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Graphical Fidelity I Expect This Gen

geary

Member
? They've been at the table the Division open world looks awesome Massive is top tier
For me, since the The Division one were top tier...That post-apocalyptical New York was one of the most grounded city I saw.
Also, is there any other developer using Snowdrop? Or just them....

I think, AC should move from Anvil to Snowdrop as soon as possible.
Watchdog was on Anvil or Snowdrop?
 
For me, since the The Division one were top tier...That post-apocalyptical New York was one of the most grounded city I saw.
Also, is there any other developer using Snowdrop? Or just them....

I think, AC should move from Anvil to Snowdrop as soon as possible.
Watchdog was on Anvil or Snowdrop?
I think it’s their proprietary engine yeah I wish more devs from Ubi used it that engine is freaking amazing their NY looks way better than Spider-Man's NY to me. I think Watchdogs was on Anvil.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
For me, since the The Division one were top tier...That post-apocalyptical New York was one of the most grounded city I saw.
Also, is there any other developer using Snowdrop? Or just them....

I think, AC should move from Anvil to Snowdrop as soon as possible.
Watchdog was on Anvil or Snowdrop?
Snowdrop was used in Mario vs Rabbids. It's probably the best looking game on the switch after the Link's Awakening remake. But sadly they had to downgrade the graphics for the sequel because they decided to make it a bigger open world instead of a top down game.

They also used it in South Park and the upcoming xDefiant GaaS game.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
What funny is that both Avatar and Outlaws, the Ubisoft games which took everyone by surprise from graphics pov, are both produced by Massive. Is this dev finally reaching the big boys table?
Not me. I have been singing Avatar's praises since it was revealed in 2021. Every time I brought it up in the graphics thread, people dismissed it as a Ubisoft bullshot. And even though there was a small downgrade, its fair to say it still looks fucking amazing. Crazy considering they showed it running on PS5. Ubisoft almost always shows PC footage at E3.

I think that since both starfield and avatar are games that started full development around 2017 with next gen goals in mind, you are seeing a distinct upgrade over games that were cross gen at the start and then had their last gen versions cancelled. I recently posted about the gameplay enhancements avatar devs were most excited about. Animal AI that reacts to you and the enemy NPCs, destruction of the jungle and denser open worlds plus faster flying thanks to the ssd. Most devs who made cross gen and faux next gen games like TLOU Part 1, Dead Space, HFW, GOW, RE4, Hogwarts and to a lesser extent star wars, just couldnt plan around having the better CPU and SSD because their goals were simply to ship last gen iterative sequels.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes

This is good to see after the disastrous year we have had. Zelda is extremely polished and FF16 seems to be the same. Yes, both have framerate issues but in terms of bugs and polish, I am very impressed by both.

P.S that lighting is to die for. Wow.
 

GymWolf

Gold Member
I am sorry but I have been hailing HFW as THE best looking game of the gen for over a year now in every thread including this one while pointing out its shortcomings. I even said it looks better than Ratchet and Demon Souls.

EVERY game even the best looking games have cutbacks. RDR2's character models dont even come close to Death Stranding's but it doesnt mean RDR2 wasnt the best looking game last gen.

Avatar, Starfield, Outlaws are all stunning looking next gen game that do a vast majority of things better than 99% of the last gen games. It's fair to call out the things that look last gen, but its a bit disingenious to say that I have different standards when it comes to judging graphics when i have spent the last year pointing out flaws in my favorite graphics of this gen.

Hell, go to the first page of this very thread. The very first post is me praising TLOU2. I list parts where TLOU2 looks stunning and then show areas that look awful. Doesnt mean TLOU2 isnt an amazing looking game.
You really liked outlaws that much?
 

GymWolf

Gold Member
This is good to see after the disastrous year we have had. Zelda is extremely polished and FF16 seems to be the same. Yes, both have framerate issues but in terms of bugs and polish, I am very impressed by both.

P.S that lighting is to die for. Wow.
The light doesn't hide the rock textures tho, even worse when you are gonna be close to them in first person view.

Do we really need a ps6 to not have low res textures in games anymore?

What is the problems? the lack of video memory? didn't cerny said that the puprose of the ssd was to load big amount of stuff at any given moment or some shit?
 

ProtoByte

Weeb Underling
You really liked outlaws that much?
Yeah, I'm not seeing the wow factor with that game in almost any sense.

Don't get me wrong, it's certainly up to par in terms of environmental geometry, but textures are far from groundbreaking and character models are just about up to par and not much else.

Animations are stiff and contextual animation systems are painfully simple. Environments are just as, if not more static than the top end of last gen.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
You really liked outlaws that much?
not initially but the climb up to space and the jaw dropping space structures to going straight FTL into another system was very impressive for an AAA game with AAA graphics. Easy to do this shit with No Mans Sky, but this was a real game and it feels ambitious.

Also, this final bit looks absolutely amazing. Love the wind effects.

H6qmPHB.gif


Avatar and Fable look better imo.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
The light doesn't hide the rock textures tho, even worse when you are gonna be close to them in first person view.

Do we really need a ps6 to not have low res textures in games anymore?

What is the problems? the lack of video memory? didn't cerny said that the puprose of the ssd was to load big amount of stuff at any given moment or some shit?
You think so? I think the rock textures look fine. I am rather impressed by the mountain quality. Coming from HFW it is a pretty decent upgrade.

But yeah, it could be the vram or lack thereof. we got a 2.5x boost to vram from last gen. You can have the best textures in the world, but there is other stuff that needs to sit in the vram so there are always compromises. This is a XSX exclusive so you will have to wait and see what Cerny was talking about with the ssd streaming. Have you played FF16? It is doing some amazing things with caching other areas and switching to them in realtime. Again, texture quality isnt that special there, but other stuff they are doing with the ssd is very impressive.

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GymWolf

Gold Member
not initially but the climb up to space and the jaw dropping space structures to going straight FTL into another system was very impressive for an AAA game with AAA graphics. Easy to do this shit with No Mans Sky, but this was a real game and it feels ambitious.

Also, this final bit looks absolutely amazing. Love the wind effects.

H6qmPHB.gif


Avatar and Fable look better imo.
Yeah the final bit was the best.
Yeah, I'm not seeing the wow factor with that game in almost any sense.

Don't get me wrong, it's certainly up to par in terms of environmental geometry, but textures are far from groundbreaking and character models are just about up to par and not much else.

Animations are stiff and contextual animation systems are painfully simple. Environments are just as, if not more static than the top end of last gen.
Yeah, it looks great but hardly mindblowing.
 

GymWolf

Gold Member
You think so? I think the rock textures look fine. I am rather impressed by the mountain quality. Coming from HFW it is a pretty decent upgrade.

But yeah, it could be the vram or lack thereof. we got a 2.5x boost to vram from last gen. You can have the best textures in the world, but there is other stuff that needs to sit in the vram so there are always compromises. This is a XSX exclusive so you will have to wait and see what Cerny was talking about with the ssd streaming. Have you played FF16? It is doing some amazing things with caching other areas and switching to them in realtime. Again, texture quality isnt that special there, but other stuff they are doing with the ssd is very impressive.

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Horizon is really uneven rocks wise, i have screenshot with rocks that looks much better than these pics but i have to go dinner, cheers.

I think starfield looks flat, like a smeared undetailed texture.

FF16 actually impressed me more than i thought it was possible, not really the huge summons that still have plasticky textures on them, but the details of the creatures like the small goblins, the textures on the castle and some rock formations in the beginning when you control adult clive.
 
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SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Yeah, I'm not seeing the wow factor with that game in almost any sense.

Don't get me wrong, it's certainly up to par in terms of environmental geometry, but textures are far from groundbreaking and character models are just about up to par and not much else.

Animations are stiff and contextual animation systems are painfully simple. Environments are just as, if not more static than the top end of last gen.
I will give you everything, but static environments? come on? The wind effects are Watch Dogs pre-downgrade quality if not better. The trees sway with the wind, so does the grass and the small pebbles on the ground as well. My favorite is the snow/fog/smoke effect in the last shot of the gif. It's even better than the pre-downgraded Ghost of Tsushima e3 2018 demo with all the dynamic leaves reacting to the wind and the player sword swings. Sucker Punch took most of those physics heavy wind effects out of the game, so clearly it wasnt possible that gen.

Horizon is really uneven rocks wise, i have screenshot with rocks that looks much better than these pics but i have to go dinner, cheers.
I think i know exactly which rock you are talking about. its that island one by the ocean right? I have seen that pic posted hre and it looks stunning but its not part of a giant set of mountains like the ones you see in the desert. Its just one island rock surrounded by water and some trees. Probably a smaller vram budget allows them to push textures more on that rock.
 
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GymWolf

Gold Member
I will give you everything, but static environments? come on? The wind effects are Watch Dogs pre-downgrade quality if not better. The trees sway with the wind, so does the grass and the small pebbles on the ground as well. My favorite is the snow/fog/smoke effect in the last shot of the gif. It's even better than the pre-downgraded Ghost of Tsushima e3 2018 demo with all the dynamic leaves reacting to the wind and the player sword swings. Sucker Punch took most of those physics heavy wind effects out of the game, so clearly it wasnt possible that gen.


I think i know exactly which rock you are talking about. its that island one by the ocean right? I have seen that pic posted hre and it looks stunning but its not part of a giant set of mountains like the ones you see in the desert. Its just one island rock surrounded by water and some trees. Probably a smaller vram budget allows them to push textures more on that rock.
Is dynamic flora swaying and wind that impressive tho? i think that even zelda has it, it can't be that taxing if even a switch can handle it

I think he is talking about static environment in terms of not much destruction going on.
 
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You think so? I think the rock textures look fine. I am rather impressed by the mountain quality. Coming from HFW it is a pretty decent upgrade.

But yeah, it could be the vram or lack thereof. we got a 2.5x boost to vram from last gen. You can have the best textures in the world, but there is other stuff that needs to sit in the vram so there are always compromises. This is a XSX exclusive so you will have to wait and see what Cerny was talking about with the ssd streaming. Have you played FF16? It is doing some amazing things with caching other areas and switching to them in realtime. Again, texture quality isnt that special there, but other stuff they are doing with the ssd is very impressive.

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good lord that fog in horizon… goddamn you cross gen
 

ProtoByte

Weeb Underling
I will give you everything, but static environments? come on? The wind effects are Watch Dogs pre-downgrade quality if not better. The trees sway with the wind, so does the grass and the small pebbles on the ground as well. My favorite is the snow/fog/smoke effect in the last shot of the gif. It's even better than the pre-downgraded Ghost of Tsushima e3 2018 demo with all the dynamic leaves reacting to the wind and the player sword swings. Sucker Punch took most of those physics heavy wind effects out of the game, so clearly it wasnt possible that gen.
Yeah, that deserves some credit, but I mean static environments in the sense that player or enemy actions - e.g. causing explosions, blasting cover with lasers doesn't destroy anything. You've got the visual of the lasers heating up spots in that cover towards the beginning, but it's just a visual effect and a pretty understated one at that.

When it comes to more physical worlds in games, I think the goal should be to sell what's happening in screen visually whilst also changing the dynamics of gameplay. It your cover gets melted to slag in a Star Wars game, that at least incentivizes the player to stay on the move as opposed to camping. It's fitting that we're talking about Massive here, because the original 2013 gameplay demo for The Division appeared to have that kind of combat design to some degree.

That's what really gets me about the demo. It's good visually. It's just that the actual game seems decidedly old hat in terms of mechanics and design. I
 
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alloush

Member
You think so? I think the rock textures look fine. I am rather impressed by the mountain quality. Coming from HFW it is a pretty decent upgrade.

But yeah, it could be the vram or lack thereof. we got a 2.5x boost to vram from last gen. You can have the best textures in the world, but there is other stuff that needs to sit in the vram so there are always compromises. This is a XSX exclusive so you will have to wait and see what Cerny was talking about with the ssd streaming. Have you played FF16? It is doing some amazing things with caching other areas and switching to them in realtime. Again, texture quality isnt that special there, but other stuff they are doing with the ssd is very impressive.

FyhUZSwXgAAf0KH


FcenHWiWQAQ08UQ


FMFvR8YXwAItxPw


FMFvSt7XoAQKzmI
I always thought HFW looked fairly good up until now. Compared to that Starfield screenshot above and to Avatar and Star Wars trailers, it honestly looks ugly. I hate this yellow tint, it looks like a PS4 game. Serious question, were these captured on PS5? I have yet to play the game though, I am behind on so many games.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
good lord that fog in horizon… goddamn you cross gen
Cant blame cross gen because Burning shores was next gen only, took them a year to make, twice as long as Frozen Wilds, and they still couldnt sort out the LOD issues, flying speeds, and other lighting issues.

You wouldve thought that a big studio like GG wouldve had a tech team working in the background updating Decima to implement new tech to take advantage of the cerny io or just the more raw horsepower of the PS5 GPU to push the draw distance, but they just treated it like another $20 dlc and settled for another native 4k 30 fps cross gen game.

Same thing that the ICE Team at ND did. yes they took over the project from VSG studios in 2020, but thats 2+ years of dev time and the ICE Team didnt have anything next gen they couldve slotted in the remake in two years? Especially weird considering they couldve just used those crazy character models and motion matching animations that they took out from TLOU2 after showing them at E3 running on a PS4 Pro. Ive no idea whats going on with these studios.
 
I always thought HFW looked fairly good up until now. Compared to that Starfield screenshot above and to Avatar and Star Wars trailers, it honestly looks ugly. I hate this yellow tint, it looks like a PS4 game. Serious question, were these captured on PS5? I have yet to play the game though, I am behind on so many games.
Horizon looks stunning but you can find a screenshot from literally any game that can make it look unflattering. The desert area is the worst looking part of Horizon it feels like the budget was shifted away for those parts RTGI would help a lot because everything looks flat. I have mountain shots on my PlayStation that look stunning just too lazy to post
 
Cant blame cross gen because Burning shores was next gen only, took them a year to make, twice as long as Frozen Wilds, and they still couldnt sort out the LOD issues, flying speeds, and other lighting issues.

You wouldve thought that a big studio like GG wouldve had a tech team working in the background updating Decima to implement new tech to take advantage of the cerny io or just the more raw horsepower of the PS5 GPU to push the draw distance, but they just treated it like another $20 dlc and settled for another native 4k 30 fps cross gen game.

Same thing that the ICE Team at ND did. yes they took over the project from VSG studios in 2020, but thats 2+ years of dev time and the ICE Team didnt have anything next gen they couldve slotted in the remake in two years? Especially weird considering they couldve just used those crazy character models and motion matching animations that they took out from TLOU2 after showing them at E3 running on a PS4 Pro. Ive no idea whats going on with these studios.
It’s like they are saving tech advancements to sell future products?

EDIT: Games should look better than they do on 10 TFLOP and 12 TFLOP consoles..
 
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SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
I always thought HFW looked fairly good up until now. Compared to that Starfield screenshot above and to Avatar and Star Wars trailers, it honestly looks ugly. I hate this yellow tint, it looks like a PS4 game. Serious question, were these captured on PS5? I have yet to play the game though, I am behind on so many games.
Thats because it IS a PS4 game. Yes, HFW's PS5 version ups the foliage density and makes some upgrades to her character model, but its the same lighting engine, same streaming engine, same everything.

And yes, i captured them on a PS5 back when I was first playing the game and couldnt believe how the game went from looking jaw dropping in the first area to this. The desert area just happens to be ugly as sin. other areas look remarkable.

Like these ones below, but sadly they rely on the fog here as well. I think its because they were still limited by the PS4 5GB vram budget and made sure everything in front of you looked amazing but as the vistas opened up, it kind of exposed the game's shortcomings.

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Msamy

Member
I am gonna have to see more from DS2 to put it up on any list. The baby and that french actress looked like an upgrade but Norman Reedus looked virtually identical to his PS4 model with the same exact PS4 quality hair. Gave me FF7-2 Rebirth vibes.
I would replace it with Starfield which looks absolutely insane for a game that big. Agreed on the rest of the list. Pragmata looked stunning.
I am with you we need to see more from death stranding 2 but I think it's going to look impressive because it use decima engine and kojima really push the the graphics in his games every generation , also i am with you in Starfield I should put it in rhe list after all it uses real time global illumination like UE5 lumen in this huge scale world (for info no sony studio done this on any ps5 first party title or even try expect returnal)
 
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alloush

Member
Horizon looks stunning but you can find a screenshot from literally any game that can make it look unflattering. The desert area is the worst looking part of Horizon it feels like the budget was shifted away for those parts RTGI would help a lot because everything looks flat. I have mountain shots on my PlayStation that look stunning just too lazy to post
Yeah that area looks ugly af honestly. That's the problem with HFW and games in general nowadays they are hella inconsistent but HFW is more inconsistent than most of them which is a shame as the game looks gorgeous for the most part.

Thats because it IS a PS4 game. Yes, HFW's PS5 version ups the foliage density and makes some upgrades to her character model, but its the same lighting engine, same streaming engine, same everything.

And yes, i captured them on a PS5 back when I was first playing the game and couldnt believe how the game went from looking jaw dropping in the first area to this. The desert area just happens to be ugly as sin. other areas look remarkable.

Like these ones below, but sadly they rely on the fog here as well. I think its because they were still limited by the PS4 5GB vram budget and made sure everything in front of you looked amazing but as the vistas opened up, it kind of exposed the game's shortcomings.

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These screenshots do it justice BUT after I saw the Ubisoft trailers as well as Fable and Starfield (for me Starfield was a little underwhelming but still better than games we have gotten lately) HFW does look a tad bit outdated next to them and it makes me happy, cuz it means we are finally getting there.

But that desert scene, big oof.
 
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Wasn't there a rumour a while back that Horizon Zero Dawn was getting a remake with an improved lighting system?

Really curious why such a lighting system wasn't used in HFW, the game itself is gorgeous but man it could have had a huge uplift was something like RTGI, or some sort of dynamic global illumination system.
 

alloush

Member
Wasn't there a rumour a while back that Horizon Zero Dawn was getting a remake with an improved lighting system?

Really curious why such a lighting system wasn't used in HFW, the game itself is gorgeous but man it could have had a huge uplift was something like RTGI, or some sort of dynamic global illumination system.
I hope not. I am freakin done with Remakes and Remasters man, they aint nothing but cash grabs. It is a very nasty trend that has been going on for far too long now. Devs should shift their focus to new games/IPs even if said games were a successor to an existing one it's still a new game but please forgo this bad trend.

This doesn't mean that there aren't games that we would not love to see remastered like RDR2 for the current consoles for example, but said games are far and few and this bad trend needs to die.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Wasn't there a rumour a while back that Horizon Zero Dawn was getting a remake with an improved lighting system?

Really curious why such a lighting system wasn't used in HFW, the game itself is gorgeous but man it could have had a huge uplift was something like RTGI, or some sort of dynamic global illumination system.
From what I understand, it was just getting Horizon Zero Dawn uptodate with the HFW level graphics. Dont expect anything more than that. its more of a remaster, not a real top to bottom remake like silent hill 2.

Honestly, Im with arkham here. Its shocking to see them remake or remaster a 5 year old game instead of going out there and implementing stuff like lumens, nanite and proper physics in their next game. they just wasted a precious year on DLC likely causing a year long delay for their next game. They are also making a GaaS horizon game with multiplayer that looks like fortnite trash basically following Naughty Dogs footsteps with a needless remake and a GaaS game that took 5 years and will likely never see the light of day. Honestly this remake and gaas focus is probably why sony studios have inexplicably fallen behind after setting graphics standards year after year going back to 2009 with KZ2 and Uncharted 2.

Just the other week before spiderman 2 was even revealed, i was asking why insomniac wasted their time with the Miles DLC and a short Ratchet game no one asked for. They shouldve been heads down making Spiderman 2 a true next gen showcase like avatar and starfield. Have the whole studio work on one game for five years since thats how long it takes to make games nowadays. Are we really surprised that Spidey 2 looks damn near identical after just 2 years of dev time with half the studio now working on wolverine?
 

alloush

Member
From what I understand, it was just getting Horizon Zero Dawn uptodate with the HFW level graphics. Dont expect anything more than that. its more of a remaster, not a real top to bottom remake like silent hill 2.

Honestly, Im with arkham here. Its shocking to see them remake or remaster a 5 year old game instead of going out there and implementing stuff like lumens, nanite and proper physics in their next game. they just wasted a precious year on DLC likely causing a year long delay for their next game. They are also making a GaaS horizon game with multiplayer that looks like fortnite trash basically following Naughty Dogs footsteps with a needless remake and a GaaS game that took 5 years and will likely never see the light of day. Honestly this remake and gaas focus is probably why sony studios have inexplicably fallen behind after setting graphics standards year after year going back to 2009 with KZ2 and Uncharted 2.

Just the other week before spiderman 2 was even revealed, i was asking why insomniac wasted their time with the Miles DLC and a short Ratchet game no one asked for. They shouldve been heads down making Spiderman 2 a true next gen showcase like avatar and starfield. Have the whole studio work on one game for five years since thats how long it takes to make games nowadays. Are we really surprised that Spidey 2 looks damn near identical after just 2 years of dev time with half the studio now working on wolverine?
Speaking of Wolverine, what's your expectations for this game? a full-on next gen looking game or a cross-gen looking crap ala Spidey 2?
 

Neilg

Member
Like these ones below, but sadly they rely on the fog here as well.

I'm pretty sure the overuse of fog in horizon is just a creative choice they went too far on. They love volumetric effects and went all in. and then the desert needed even more dust for a point of comparison.
I think horizon would have looked significantly better with all fog toned down about 50% they were just trying too hard to make the biomes feel different from one another. The fog fades at night and you can see things clearly.

it's fully volumetric, they'd get a shitload of performance back if it was removed. it's very likely got the biggest impact to performance of anything on screen, so the idea you think they're using it to hide issues is way off the mark.
 
Horizon FW has some of the highest looking poly models in the biz as well sometimes I'll just hide and look at the machines especially a Thunderjaw the details are ridiculous I just wish all of the environments were as striking as the cauldrons maybe Horizon 3 we'll see more consistency
 

Represent.

Represent(ative) of bad opinions
You think so? I think the rock textures look fine. I am rather impressed by the mountain quality. Coming from HFW it is a pretty decent upgrade.

But yeah, it could be the vram or lack thereof. we got a 2.5x boost to vram from last gen. You can have the best textures in the world, but there is other stuff that needs to sit in the vram so there are always compromises. This is a XSX exclusive so you will have to wait and see what Cerny was talking about with the ssd streaming. Have you played FF16? It is doing some amazing things with caching other areas and switching to them in realtime. Again, texture quality isnt that special there, but other stuff they are doing with the ssd is very impressive.

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To be fair the rocks in HFW are probably the weakest part of the game.

Whereas its clearly the strong point of Starfield.

I need to see how Starfield handles foliage.

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ZehDon

Gold Member
Naughty Dog didn’t develop it alone, a secondary studio developed it mostly.
As I've already explained, the initial project was started elsewhere, before Naughty Dog took over the project and basically did it themselves. So, as far as Sony and Naughty Dog are concerned, Naughty Dog developed the entire game. The only outside help listed officially is Iron Galaxy, who came in at the tail end to help get the PC Port done. The Last of Us Part 1 is a Naughty Dog next-gen PS5 exclusive. I have no idea why this is suddenly a hot point.
 
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