To the surprise of many, a remake of The Last of Us was recently revealed to be in development at Naughty Dog. The existence of this remake brings up the question of how drastically the game will be changed from its original form. Will it do little more than The Last of Us Remastered version that brought TLOU to the PS4, or will it completely restructure the narrative like recent years' most ambitious reimagining, Final Fantasy 7 Remake?
The remake of The Last of Us should not make changes to the original's story, or it should at least only make very minor changes. The story in TLOU is by far its most important element, and changing major narrative beats could potentially cause issues with established character development and might create continuity errors with the sequel. The original FF7 was over 20 years old by the time Final Fantasy 7 Remake came out, giving Square Enix an opportunity to make a different kind of remake. The PlayStation classic needed a complete overhaul in order to meet modern gaming standards, and the story itself necessarily got some work in order to accommodate the multiple releases which are planned for the complete game.
The controversy surrounding The Last of Us Part II could potentially pale in comparison to the outrage that would follow a TLOU remake changing the core narrative. This is not to say developers should exclusively pander to the audience, but the characters in The Last of Us are so beloved because of their established depth. There is a lot of potential for improving TLOU in a remake, but the story is the last thing that needs to be improved.
The Last of Us is a Smaller Remake Than Final Fantasy 7
The Last of Us is now eight years old, and was an impressive late addition to the PS3's line-up of games. TLOU could definitely use some graphical and engine upgrade work done in a remake, but not as much as Final Fantasy 7 needed. TLOU is still very accessible to today's video game audience, as evidenced by its sequel having extremely similar gameplay elements. FF7 was impressive for 1997, but games evolved a lot more from then to 2013 than they have from 2013 to today. Three discs were needed to deliver FF7 when it first came out, but players were still given the entire story. FF7 Remake is only the first part of a planned series of games, and as such parts of FF7's original narrative had to be reworked to deliver certain elements players expected, like Sephiroth appearing earlier than in the original.
The Last of Us' remake won't have to make such compromises in narrative, and should instead focus on areas where the game needs improvement. Facial animations and textures can be brought up to the level of those in TLOU2; the playable areas can be expanded to give a greater sense of exploration or allow for more varied combat scenarios; the prone mechanic introduced in TLOU2 can be included. There are so many aspects of The Last of Us that could use improvement, but reworking the story a la Final Fantasy 7 Remake would feel unnecessary.