The Last of Us Part I PC Port's New 25 GB Patch Brings Optimisation, Fixes Crashing, Improves Textures

The Last of Us Part I on PC has received a massive 25GB patch, aimed at improving the horrid condition it was launched at. Dubbed v1.0.4.0, the version marks the seventh update since the port was launched on March 28, proving that developer Naughty Dog hasn't given up on it yet. The patch is mainly focused on optimising CPU and GPU performance in-game while adding improved graphical fidelity on Low and Medium settings. The low-res textures were a key point of criticism upon launch, with many fans posting screenshots of a caveman Joel and poking fun at the state of the port.

The patch notes detail 22 fixes for The Last of Us Part I on PC, with a good chunk focused on crashes that occur upon death, when quitting out to the main menu, and during the ‘Shader Building' process. In our review, we noted how time-consuming the process was — even on decent CPUs such as the AMD Ryzen 7 5800x, putting 100 percent load on all its eight cores. “Fixed an issue where the shader load warning did not appear while relaunching the game,” the post reads. Following that, players had to endure an unusually long loading time, despite the game being installed on SSDs. Naughty Dog has now addressed that issue while adding new features so players can better gauge performance. The HUD menu in settings will now let you enable performance stats, and there are better descriptors for how graphics options will affect your system.

The Last of Us Part I PC Review

“We at Naughty Dog and our partners at Iron Galaxy are closely watching player reports to support future improvements and patches,” the post reads. “We are actively optimising, working on game stability, and implementing additional fixes which will all be included in regularly released future updates.” The partner Iron Galaxy was also responsible for porting Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection to PC, whose technical issues carried over to The Last of Us Part 1 as well. For instance, using the mouse to navigate the camera creates micro stutters, which only get worsened with your character's movement. The issue doesn't seem to affect controller inputs, however.

Naughty Dog has also fixed an issue where skipping cutscenes would cause the game to freeze. Translations for foreign languages in the menu options have been corrected, too. By default, The Last of Us Part 1 enables AMD's FSR2.0 upscaling option to ensure better performance at a reduced loss in visual fidelity. Turns out, the Steam Deck version was having trouble defaulting to it, which has also been fixed. While the condition of the port is way better than it was during launch week, it isn't perfect yet. You can read the detailed patch notes for v1.0.4.0 on the official website.

The Last of Us Part I is available on PC and PS5.