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Naughty Dog's Next Game Will Reportedly Focus on 'Player Freedom'

Naughty Dog's Next Game Will Reportedly Focus on 'Player Freedom' 6u5k6f

Naughty Dog is working on several projects, but the studio has not shared details about any of them. 5i6k53

Written by Manas Mitul | Updated: 22 October 2024 13:09 IST

Naughty Dog's Next Game Will Reportedly Focus on 'Player Freedom'

Photo Credit: Sony/ Naughty Dog 621j9

The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered was released on January 19

Highlights

Naughty Dog cancelled The Last of Us Online in December 2023
The studio's last original release was The Last of Us Part 2 in 2020
Naughty Dog is yet to release an original game on the PS5

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The Last of Us Part 2 in 2020, following which the studio has released a remastered collection of two Uncharted games, a remake of 2013's The Last of Us and a remaster of the sequel. Naughty Dog has not revealed any details about its next game, but an industry insider has teased that the unannounced project would favour player freedom.

'Player Freedom' in Naughty Dog's Next Game 3w3n51

The information comes from Ben Hanson (as spotted by Sony-owned studio's next game could be a departure from its signature narrative-focused, hyper-linear titles that usually offer a very on-rails experience to players.

According to Hanson, a source “very in the know, who worked on the game,” told him that Naughty Dog's next game would take players by surprise. The source compared the in-development title with another existing game that features “a lot of player freedom,” Hansen revealed on The MinnMax Show last week.

Naughty Dog Cancels The Last of Us Multiplayer Game

Naughty Dog release The Last of Us Part 1, a remake of 2013's The Last of Us, in 2022
Photo Credit: Sony/ Naughty Dog

Neil Druckmann on Naughty Dog's Unannounced Game 3q2660

While that's very little detail to get a clear idea about what Naughty Dog is working on, the claim does line up with Druckmann's recent views on the kind of games that have interested him of late. In a conversation with The Washington Post in January 2023, the Naughty Dog co-president had said that he was drawn towards games that told their stories through environment, exploration and gameplay, rather than through a traditional linear narrative.

Naughty Dog Has Chosen Its Next Game, Neil Druckmann Confirms

“I'm more recently intrigued by stuff like Inside that doesn't rely as much on traditional narrative to tell its story and is--I think there's some--some of the best storytelling in “The Last of Us,” a lot of it is in the cinematics. But a lot of it is in gameplay and moving around a space and understanding a history of a space by just looking at it and examining it,” Druckmann had said.

In the same interaction, Druckmann had also said that Naughty Dog was working on multiple new projects, which would be “a little bit different” from the games the studio had worked on before. “I'm really intrigued, again, never resting on our laurels and trying something a little bit new, a little bit different that not everyone is going to like, but that's okay. And, again, the stuff that we're working on now, I could tell you that the teams are very excited by the different projects we have at Naughty Dog,” he had said.

The Last of Us Part 2 featured some player freedom in the form of a mini open-world level
Photo Credit: Sony/ Naughty Dog

Naughty Dog's Next Project, The Last of Us Online and 'Part 3' 5w1n71

Both Druckmann and Naughty Dog have remained evasive on the details about the studio's ongoing projects. Druckmann, in a The Last of Us game.

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“I know the fans really want The Last of Us Part 3, I hear about it all the time,” Druckmann had said in the interview. “All I can say is that — look, we're already into our next project. So, the decision has already been made. I can't say what it is, but that's the process we went through. There was a lot of consideration of different things, and we picked the thing we were the most excited for.”

For a long time, Naughty Dog had been working on a multiplayer game set in the world of The Last of Us, with the studio even releasing concept art from the project. In December 2023, however, the Uncharted developer announced that the multiplayer title had been cancelled. According to the developer, ‘The Last of Us Online' would have required a long-term commitment to push out regular updates, essentially turning Naughty Dog into a live-service studio. The company instead decided to abandon the direction it was headed and stick to making what it was good at — single-player titles.

Despite several teasers and reports about Naughty Dog's unannounced projects, the studio and its parent Sony have kept its next game tightly under wraps. Naughty Dog, one of Sony's most prestigious game studios, is yet to release an original game on the PS5, four years after the console launched.

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Further reading: Uncharted

Manas Mitul

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In his time as a journalist, Manas Mitul has written on a wide spectrum of beats including politics, culture and sports. He enjoys reading, walking around in museums and rewatching films. Talk to Manas about football and tennis, but maybe don’t bring up his video game backlog. More