Naughty Dog has explained why it's taking it's time unveiling its next major game.
Naughty Dog is a studio that typically likes to keep fans well informed about the virtual delights it's cooking up, often announcing games many years before they're due for release. Take Uncharted 4, for instance; Nathan Drake's latest adventure was announced back in 2013 and launched in 2016. The wait for The Last of Us 2 was even lengthier; first unveiled in 2016, the highly anticipated follow-up didn't appear on store shelves until mid-2020. But when it comes to its next game, the developer isn't giving anything away too far in advance.
In an interview with ComicBook, Naughty Dog co-president Neil Druckmann discussed the studio's experience with announcing games way ahead of time and why it's not something he's keen on doing in the future. "We did announce Uncharted 4 and The Last of Us Part 2 way in advance, but that actually caused a little bit of the work-life balance issues that we've sometimes had at the studio," says Druckmann. "By delaying that announcement, we could play with the schedule more and we're more conscious now about how we're approaching production."
Druckmann also mentions the upcoming The Last of Us multiplayer project, which the team had been silently working on "since even before The Last of Us Part 2 shipped", describing it as "the most ambitious project we've ever done. [It's] expanding the world even further, continuing to tell a story, but in a multiplayer space," he says.
To round things off, the Naughty Dog exec briefly touches on the studio's as yet unannounced game, keen to not give even the most minute of hints away, Druckmann says, "There's another project that I will not say anything about that's beyond that that we're also very much excited for." But by the sounds of things, we won't be getting any solid details on this until much closer to its launch.
For the time being, we can only speculate what the studio has planned, although rumours suggest that The Last of Us Part 3 is currently in production. This certainly isn't beyond the realms of possibility given that, Druckmann, when discussing the potential for a third entry in the Last of Us series, said, "I think there's more story to tell."
If it happens, The Last of Us Part 3 is likely a long way off; still, as our new games 2023 guide shows, there are plenty of titles to get excited about this year.
