Latest The Last of Us PC Patch 1.0.2.0 Packs Some Improvements But There’s Still Much to be Fixed

The latest The Last of Us PC patch 1.0.2.0 has been rolled out by Naughty Dog, and while this update appears to address some visual bugs and improve overall stability, there's plenty of fixing to be done.

As promised, Naughty Dog released another much-needed patch for The Last of Us Part 1 on PC some hours ago. Compared to previous updates, this appears to be the most extensive patch to date with the patch notes mentioning numerous fixes in order to improve the game's visuals, performance, user experience, and much more. One of the changes is updated texture streaming in order to reduce CPU usage. Also, this patch packs some changes to shader loading, which caused problems for many users. In addition, this update contains some Steam Deck-specific fixes, including a freezing issue due to pipeline State Object (PSO) caching.

You can find the full release notes for The Last of Us PC patch 1.0.2.0 on Naughty Dog's official support page for the PC version here.

As said, this patch seems to be the most substantial update to date, but does this patch actually solve most of the encountered problems with this troubled PC port? YouTuber 'ElAnalistaDeBits' tested the PC version with patch 1.0.2.0 applied on both PC and Steam Deck, and compared it to the PlayStation 5 version of the game. The result? From the looks of it, this patch improves loading times on PC and Steam Deck, and somewhat fixes animations on some occasions. In addition, the update optimizes VRAM usage, and the compilation of shaders has indeed been improved.

On the other hand, 'ElAnalistaDebits' still reports frequent crashes, although Naughty Dog mentions that this update should decrease them. Also, there are still problems with some shadows and textures. Luckily, the patch does appear to address some texturing and reflections issues as seen in previous versions of the game.

Overall, the comparison video shows that the game's performance hasn't noticeably changed when running the game on an NVIDIA RTX 30/40 series. Neither has there been a noteworthy performance improvement on Steam Deck.

Although this patch does appear to fix some visual bugs and improve general stability, there are still numerous issues that need to be addressed by Naughty Dog in a future patch. On Twitter, Naughty Dog has promised that the team continues to look at reported issues. The team has said to share more information about future patches, including a fix for the mouse jitter issue. Of course, we will do the same once more information about future updates for the PC version comes available.

We at Naughty Dog and our partners at Iron Galaxy are continuing to watch and investigate player reports, and will keep you updated on future improvements and patches, including a mouse jitters fix.

For more info, please check out our known issues page:  https://t.co/Xr072rK76T

— Naughty Dog (@Naughty_Dog) April 7, 2023

Written by Aernout van de Velde