The Last of Us Part 1 on PC has released its second patch in the two days since its rocky launch.
According to Naughty Dog, the new update is designed to improve "memory, performance, and more." Specifically, the patch "decreased PSO cache size to reduce memory requirements and minimize Out of Memory crashes," "added additional diagnostics for developer tracking purposes," "increased animation streaming memory to improve performance during gameplay and cinematics," and fixed "a crash on boot relating to game save files."
In layman's terms, the hotfix seems to address two major problems players have been reporting since The Last of Us Part 1 launched on PC this week: the high VRAM requirements and the (often hilarious) visual glitches affecting gameplay and cinematics. It should also make crashes less frequent during boot-up.
The first patch included "stability and performance improvements, and other smaller improvements," as well as "extra crash diagnostic information to assist in investigating shader building-related crashes and other common reported stability issues."
It's really a bummer that The Last of Us Part 1's PC launch has been tarnished somewhat by its performance issues. We should be celebrating a new audience getting to experience the definitive version of one of the best video game stories ever, but instead we're talking about that awful "get wet" glitch and Joel's out of control eyebrows. Hopefully these patches are doing the heavy lifting necessary to get the PC port in working order so that first-time players can experience tears of trauma - as one should playing The Last of Us - instead of tears of laughter or frustration.
If you do come across any issues, it wouldn't hurt to visit Naughty Dog's feedback page to see if they're already there or raise a ticket if they aren't.
In the meantime, here are some great games like The Last of Us to play.