Given the big success of The Last of Us video game series and the new HBO show, fans might be expecting Naughty Dog to make The Last of Us: Part III in the future. That could happen–a plot outline has already been formulated–but Naughty Dog hasn’t made any decisions just yet.
The next Last of Us game is the upcoming multiplayer title, which Naughty Dog says is its most ambitious title ever. Speaking to BuzzFeed, Naughty Dog co-president Neil Druckmann said he considers the multiplayer game to be “another chapter in the universe of The Last of Us.”
But what about a sequel to The Last of Us: Part II? Druckmann said people are “wondering about The Last of Us: Part III and whether that will be a thing or not.”
Druckmann didn’t have anything to announce, but said Naughty Dog gets to decide which games it makes. And just because The Last of Us is a successful franchise, that doesn’t mean it will keep making more Last of Us games. After all, Naughty Dog has said it is done with the Uncharted series, despite that franchise’s massive commercial success.
“All I could say is, at Naughty Dog we’re very, very privileged that our publisher is Sony–which means Sony funds our games, supports us, and we’re owned by Sony. They have supported us every step of the way to follow our passions–meaning that just because something is successful, people think there’s all this pressure and we have to make a sequel. That’s not the case,” Druckmann said. “For us, Uncharted was insanely successful–Uncharted 4 was one of our best-selling games–and we’re able to put our final brushstroke on that story and say that we’re done. We’re moving on.”
Similarly, Naughty Dog could walk away from The Last of Us franchise and pursue other projects, like potentially its rumored new IP. But Naughty Dog would make another mainline Last of Us game if it had a compelling enough story behind it, Druckmann said.
“It’s up to us whether we want to continue [The Last of Us] or not. Our process is the same thing we did when we did Part 2, which is if we can come up with a compelling story that has this universal message and statement about love–just like the first and second game did–then we will tell that story,” he said. “If we can’t come up with something, we have a very strong ending with Part 2 and that will be the end.”
Just because Naughty Dog has no plans to make another Uncharted game and has the opportunity to walk away from The Last of Us, both franchises could continue with external developers. In the case of Uncharted, Naughty Dog has said it’s open to the idea of an outside studio making Uncharted 5.
For now, fans can look forward to new episodes of HBO’s The Last of Us series every Sunday night until Season 1 wraps up on March 12. As for the Last of Us multiplayer game, more details are expected to come this year.
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