Naughty Dog fans who cannot get enough of The Last of Us are surely excited about the upcoming remake of the original game. The Last of Us Part 1 is scheduled to release on September 2, and enough has been shown to discern how much may be updated from the original. The Last of Us Part 1 received a Features and Gameplay trailer that briefly addressed improvement to accessibility and graphical fidelity, but a question still lingers over how much its moment-to-moment gameplay has changed.
It is now known that gameplay akin to The Last of Us 2 should not be expected in the remake, so players should not expect to have the prone movement, combat dodge, or other mechanics that the sequel introduced. While gameplay in The Last of Us Part 1 will remain mostly the same, features like workbenches will behave identically to the sequel. If such a change as this was possible, it would also be great to see the original game’s optional safes be updated to have manual numeric combinations like they do in The Last of Us2.
The Last of Us’ Original Safes Were Great for Collectibles
The Last of Us is a remarkably linear game, balanced out with optional artifacts and collectibles. These are items in the environment that players can disregard if they chose to, but could potentially lead to rewards. Some optional rewards are locked behind shiv doors in The Last of Us that require a full shiv to break into, but house a plethora of different items including supplements or ammunition. This is relatively simple so long as players have shivs on hand, but one optional reward cache is impossible to retrieve if players are unable to locate their designated codes.
Large metal safe boxes are strewn throughout The Last of Us, and in order to open them players need to find an associable artifact with a code written on it. The code will be written out plainly on the artifact, but players do not actually have to insert it into any sort of keypad themselves. Joel will simply open the safe afterward as players interact with it, and they can then loot whatever is inside.
This made for simple interaction and looting as long as players had the patience to search nearby, which contributed to the game’s tonal atmosphere of survival scavenging. However, The Last of Us 2 pushed that atmosphere a step further and made safes interactive, as should The Last of Us Part 1.
The Last of Us 2’s Manual Safe Combos Add a Great Puzzle Element
The Last of Us 2 iterated on the interactivity of safes by giving players numerical combinations and codes that they needed to punch in manually. This translated to large metal safe boxes found throughout, as well as keypads on doors and devices that unlock metal gates or other passageways.
The Last of Us 2 is fully interactive in this way, and combination codes are scarcely stated explicitly as they are in The Last of Us. Instead, players must engage with environmental clues that may or may not suggest a numerical combination, such as particular dates highlighted on a calendar.
This made combinations and safe boxes something of an optional puzzle, and exploration became more entertaining as a result. It is already confirmed that The Last of Us Part 1 will feature the same workbench visuals and functionality as The Last of Us 2, and thus it would not be outside the realm of possibility for The Last of Us’ remake to also feature the sequel’s safe mechanics.
This would be a relatively small but impactful change the remake could implement to make The Last of Us’ original gameplay more interactive, even if all its combination codes are clearly given in nearby artifacts. Being able to punch these codes in would help update the original gameplay to the sequel’s standard, making it a truly definitive remake.
The Last of Us Part 1 is scheduled to release on September 2, 2022, for PS5. A PC port is also in development.
