The Last of Us series has only had two main entries – but Naughty Dog has made the most of those two games with a variety of remasters and remakes. PS5 Pro puts a capstone on those follow-up efforts though, by delivering both contemporary Last of Us iterations at 4K60 using PSSR. These patches also provide an interesting console benchmark, because the old PS5 modes are available on PS5 Pro, giving us a rare test to compare the Pro and base machine in like-for-like content in a Pro enhanced title. So does the PS5 Pro deliver the definitive Last of Us experience? And exactly how well do the old modes scale on the boosted Pro GPU?
Naughty Dog keeps things simple with these new patches: PS5 Pro offers just one new visual mode across both Last of Us games, a new “Pro” option, in addition to the old performance and fidelity modes. This Pro mode renders at 1440p like the old performance mode, but upscales the image to 4K using PSSR. Other visual settings appear unchanged. Relative to the performance mode, there’s a substantial visual improvement. In stills, the image has a compelling combination of enhanced image detail and more effective anti-aliasing, producing a substantially better image on a 4K display.
The biggest improvement is seen on foliage, which looks more natural and clean. There’s a generous helping of post-process sharpening on the base machine, which appears much more subdued or possibly even absent on the Pro. It’s definitely a change for the better in this case, giving grass a smooth appearance without edge ringing. The differences are especially obvious in motion, with foliage appearing clearer, with the standard PS5 having a noisy, undersampled look by comparison. The Pro delivers somewhat less sterling results on thin geometry, but it’s usually similar to – or better than – the base machine. I also prefer the Pro rendition of screen-space reflections. Testing for disocclusion issues doesn’t reveal any particularly bad artifacting on Pro either: PSSR tends to blur a little in areas of the frame with recently revealed detail, which is definitely preferable to typical FSR 2-style disocclusion fizzle.