There was a whole story about why TLOU got chosen. Basically Sony's Visual Arts support studio needed to pick a safe project to prove they could take on bigger projects by themselves, TLOU was more modern and would require less resources in terms of a remake so they went with that instead of UC1. But the budget ended up balooning and Sony wasn't feeling the remake without Naughty Dog, then Naughty Dog was brought in a year ago to finish up the project and also gain some PS5 dev experience.
"Schreier writes in his report that Sony’s Visual Arts Service Group (VASG) in San Diego was originally leading development on the game. Often used by Sony as a support studio for its blockbuster releases, the team wanted to move into proper development and lead up their own project, though the report describes Sony’s ambivalence to the idea. The development team was never given a proper name, and indeed, while there have been reports that they are
working on a new project over the last couple of years, the most Sony has done to acknowledge that is say that they’re
working on expanding existing PlayStation franchises.
As Schreier’s report explains, knowing that to be able to move into proper development they’d need to pitch something that would be perceived as a safe bet by Sony executives, they decided to remake a popular PlayStation game for their first project. Their first choice was Uncharted 1, but since that would have required heavy reworking and major investments, decided instead to settle on The Last of Us, which was much more modern and would require fewer overhauls.
When Hermen Hulst was appointed as the head of Sony Worldwide Studios, however, he wasn’t impressed with the work that was being done. Though a section of the game had been developed to show what the rest of it would like and play like, Hulst believed too much money was being pumped into the project (which was internally being called T1X). VASG founder Michael Mumbauer and his team explained that the game needed that much budget because it was being developed on a new graphics engine to leverage the PS5’s hardware, but Hulst wasn’t convinced.
Following the launch of The Last of Us Part 2 (for which VASG provided development support), several Naughty Dog developers were allegedly assigned to the development of the T1X, many of whom had been involved with the original’s development. Meanwhile, the project itself was also moved under Naughty Dog’s budget, giving it more freedom and financial leeway. In other words, Naughty Dog were made leave developers on the remake, with VASG demoted to being a support studio again."
