A new patch for The Last of Us Remastered has reportedly reduced the game's load times by more than 70%, according to reports.
The Last of Us speedrunner, Anthony Calabrese, noted the reduced load times on Twitter, claiming that patch 1.1 has made loading times "basically non-existent on PS4" and claimed that sections load in "ASAP".
The decrease in load times was also noted by YouTuber ElAnalistaDeBits, who posted a video which shows the initial load screen time has been reduced from around 1 minute 30 seconds to just under 14 seconds. Check it out below:
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But, as reported by VGC, The Last of Us Remastered doesn't appear to be the only first-party PS4 game that's being updated ahead of the PS5 release in just a few weeks.
God of War and God of War 3: Remastered have also reportedly had updates recently - as has first-party title, Concrete Genie.
In addition, another Twitter user posted a video that seems to show Supermassive's Until Dawn with virtually no loading screens. However, it's unclear whether this is authentic as Until Dawn hasn't received an update in a few years - and some commenters claimed the game was capable of this performance on a PS4 Pro with boost mode enabled.
But why?
It's possible that Sony is updating its first-party PS4 games ahead of the PS5's release in just a few weeks.
It's been speculated that these updates may be introducing compression techniques and support for backwards compatibility on the new PlayStation - however, this hasn't been confirmed.
We already know that the PS5 will be backwards compatible with "almost all" PS4 games. Whether or not these updates are to help support that compatibility is unconfirmed, but we would be happy to see some of our favorite PS4 games benefiting from fewer load screens.
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