Highly anticipated: Sony is once again timing the re-release of a Last of Us game with a season of the popular television series. With both arriving next month, the company has published a familiar-looking list of PC features and system specifications. Hopefully, The Last of Us Part II Remastered will perform more smoothly at launch than its predecessor.
The PC system requirements for The Last of Us Part II closely resemble those of the first game’s PC conversion (and, oddly, Spider-Man 2’s, minus the ray-tracing specifications). However, the sequel’s storage requirement has increased significantly to 150 GB from the original’s 100 GB, likely due to its substantially longer story mode.
Graphics card requirements remain largely unchanged. To achieve 60 frames per second at 1440p, Sony recommends an Nvidia RTX 3070 or an AMD Radeon RX 6800.
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Hopefully, the spec sheet indicates that The Last of Us Part II won’t repeat its predecessor’s texture memory issues, which notably disadvantaged the 8 GB RTX 3070 compared to its 16 GB AMD counterpart. This discrepancy likely explains why the first game recommended an RTX 2080 Ti, which performs similarly to the 3070 but features 11 GB of VRAM.
The new game’s system specifications do not explicitly mention upscaling, but it supports AMD’s FSR 4, which should offer significantly improved image quality on AMD’s new RX 9000 GPUs compared to FSR 3.1. Although DLSS support officially only extends to version 3.1, Nvidia users can likely enable DLSS 4 through the desktop application.
Interestingly, The Last of Us Part II also has slightly lower CPU requirements than its predecessor. Mid-range 8th-generation Intel processors or Ryzen 3000 CPUs should comfortably handle 60 fps gameplay. While the game hasn’t yet received Steam Deck verification, the previous entry eventually did, and Sony has confirmed optimization of the sequel for handheld PCs.
Adjustable graphical settings include textures, LOD distance, volumetrics, shadows, ambient occlusion, reflections, and more. The game supports ultra-wide aspect ratios (21:9, 32:9, and 48:9), haptic feedback for DualSense controllers, and DirectStorage.
Both the PC and PlayStation 5 versions will simultaneously receive four new maps for the “No Return” survival mode and two new playable characters – Bill and Marlene. Although the game won’t require a PlayStation Network login, connecting an account unlocks the PlayStation overlay, trophies, and points redeemable for in-game skins.
The Last of Us Part II will launch on Steam and the Epic Games Store on April 3 for $49.99. The second season of the TV series, which covers events from the sequel, begins streaming on April 13.
