The Last Of Us Remake Happening 'Whilst Other Projects Are In Pre-Production, Runs On TLOU 2 Engine' Says Jason Schreier

Bloomberg's Jason Schreier has elaborated on last week's report that Naughty Dog are working on a remake of The Last Of Us.

Read more: Naughty Dog Is Remaking The Last Of Us On PS5, Report Claims

The Last Of Us Remake Happening 'Whilst Other Projects Are In Pre-Production, Runs On TLOU2 Engine' Says Jason Schreier

Last week's story revealed that the 2013 PS3 title was being remade for PS5, with original developer Naughty Dog taking over the project from an outside studio who began production.

The man behind the report, Jason Schreier, has now appeared on the latest episode of the MinnMaxShow to discuss the story further. As it turns out, the reason for Naughty Dog taking over development - according to Schreier - was to avoid having too many people twiddling their thumbs whilst other projects are in pre-production.

"You finished The Last of Us 2, Neil Druckmann and some other writers go off in a room somewhere and they say “What do we want to make next?” and you have hundreds of people at the studio who don’t have a lot to work on.

There’s the multiplayer thing they’re doing, I don’t know what stage that’s in, but I doubt it needs everybody. […] They had a bunch of people that needed work, and so it was an elegant solution to be, “Let’s put them TLOU remake, get them used to working on the PS5, and let’s make this happen.” It’s something for people to do for the next year or so while the other things are in pre-production."

Elsewhere in the chat, Schreier also states that the remake will run on the same engine as The Last of Us: Part 2, with the potential to release both games in a standalone package as one 'seamless' experience.

"From the get-go there was always Naughty Dog programmers helping [the other studio] out with the engine because it's The Last of Us 2 engine that they were working on... which was also one of the reasons that it was gonna be an expensive project as they were working on this brand new engine and so they had Naughty Dog programmers working with them.

"The idea was, The Last of Us 2 has all these advancements in graphical technology and in gameplay, there's a lot of stuff you can do in Last of Us 2 like breaking windows, different cover systems, and the idea was here we release Last of Us 2, why don't we re-release Last of Us, maybe call it Part One or whatever, and do a whole package of the two games so its the one complete story and it will all feel seamless."

Of course, there has been no official announcement from Sony or Naughty Dog regarding any Last of Us remake just yet, but it certainly sounds like a solid way to bring the studio up to speed on developing for the PS5 whilst other projects get off the ground.