We are not entirely sure Naughty Dog envisioned the launch day of its PC version of The Last of Us: Part I to have gone quite like this. Instead of celebratory tweets and beautiful Photo Mode dumps on social media from users, it's having to put out one fire after another. What's available on PC is said to be a mess technical-wise, with a consistent stream of "mostly negative" user reviews on Steam now stretching beyond 4,000.
Although, this viral tweet feels like the unwanted cherry on top for the developer. It's a punchline anyone can point to in order to convey just how busted the PC version is. Joel has most certainly seen better days on Steam Deck, as captured by Reddit user Zerindo.
Whether the character model looks this way throughout the whole game we don't know, but it's not exactly the angle Joel will want for future selfies. With facial hair that seems to go on for days, the apocalypse has gotten to him even more than usual. A sorry sight indeed. Let's hope he sees some better days in the future.
Of course, this isn't what Joel looks like if you're running the game on a powerful computer. However, since The Last of Us: Part I was even advertised alongside the Steam Deck in a promotional advert, you'd like to think the port would look at least a bit better than this.
Naughty Dog has taken to Twitter to ask PC users to submit support tickets on its website in order to garner feedback and work out exactly what the issues are plaguing this particular version. Having run exquisitely on PS5, the developer will want to sort these problems out promptly. A very long list of reports complains about constant crashes, shader issues, and overall poor performance. The studio even went as far as describing this port as "for PC" rather than just a simple version running on the personal computer. As such, expect patches to flow thick and fast.