In other cases, the remake introduces more dramatic differences. This kind of change alters the game’s impression by subtly underscoring the original’s narrative. Joel has been redesigned to appear too badly beaten by the horrors of his violent life to believe in a better future. The sense that Joel is a man running out of time – that the world has ground him down and that he has little left to cling to beyond his care for Ellie – makes it less shocking that he makes the selfish decision to stop his companion from giving her life to create a cure for a world-destroying virus. It makes it harder to imagine him making the sort of heroic turns that both versions of the game suggest for him, but of which he is ultimately incapable. He looks less soulful than before, his expressions drained of a handsome cowboy gleam and replaced with a kind of outward callousness. The white in his hair and beard highlight his age. Wrinkles carve grooves in his tired face. Though the change in character design is more dramatic in some cases than others, Joel, in particular, appears dramatically wearier and older than he did before. They also look pretty different as people, too. Protagonists Joel and Ellie are more naturally expressive – the elastic cartoonishness of their original faces has been replaced by realistically furrowed brows and, of course, wide-eyed expressions of horror when something tragic plays out before them. It’s the cast’s faces, though, that really stick out. Developer Naughty Dog updated the game’s visuals, improving the graphical fidelity of everything the player sees, from the stomach-churning fungus boils covering a massive “Bloater” monster to the bits of bright green grass poking out from the cracked asphalt of a ghost town’s potholed roads. In The Last of Us Part I, the most noticeable changes come by way of the character designs. Whether in small or large ways, it is altered. By making a game look “better” than it did before, it’s changed into something else. They experience the same vision of a post-apocalyptic United States, where one traumatized man, Joel, reckons with his inability to part with his surrogate daughter, Ellie.īut despite sticking as close to the original script and general design as Part I does, it's still, ultimately, a new game in its own right. They follow the same story to the same conclusion, meeting the same characters and feeling many of the same feelings. Players first experiencing the game through the remake will understand the plot in much the same way. Includes spoilers for The Last of Us Part I.Įven though it’s a remake of a game released in 2013 for the PlayStation 3, The Last of Us Part I is, in most respects, the same game as the original The Last of Us.

Last of us two ellie character model