Naughty Dog released “The Last of Us: Part II” the other week and, like “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” or “Iron Man 3” before it, the work defied expectations which made the critics swoon but proved divisive among the fanbase.
That didn’t stop it from being popular though with the game’s sales skyrocketing and inevitable talk of a potential next chapter which could turn this effectively into a trilogy – the first setting up this post-apocalyptic world, the second going to a very dark place and the third offering resolution and some hope and optimism.
A month ago, game creator Neill Druckmann spoke with British GQ and said a third part could be the next project on his plate: “As you start wrapping things up, creatively there are fewer and fewer responsibilities and my mind can’t help but think about the next thing. So, yeah, the next thing could be a Part III, the next thing could be some new IP.” More recently though he has gone into more detail with Indiewire, saying:
“I’ll be a little vague and cagey as you can expect, but I think the test for whether or not to make a “Part III” would have to be a similar test to what we did with “Part II.” With the first game there were no expectations and it was like we could do anything.
But now that we’ve established certain characters and themes and processes, it felt like to justify making a “Part II” we had to do something not that fans would just be comfortable with, but do something that would match the emotional core we found in the first game. And without that, there’d be no reason to do a “Part III.”
Finding it with the sequel was much harder than it was with the first game, and going forward it would be exponentially harder to justify going back to that world and finding a way to vary things up. There’s already so many things you’ve seen about the backstory, about how the outbreak happens, so we’d really have to figure out how to create a new experience that matches the emotional impact of these stories and I don’t know what that is. Currently.”
Despite some vocal criticisms from gamers, the title is expected to be one of the year’s big contenders for game of the year honors. NPD data for the month of June in the United States as arrived with the title not only the best-selling game of the month and is already at number three for the top-selling game in 2020 so far behind only “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare” and Switch smash “Animal Crossing: New Horizons”.
