People have been asking for a new Last of Us game for quite some time. With interest in the franchise skyrocketing after a successful debut season run of its live-action adaptation on HBO and HBO Max, the onus is now on Naughty Dog to deliver.
We’ve heard plenty of rumors over the last few months leading up to the TV show premiere, mostly notably about the as-yet-unnamed multiplayer game set in The Last of Us universe. And while neither Naughty Dog nor long-time franchise director Neil Druckmman has confirmed a new addition to the series, it seems we're getting closer to that moment. This is what Druckmman had to say when speaking with Kinda Funny Games in a recent interview:
I know the fans really want The Last of Us Part III, I hear about it all the time. All I can say is that, look, we're already into our next project. The decision has already been made. I can't say what it is, but that's the process we went through, that there was a lot of consideration of different things and we picked the thing we were most excited for.
Druckmman elaborated the pressure exerted by the player base is much greater than the expectations PlayStation has of them. With their hands untied, they’ve taken advantage of the situation and explored many different ideas, some for new sequels and some of them entirely new projects. Although nothing is confirmed as of yet, seeing the director speak so much about new ideas and Part 3 might feel like softening the inevitable blow.
This is what he had to say about the trajectory of his team’s creative process:
At the end of every project we purposefully explore several different projects. Some of them might be a sequel, and then a bunch of new ideas, and then we really feel like "where do our passions lie". That's the fire that has to sustain for years to come, because if you pick the wrong project and you burn out from that idea because you weren't that passionate about it two years into it on a four year project, you're fucked.
As Naughty Dog takes its time with its next project, Amazon Prime’s God of War TV Show is feeling the heat generated by the Last of Us adaptation. Season two of the highly successful series has already been confirmed and it looks like HBO will try to spread out the source content from The Last of Us Part 2 across multiple seasons.
With both the tenth anniversary of The Last of Us franchise and the tenth The Last of Us day set on June 14 and September 26, respectively, we're hoping to hear more future projects sooner rather than later.
