With powerful next-gen consoles right around the corner, and this year’s Ghost of Tsushima both boasting impressive load times, it seems they’re now not alone in this. The Last of Us Remastered, a now six year old PS4 game, has received a patch improving the time it takes to load into gameplay exponentially.
This addition appears to be first brought up by The Last of Us speedrunner Anthony Calabrese in the tweet issued below. Following the recently issued 1.11 patch, it now takes under 14 seconds to load in and get the ball running.
Patch 1.11 of TLOU made it so loading screens are basically non-existent on PS4. This is for both ssd and hdd. Sections load in asap and I can save almost 18 seconds in the David fight. Everyone go and check. Was this the patch's intention? @Naughty_Dog @BadData_ @arnemeyer
— Anthony Calabrese (@AnthonyCaliber) October 24, 2020
According to this video from gaming Youtuber ElAnalistaDeBits that runs both pre and post-patch footage side by side, it’s quite the jump. In starting a new game, it takes about a minute and a half. Loading an existing save takes over two minutes. Consider this with the patch’s jump to 14 seconds in any instance, and that’s a reduction of over 70%.
It’s still a bit uncertain how this feat was achieved. The loading speed changes wasn’t indicated towards in the patch notes and, obviously, PlayStation and Naughty Dog haven’t gone in and altered all our PS4’s Hard Drives to SSDs. Regardless, it’s a welcome change that’s better late than never. If anything, it gives console gamers another taste of what’s to come with next-gen.
About the Author
Charlie Kelly
She/Her, They/Them
Charlie loves her video games as much as she loves dumb, charming JRPG protagonists: probably way too much. You can often catch her spending too much time being emotional over LGBT stories in games. She also thinks Yakuza 6 is the best one.
