This week saw Variety interview Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin about the upcoming season of The Last of Us. Toward the end of the article, Druckmann dropped a bit of news about Naughty Dog’s work on The Last of Us Part 3. Or its lack thereof.
“I was waiting for this question,” Druckmann said when asked about the long-discussed but, as of yet, still hypothetical sequel. “I guess the only thing I would say is don’t bet on there being more of ‘Last of Us.’ This could be it.”
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It makes sense for Druckmann to take the focus off The Last of Us Part 3. At the moment, he wants to direct fan attention to the HBO adaptation, rather than to a sequel that is likely still very far in the future, if it ends up materialising at all. Even if the HBO series wasn’t a factor, Naughty Dog’s current focus is on Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, and building anticipation for a new IP isn’t as easy as ginning up excitement for a sequel. Naughty Dog wants to be known for more than The Last of Us, and his comments seem like a way to (for the time being) direct attention away from Part 3.
You notice how in that paragraph I didn’t say that I buy for one second that there won’t be a TLOU3? Yeah, that’s because, if I was Druckmann, and knew that The Last of Us Part 3 was in development, I’d probably say exactly what he said.
The Element Of Surprise
Naughty Dog likes surprises. In Grounded 2, the 2024 documentary chronicling the making of The Last of Us Part 2, Druckmann talks about how exciting it was to unveil both Uncharted: The Lost Legacy and The Last of Us Part 2 at PSX in 2016.
“If we’re gonna surprise people, PSX — the PlayStation Experience — hasn’t set itself up yet as a place where big titles get revealed. That’s E3. We’re unveiling the Uncharted single-player content [Lost Legacy] at the opening of the show. No one’s gonna expect a second Naughty Dog title to be revealed in the same press conference,” Druckmann says over footage from the event.
“When we first revealed The Last of Us, the Naughty Dog logo came up and the crowd erupted, and it was such a high that that’s almost been like chasing the dragon, wanting to recapture that feeling.”
So, how do you recapture that surprise when The Last of Us Part 3 is widely assumed to be an inevitability? How do you capture that bolt-from-the-blue electricity when you’ve already said (as Druckmann did in Grounded 2), that you think there’s one more story to tell.
“I don’t have a story, but I do have a concept, as exciting as 1, as exciting as 2, it’s its own thing but acts like a through-line for all three. It does feel like there’s one more chapter to this story.”
That quote understandably prompted fans to believe that The Last of Us Part 3 is in the works in some capacity, even if it’s a “Bethesda announcing The Elder Scrolls 6” at E3 2018 capacity. It may be a long way away, but Druckmann was alerting fans that another game will eventually come.
Having Your Game And Playing It Too
It seems like Druckmann may want it both ways: to lay down the breadcrumb trail for fans who are eagerly anticipating any TLOU news and to enjoy the total surprise of that PSX reveal again, or of The Last of Us reveal before it. I don’t blame him. As a big fan of the studio, I also want both. I want to play the game of wondering if Part 3 is in development, wondering when it will launch. And I want to see it officially revealed and play it. Game development is built on cycles of hype, and you don’t build hype by laying all your cards on the table.
You can’t take Naughty Dog at face value on things like this. It’s important to note that, in Druckmann’s quote, he doesn’t say that The Last of Us Part 3 is not in development. He says, “This could be it.” And, of course it could. Nuclear war could break out tomorrow or Sony could shut Naughty Dog down or every PlayStation 5 in the world could spontaneously combust. Those things could happen, but they probably won’t, and Druckmann’s statement stakes out the same gray area.
That might seem like a lot to read into a fairly straightforward statement, but Naughty Dog has straight-up changed footage in trailers to mislead fans and preserve surprise before. To hide the twist of Joel’s death at the beginning of The Last of Us Part 2, one late trailer swapped Jesse out for Joel in the scene where Jesse finds Ellie in Seattle. Think about that for a second. Extra mo-cap work, extra voiceover work, and extra animation work, purely for the purpose of a misdirect. If Druckmann is actually being straightforward here about The Last of Us Part 3’s status, it would be extremely out of character for a studio that loves to obfuscate in service of a big reveal.
So, I would bet on there being more of The Last of Us. This statement makes me more sure it will eventually happen, not less.
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