The Last of Us Part I may be almost 10 years old, but the launch trailer is going hard on spoilers.
First released on PS3 in 2013, you might think we're safely out of spoiler territory for The Last of Us now. But you'd be wrong. With a PS4 remaster and now a PS5 remake on the way, it's safe to say that Naughty Dog is courting a new audience with each iteration.
The game is fantastic, but it's hard going in terms of plot, visceral violence, and harrowing events. It's not something you'll be popping on to unwind for an evening, is what I'm saying. If you're making a revamped version for every console generation, it's going to be for players who missed out the first time around. Because they were literal children.
A decade and two consoles later, there's a whole new generation of gamers ready to embark on Joel and Ellie's adventure for the first time. Which is why it's wild to see so many late-game spoilers in the launch trailer for The Last of Us remake.
Blast from the Last (of Us)
The trailer straight up kicks off with segments from the latter portion of the game. Ellie is skulking around in the snow, taking out fully-grown men, while Joel is interrogating an unfortunate soul to find out where she is. In terms of showcasing the new look, the selected scenes aren't the best for that either. They're dark and dingy, which is perfectly appropriate in the context of the game, but hardly in the realm of eye candy.
The rest of the trailer is a montage made up of gameplay, and snippets of cutscenes that are both brief and vague enough to avoid giving too much away. The original story trailer did a great job of setting up the plot without showing its hand. Similarly, the E3 2013 trailer was as brilliant as it was brutal.
Of course, if you haven't played before, you'll have no idea which parts of the game you're seeing in the trailer. This might be a divisive opinion, but I think that's largely irrelevant. I hate when trailers – whether they're for games or movies – show off spoilery bits. There's no need.
The worst offenders are the ones that cover every plot point so you feel like you've watched the whole film already. Or that cram in all the best jokes in an otherwise mediocre piece of media. Then there's brazen ones like this that will only register as a spoiler when you're consuming the content later down the road. And it still sucks.
It's been a hot minute since I played The Last of Us Part I, so it'll be interesting to dive back in on PS5. In my rose-tinted memory, the game looked fantastic at launch. In reality, there have been a lot of upgrades. Druckman says the facial animation has been kicked up a notch, while on the gameplay front, the AI has been overhauled and controls improved.
I only ever played through it once, which was more than enough given the scary parts spooking the crap out of me, and the emotional rollercoaster of the story, from start to finish. It's probably been long enough that I'm finally ready for a second playthrough. So keep an eye out for our review!
