The release of The Last of Us Part I took place a few years ago, but one of the authors of the original project is still annoyed by the decision of the Naughty Dog studio to throw out his work.
Benson Russell, the developer of the original TLOU combat system, shared his emotions from the release of the remake in a recent interview:
When they released The Last of Us Part 1, where they reworked the game and used The Last of Us Part II technologies to redo battles and other elements, it pissed me off — and still pisses me off. This is a sore subject for me.
Russell's claim is not about the very fact of creating the remake of The Last of Us Part I, but about its positioning. Naughty Dog studio called it "the definitive version" (the final version of the game):
It literally means: take my scripts, press "delete" and insert completely new ones. That is, [they throw out] my real work — the spawn points that I placed in the editor, the very scripts that I wrote to make the combat system work as it should... It was a very big job. And when The Last of Us Part 1 comes out, where literally every battle has been redone, I'm like: "well, yeah, uh-huh."
The developer still cannot accept that his work was completely thrown out in order to present new battles to players in The Last of Us Part I. Now this version of the game is being promoted and some may never see the battles from the original 2013:
Seriously, it still pisses me off so much that I think: "fuck you guys". There is no greater slap in the face to people who put blood, sweat and tears into their work than to say: "you know what, we're going to recreate it". And it's not just about the fact of recreating it. Now you are promoting this version. You say: "this is the final, canonical version of this game."