Naughty Dog’s latest title has far fewer narrative scenes. According to the latest rumours, the next project from the studio behind The Last of Us will focus more on exploration and player freedom. At least if we are the founder of MinnMax Ben Hanson might think.
Hanson was given a description of a single-player project in the works at the studio. Its source? Who is working on the game? According to Hanson, the game gives the player a great deal of freedom. The man was also given a name as a reference to the title. Unfortunately, he didn’t want to reveal it, because he didn’t want fans to cite him as an authoritarian source. “The fans aren’t prepared for how great this game is going to be,” Hanson admitted. It sounds like strong language. Here is his full answer:
“The tone was like, y’all aren’t prepared for how great this thing is, and the tone was – I won’t say which game they pointed to to compare it to because I don’t want people to be like, for example, MinnMax said it was going to be exactly like this, but they compared it to a game that had a lot of Of player freedom.
This reference to player freedom is no coincidence. During a Interview with the Washington Post At the end of 2023, Neil Druckman indicated his desire to move away from traditional storytelling. At the time, he was fascinated by games like Elden Ring and Inside, where players could get a lot of the story from the gameplay and environments. Which is something he’s undoubtedly already implemented in The Last of Us: Part 2, thanks to all the types of written messages you can find. As well as the state of the environments.
It seems questionable whether Naughty Dog will scrap the scenes entirely. But exploration will certainly be pushed forward further in the studio’s new games.
