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
40 fps mode is only locked at 40 fps during non-combat sections. As soon as the combat starts, you can see the framerate start to dip and settles around 34-35 fps.

I would not recommend anyone play this mode. I really fucking hope DF runs some tests on the PC version with a 10 tflops 6600xt to see how it performs relative to the PS5.
 

ChorizoPicozo

Gold Member
70USD is just wrong. Watching this analysis...oh boy max 30 USD it should be free if you bought the PS4 remastered.

To Sony:
HYzf0VA.jpg
 

Tomi

Member
70USD is just wrong. Watching this analysis...oh boy max 30 USD it should be free if you bought the PS4 remastered.

To Sony:
HYzf0VA.jpg
Dont worry, Sony knows that this will sell millions even with 70$ pricetag and why dont take maximum if you can.
Cant imagine pc port, probably million + more
 

Stuart360

Member
This is one of those games where you dont fully understand how much better the remake looks until you see it side by side with the orig game. Its a fantastic looking game with a pretty huge detail upgrade.
Its just a shame the game seems to use the Death Stranding rain and has aged everyone 20+ years lol.
 
At which point the director at VSG quit along with other leads in protest over ND's meddling and then the project simply fell into ND's lap.

He quit because he wanted to make movies and TV series with video game assets

Pitched it to Sony but they weren’t interested, preferring to do live action instead
 

RoadHazard

Gold Member
Looks good, but also looks like a PS4 game. I don't see much, if anything, that looks better here than in TLOU2.

Also, why does Joel look older in Part 1 than he does in Part 2?
 

Haggard

Banned
So it looks like a PS4 game, plays like a PS4 game and even has loadtimes like a PS4 game.
This game being built from the ground up for PS5 surely totally isn't Sony lieing their willies off....
 

ChiefDada

Gold Member
Chief- Are you not a little disappointed in this game after DF's tech review? You know it confirmed that I was right all along ...not trying to rub it in but I got nothing but vitriol from some of the defenders including how "baseless" my thoughts were. No improvement to lighting, assets, etc over LoU2 according to DF

Lol not at all! No review is going to change the perceived visual improvements I noticed between the remake and TLOU2. Besides, the DF tech review was very surface level, perhaps Ollie's follow up video will go into further detail. I'm sure some outlet landed an exclusive developer interview. Otherwise maybe we have to wait for next GDC.
 

RoadHazard

Gold Member
Yeah Slimy, completely ignore the increased asset and texture size gap between the different apps. And your DS comparison makes no sense. Output resolution and framerate has zero to do with load times, and the DS asset variety and quality do not compare to this remake, no matter what PC quality label you want to apply.

The PS5 SSD is fast enough to fill the entire RAM in 2 seconds, so what you're saying doesn't make any sense. You can't load more data than that, there's nowhere to load it into. Any PS5 game taking 15 seconds to load is a very strong indicator that it's not really using the new I/O capabilities, but is rather brute force loading data using the CPU for decompression etc, like you would in a PS4 game.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
It really makes no logical sense at all. Unless this is at its core a PS4 game that just happens to be PS5 exclusive.
Several PS4 games like HFW, GT7, Death Stranding and Kena have much faster loading times compared to the PS4 versions.

But you are right, it makes no logical sense at all. If only DF had the integrity to go get some answers.

EDIT: Looks like loading times were instantanoues on ND's Uncharted remasters. So it's not ND. This really makes no sense whatsoever.
 
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RoadHazard

Gold Member
Several PS4 games like HFW, GT7 and Kena have much faster loading times compared to the PS4 versions.

But you are right, it makes no logical sense at all. If only DF had the integrity to go get some answers.

Those games probably do use the new storage APIs etc.

Actual PS4 games usually load faster on PS5 than on PS4, simply because of the faster storage and CPU, but nowhere near as fast as a proper PS5 game. This game seems to belong in the former category.
 
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Umbasaborne

Banned
I know 4k 60 is asking alot, but why not 1800p 60, or 4k 40fps like spiderman and ratchet have. The head room is there. 1440p just looks so blurry to me now on my 4k oled
 
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Umbasaborne

Banned
Fuck Flight Sim, that's not a fucking game. Nobody with a console wants that bollocks. I'd have as much fun just walking in circles round the Matrix tech demo city.

Sony hasn't been great, it's true - that's exactly why I'm pissed with them!

BUT... there has been Ratchet, which looks incredible. Horizon for the most part also looks amazing, despite the cross gen. GOW is coming in a couple of months, too.

Then stuff like Demon's Souls, Deathloop, and Returnal - while imo all being slightly underwhelming as next gen games - all still look way better than anything from last gen.

As far as I can see, Xbox just has FH5 - which is itself cross gen.
Flight sim is rad, too much sodium is bad for you
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Those games probably do use the new storage APIs etc.

Actual PS4 games usually load faster on PS5 than on PS4, simply because of the faster storage and CPU, but nowhere near as fast as a proper PS5 game. This game seems to belong in the former category.
I guess you didnt see my edit. Why would ND use those new APIs for their Uncharted remaster but not for the REMAKE built from the ground up on PS5?

Im with you. I dont think any of these makes any sense. lol
 
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Hobbygaming

has been asked to post in 'Grounded' mode.
Lol not at all! No review is going to change the perceived visual improvements I noticed between the remake and TLOU2. Besides, the DF tech review was very surface level, perhaps Ollie's follow up video will go into further detail. I'm sure some outlet landed an exclusive developer interview. Otherwise maybe we have to wait for next GDC.
It looks so good. I see another 5 more playthroughs at the minimum. All of the other improvements will be nice as well. The original was already almost flawless and now it looks way better
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
I know 4k 60 is asking alot, but why not 1800p 60, or 4k 40fps like spiderman and ratchet have. The head room is there. 1440p just looks so blurry to me now on my 4k oled
There IS a 4k 40 fps mode.

But for whatever reason, the game simply does not scale well on the PS5. Even the 4k 40 fps mode dips all the way down to 32 fps and averages around 34-35 fps during combat. It's 40 locked only during exploration. Im guessing they had an engine bottleneck for the CPU. We have seen this with PC ports of Horizon and GOW which are single threaded and hold back even the most powerful GPUs, let alone PS5 equivalent GPUs like the 2080. The GOW PC port team even admitted that changing the CPU tasks to be more multithreaded wouldve required a lot more work so they left it as is. We are probably seeing something similar here.
 
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