Despite being released over six years ago, the remastered version of the first The Last of Us game has received a new update. The key change provided in the patch seems to make a drastic improvement to load times within The Last of Us Remastered, an adjustment that should benefit all players of the beloved Naughty Dog game.
The seemingly out of nowhere update likely has something to do with The Last of Us Remastered’s inclusion in the PS Plus Collection for PS5. With the special package including over a dozen of the PS4’s most popular games, Naughty Dog seems to be preparing for the PS5 rerelease by further improving the critical and commercial success ahead of time. While the 1.11 update was likely intended for PlayStation 5 players, it is nice to see that PS4 users are benefiting as well.
Despite the Naughty Dog team hard at work on Factions for The Last of Us Part 2, the sneaky update for the remaster of the first game was quickly caught by a speedrunner. One of the groups most likely to benefit from loading time changes, players like Anthony Calabrese noticed the impact right away. With the update helping Calabrese “save almost 18 seconds in the David fight,” the load time changes should have a major impact on the speedrunning community.
With all Naughty Dog games confirmed to work on PS5, players may have expected some minor upgrades when playing the game on the new system. However, with the surprise loading time update coming to the PS4 version of The Last of Us: Remastered as well, some fans have questioned why the loading was so long beforehand. Twitter user WeirdScienceX poses the question to Anthony Calabrese, with the speedrunner simply replying “good question.”
Even though some fans are bothered that the changes could have been made sooner, most fans of The Last of Us are just happy to see load screens nearly eliminated from the original game. While there is still controversy around the sequel, the original Last of Us was almost universally praised — even getting some incredible artwork from Kojima Productions’ Yoji Shinkawa. The load time update should make a replay (or first playthrough) of the game even more enticing for fans, regardless if they are playing on the PS4 or PS5.
With an HBO series based on The Last of Us on the way, and Troy Baker requesting a role, fans looking to brush up on their TLoU lore ahead of the show’s release will now be able to do so without any lengthy loading screens.
The Last of Us Remastered is available now on PlayStation 4.
