Naughty Dog have been the masters of squeezing every last bit out of the PlayStation systems for as long as we can remember. In more recent times especially, they continued pushing the PS3 hardware to its limits with each successive Uncharted game, before truly using everything at their disposal to create the technical wonder that is The Last of Us. On the PS4, Uncharted 4, too, was a visual beast. But with a shorter development time and owing to the fact that The Lost Legacy is essentially an expansion to last year’s game rather than a whole new entry, it makes sense that it isn’t as massive a jump.
But there’s no doubt that this is a gorgeous game. The Lost Legacy is using much of the same assets and technology that Naughty Dog used for Uncharted 4, which means that it’s still state of the art. From excellent character models and realistic lighting to fluid animations, The Lost Legacy looks excellent. It also showcases the incredible eye for detail that Naughty Dog have come to be known for. Everything from the foliage and ruins to the urban environments and even something as minuscule as the characters’ clothing is incredibly detailed. We’ve come to expect an obsessive attention to detail in Naughty Dog games, and The Lost Legacy doesn’t disappoint.
When it comes to how much better it looks on the PS4 Pro as compared to the regular PS4 version, there’s not much of a difference. On a regular PS4, The Lost Legacy runs at a native 1080p resolution, whereas on the PS4 Pro, the resolution is roughly at 1440p, with a few instances every now and then where it dips or rises a little bit. The game runs at a steady 30 frames per second on both, the PS4 and the PS4 Pro, with times in both instances when it drops fractionally.
This mostly happens in foliage heavy areas or areas that are otherwise dense with complex lighting systems and environment effects in place. The frame rate drop is never too significant, but it’s noticeable. Thanks to temporal anti-aliasing, there’s next to no jaggies or rough pixels. Overall, on the performance side, it’s solid and steady, as was expected. It’s disappointing that the PS4 Pro version is essentially the same as the PS4 version. If there was any developer you’d be expecting to take advantage of the extra power the Pro provides, you’d expect Naughty Dog to be it. Then again, maybe they’re saving what they’ve got in store for The Last of Us Part 2.
It’s pretty clear that The Lost Legacy doesn’t push boundaries the way we’ve come to expect from Uncharted games, but then again, it’s also been pretty clear for a while that that wasn’t Naughty Dog’s aim with this game at all. This is, after all, an expansion to last year’s Uncharted 4. What the developer has smartly done to make it carve out its own identity is try something new in terms of game design. The Lost Legacy is truly very different from all previous Uncharted games, focused more on open ended gameplay, stealth and linear yet still open areas for exploration. You can read more about what we liked and didn’t like in our review.
It presents interesting opportunities for Naughty Dog in the future, both, in the Uncharted franchise and for any other games. When it really comes down to the technical aspects, The Lost Legacy is just as impressive as Uncharted 4 was. It is admittedly disappointing that the PS4 Pro version and the regular PS4 version of the game are all but identical, but with excellent attention to detail, the same technical proficiency that was showcased in Uncharted 4 and excellent art style, The Lost Legacy is very much a looker. We’re going to have to wait until The Last of Us Part 2 to see Naughty Dog’s next large leap, but until then, The Lost Legacy is enough to whet the appetite.