DF Direct Weekly on The Last of Us PS5 remake, Hitman 3 RT and Starfield’s delay

Is The Last of Us being remade for PS5 – but is it really coming this year? Does Hitman 3’s Ray Tracing Hardware Requirements Make Sense? And what about the PlayStation Plus range of games? These answers to these questions – and more! – are all covered on this week’s Digital Foundry Weekly show, this time hosted by Rich, John and Alex.

It’s the relaunched line of PS Plus games that’s the first port of call, as the team mulls over the curious selection of titles from the newly expanded service’s upper tiers – and the pleasant surprise that a selection of PS1 games and Previously purchased digital PSPs will be playable on PS4 and PS5 without a PS Plus subscription. The team comments on what was revealed last week, but we may not have seen the full picture yet as it looks like at least one Ridge Racer game will be added to the list of classics.

The Last of Us PS5 remake rumor is also strange – after all, the game has already received a PS4 Pro version, so how much room for improvement is there still for a remaster beyond targeting 4K 60fps? Alex Battaglia has some ideas – vis-a-vis ray tracing, naturally – and John Linneman follows up with some thoughts on the actual gameplay changes that would make the PS5 release more compelling. It will be fascinating to see what direction Naughty Dog has taken here, as there’s room between anything from a full-digit remaster for PS5 hardware to a much more substantial overhaul that leverages lessons learned from development. of the second game.

While the Last of Us remake is announced for 2022, two other big games originally planned for this year have been delayed. Starfield and Redfall, two Bethesda releases that would have bolstered Microsoft’s Game Pass offerings, have had their release dates shifted to 2023. In some ways, that’s no huge surprise – both seemed like huge AAA games. which hadn’t shown any substantial gameplay six months after release – but that means the game’s 2022 release schedule looks pretty empty. This is a problem for Microsoft, and it also has a pretty big effect on the rest of the gaming industry, including us at Digital Foundry. However, given the technical state of Fallout 76 and Fallout 4 at launch, giving the dev team an extra team must be a good thing, right?

00:00:00 Presentations
00:00:59 News 01: The PlayStation Plus line-up revealed
00:11:58 News 02: Last of Us Remake planned for 2022?
00:19:04 News 03: Starfield/Redfall postponed to 2023
00:24:13 Supporter Q01: Is it time for companies to delay release dates?
00:28:38 News 04: Hitman 3 RT requirements are heavy
00:35:40 News 05: Test Drive Unlimited SC postponed to 2023, no more cross-gen?
00:39:28 News 06: Portal 64 proof of concept emerges
00:44:53 Support Q02: How does balanced mode work in FSR 2.0?
00:50:20 Support Q03/04: FSR 2.0 on consoles?
01:00:55 Supporter Q05: Are tensor cores likely to be less important on future Nvidia GPUs?
01:04:43 Supporter Q06: Do you think we will see FSR 2.0 implemented in emulators?
01:07:08 Supporter Q07: Why don’t console manufacturers release emulators and allow legal ways to buy ROMs?
01:11:14 Supporter Q08: Which proprietary Sony games would you like to see back?
01:15:55 Supporter Q09: How many games have DRS that still does not reach its target frame rate?
01:20:52 Supporter Q10: What videos surprised you in terms of viewership, good and bad?
01:24:52 Supporter Q11: If you could choose one game, from any console/PC generation, to receive the full Quake 2/Minecraft RTX treatment, which would you choose?

The rest of the hot stuff is also interesting – Alex discusses the surprisingly steep ray tracing requirements for Hitman 3 (the update drops this week and we’ll check it out, naturally), the team talks about the delay of Test Drive Unlimited SC through 2023, and the amazing proof-of-concept version of Portal 64 running on real (!) N64 hardware.

Elsewhere, DF supporters have asked a host of interesting questions about AMD’s recently released FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) 2.0 technology, an upscaling algorithm that uses data from previous frames to improve its results – something which was notably missing in version 1.0. The questions cover FSR 2.0 on consoles, how FSR balanced mode behaves, and whether FSR’s broader hardware requirements mean tensor cores will be less important on future Nvidia GPUs. Perhaps the most interesting question about FSR came from DF supporter Yogi, who asked if FSR 2.0 could be added to Switch and PS3 emulation software – and Alex’s response on the technical requirements is particularly illuminating .

Rich, John and Alex also answered some more open-ended questions to round out the show, including which first-party Sony games should make a comeback and if you had the power to pick a game to get a full plotted remake, what it would be? Alex and John go for pretty simple picks, but Rich’s answer is out of left field…

It’s pretty much the end of the Direct, but now it behooves me to remind you that you too can join the DF support program to influence the direction of the Direct, talk with us on Discord and generally shape the future of Digital Foundry. We’d love to have you, so be sure to take a look!