Att ta The Last of Us från Playstation 3, finputsa grafiken, skjutsa upp upplösningen i 1080p med 60 bildrutor per sekund och lansera kalaset till Playstation 4, kan väl inte vara någon konst? Creative director Neil Druckmann håller inte med, utan konstaterade i samtal med Edge att han förväntade sig ett helvete, och att han mycket riktigt fick ett helvete:
"We expected it to be hell, and it was hell. Just getting an image onscreen, even an inferior one with the shadows broken, lighting broken and with it crashing every 30 seconds ... that took a long time. These engineers are some of the best in the industry and they optimized the game so much for the PS3's SPUs specifically. It was optimized on a binary level, but after shifting those things over, you have to go back to the high level, make sure the systems are intact, and optimize it again."
"I can't describe how difficult a task that is. And once it's running well, you're running the [versions] side by side to make sure you didn't screw something up in the process, like physics being slightly off, which throws the game off, or lighting being shifted and all of a sudden it's a drastically different look. That's not ‘improved' any more; that's different. We want to stay faithful while being better."
Helvetesutveckling eller ej, vi längtar efter att få återbesöka Joel, Ellie, girafferna och den makalöst vackra historia som The Last of Us ändå är.