'The Last Of Us Part 2' Will Run Fine On Standard PS4s, Says Naughty Dog

When Sony and Microsoft first released "enhanced" versions of their current-gen consoles in the form of the PlayStation 4 Pro and the Xbox One X, there were some initial concerns that developers would be tempted to design their games based around the superior hardware, leaving the "vanilla" versions of the consoles to fall by the wayside in terms of performance.

This certainly seemed to be the case with Remedy's recently-released (and excellent) Control. While the single-player adventure undoubtedly suffered from performance issues on all consoles, the hiccups were noticeably worse on the Xbox One and PS4, with more frequent frame-rate disturbances and longer loading times when compared to the One X and Pro.

The Last Of Us Part 2

With The Last Of Us Part 2 just around the corner, it's understandable that those of us still using an original PS4 could be a little worried about how well the game is actually going to run. Based on what we've seen from the Naughty Dog sequel so far, it really does look the hardware is being pushed to the absolute limit, and my old console already sounds like it's preparing to fly to the moon every time I boot up Marvel's Spider-Man. Will I really run into problems when trying to play The Last Of Us Part 2 on a vanilla PS4?

The good news is that Naughty Dog doesn't seem to think so. In an interview with USgamer, Lead Game Designer on The Last Of Us Part 2 Emilia Schatz confirmed that the standard PS4 is very much the "target platform" first and foremost. "That's actually what I've got on my desk at work, and so that's what we sort of aim for," Schatz explained.

While the PS4 Pro will obviously have advantages when it comes to things resolution, Schatz stressed that The Last Of Us Part 2 has always seen the trusty OG PS4 as its development platform. "So yeah, you want to have that balance, but you know, there's still a lot of optimization now to get done. What you saw here isn't quite our final frame rate and final screen resolution, stuff like that," she said.

The Last of Us Part II

In my experience, Naughty Dog has always been reliable at squeezing every last drop of potential from PlayStation hardware without sacrificing performance. Uncharted 4, easily one of the best looking games of this generation, runs absolutely fine on my PS4. Even if The Last Of Us Part 2 is the studio's longest and most ambitious game to date, which they say it is, I've no doubt it'll be fine - although there's probably a chance running the game occasionally activates my console's secret rocket thrusters.