The Last of Us is an emotional game set in an unfriendly world. If the terrifying mutated Clickers don't kill you, the apocalyptic world's bandits might.
In bringing its latest title from the PS3 to PS4, Naughty Dog is hoping to draw in even more players that couldn't witness Joel and Ellie's journey the first time around. And with the game's enhanced FPS, the developer thinks the experience will be even more harrowing than before.
"We do so much with the animations of the character to convey emotion to the player so when you talk about what's going on with Joel and getting the player to empathize with him," Jason Gregory, lead programmer, told GameSpot. "At 60 frames, seeing his breathing change, or when a Clicker shows up and you hear that sound and the way he moves changes, because all the animations are that much more fluid, I think that comes across even more now. That's going to change the play experience just a little bit in the way the players experience that."
Naughty wasn't completely sold on the idea of implementing 60 FPS at first. The programmers were worried it might create too much separation between the players and the characters, that the movements would feel too fluid for a game. But those concerns quickly evaporated when the team saw The Last of Us: Remastered in action.
"It was a toss-up before; people were saying that you lose quality and graphics and what not," Gregory said. "But being able to compare apples to apples like we have now with The Last of Us, going back and playing the 30 [FPS] version feels, to quote some people in the office, 'broken.' There's something that can't be captured in screenshots and playing an adventure game where you just walk around and experience the world at the smooth 60 [FPS]. You really just have to feel it."
And when asked if 60 FPS will become the new standard for games, Gregory was optimistic. "We hope so," he said. "It used to just be that first-person shooters were 60 by default, but a lot of other games didn't feel the need for it. I think we're showing that it does make a difference even in a non-FPS type game."
