• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Naughty Dog's next big single player game is not The Last of Us: Part 3.

Fess

Member
Whatever it is you just know it’s going to be Modern Storytelling for Modern Audiences.

At this point I really just don’t care, which is unfortunate as I really liked Uncharted 1-3, 4 was alright, TLOU 1 was great. And then it went downhill.
Yeah I loved Uncharted, really enjoyed the smaller Lost Legacy a lot too.
I have TLOU2 on the shelf but haven’t bothered playing it, no interest for that depressing story. Still planned to do the $10 remaster upgrade for the gameplay but there was too much negativity around the release so it’s sitting on the shelf again.
Hoping they can do something more uplifting next, don’t care if it’s sci-fi or fantasy or comic style or whatever.
 

Perrott

Member
Thats also not correct btw

Most teams do not have the majority working on remakes.
No, I'm not wrong about the remake.

At the time of Part II's release, neither TLOU Online nor the next original singleplayer game were ready to absorb a full team worth of developers, as they were both in pre-production, so in order to keep people busy at the studio, Naughty Dog choose to take over the TLOU remake project from the VASG guys and turn it into an internal project.
So this means Sony Bend and some of Naughty Dog worked on that remake, the rest of their team was working on pre-production of something else.
No, that's not how game development works.

On pre-production, you need at most a very small crew of a few dozen leads figuring out the creative and technical goals of a project, certainly not "the rest of the team" which would translate into well over a hundred people with no work to do as there's still no clear game in sight on which to work on.
 

EDMIX

Writes a lot, says very little
most developers went on to work on the remake
No, I'm not wrong about the remake.


Most of Naughty Dog went to work on the remake? Something that already had Sony Bend assisting with? Do you have a link for this or?

No, that's not how game development works.

On pre-production, you need at most a very small crew of a few dozen leads figuring out the creative and technical goals of a project,

That literally supports that they very much could have had another team working on a new IP for some time now....

So its unlikely that they are going to tell everything their teams are working on, but the new IP coming first isn't really a shock as they have more then 1 team.


So to go Uncharted 3, Last Of Us 1, Uncharted 4 / Lost Legacy, The Last Of Us 2, why the fuck would anyone be shocked that the next thing would be a new IP that was already being worked on prior to the Last Of Us 2's release?
 

Pop

Member
nathan drake but uncharted is soooo dear to meit has a special place in my heart GIF


I will have been 10+ years since the last mainline Uncharted
 

Perrott

Member
Most of Naughty Dog went to work on the remake? Something that already had Sony Bend assisting with? Do you have a link for this or?



That literally supports that they very much could have had another team working on a new IP for some time now....

So its unlikely that they are going to tell everything their teams are working on, but the new IP coming first isn't really a shock as they have more then 1 team.


So to go Uncharted 3, Last Of Us 1, Uncharted 4 / Lost Legacy, The Last Of Us 2, why the fuck would anyone be shocked that the next thing would be a new IP that was already being worked on prior to the Last Of Us 2's release?
Because after The Lost Legacy shipped, there only was the Part II team at Naughty Dog and there couldn't be any other small team even thinking about the next thing because Part II was on its way to arriving two years later than originally expected, whether that initial target was unrealistic or not.

Neil Druckmann went on to say on podcasts in early 2021 that they had only started to consider the next original singleplayer project after Part II shipped and that at the time they were still divided on which pitches (the Tommy TLOU spin-off among them) to ultimately move forward with. This was while the majority of the studio was working on the remake, yes, because neither The Last Of Us Online nor the next singleplayer project were ready absorb hundreds of people at that point in time.

And fucking yes, Naughty Dog did most of the heavylifting on the remake in spite of Bend already assisting on the project because that remake was a huge undertaking and native PS5 title nonetheless.

But if you want to believe that both The Last Of Us Online and an hypothetical ND new IP had hundred people teams working on them at a preproduction stage... go ahead, but that idea is dead wrong.
 
Makes sense for them creatively, rumour is its a medieval fantasy so should help them to venture into new designing new gameplay and design mechanics.

I've never been a fan of TLOU (nothing against it but just not my cup of tea) so it's great to hear they're working on something new and different.
 
I really appreciate a developer that dosen't stagnant on an IP for too long. Naughty Dog is probably one of the best examples of this. FromSoft does it to but there IPs (dont shoot me) are kinds samey
 
Hopefully true. After Part 2, I've lost all interest in it as a franchise. Didn't hate it, but it just wasn't for me. Loved the first one though. Hope they go back to Jak and Daxter. J&D on new tech by ND artists would be a sight to see.

I really appreciate a developer that dosen't stagnant on an IP for too long. Naughty Dog is probably one of the best examples of this. FromSoft does it to but there IPs (dont shoot me) are kinds samey

Uhh.... They've released the same Uncharted(s) and TLOU(s) multiple times across multiple platforms and nothing else. It's almost exactly what stagnation is.
 
Last edited:

Elios83

Member
Fantastic news in line with previous rumors.
While the success of TLOU is huge and they now also have a responsibility towards the TV series, something completely new before Part3 is welcome.
I wonder if they're in a position to tease it this year.
 
Last edited:
Hopefully true. After Part 2, I've lost all interest in it as a franchise. Didn't hate it, but it just wasn't for me. Loved the first one though. Hope they go back to Jak and Daxter. J&D on new tech by ND artists would be a sight to see.



Uhh.... They've released the same Uncharted(s) and TLOU(s) multiple times across multiple platforms and nothing else. It's almost exactly what stagnation is.
When Crash Bandicoot was at its peak, they moved on to Jak and Daxter, when that was at its peak they moved on to Uncharted, when that was at its peak they moved onto the Last of us, and now after two of the most successful games in the history of gaming they are moving on to another IP.

They dont milk an IP into oblivion like other studios do. They have remastered some of there catalog for newer systems sure but that hasnt prevented them for releaseing new IPs as this is an example.
 
Last edited:

Eiknarf

Banned
Naughty Dog animations and fluidity and mechanics are so good that I would rather a short, ten hour, cream of the crop title using their great attributes in a game if we could get one by end of 2024.
Im not a fan of waiting this long for a massive game from ND. Maybe they don’t have to be so big. I’m ok if it’s not a 25-30 hour game
 
Good, I'm kind of fucking sick of the IP already. They've released those 2 games a combined total of 5 times. Let's see something new.
 
When Crash Bandicoot was at its peak, they moved on to Jak and Daxter, when that was at its peak they moved on to Uncharted, when that was at its peak they moved onto the Last of us, and now after two of the most successful games in the history of gaming they are moving on to another IP.

They dont milk an IP into oblivion like other studios do. They have remastered some of there catalog for newer systems sure but that hasnt prevented them for releaseing new IPs as this is an example.

aMa9zLy.png


Yeah, so many new IP's and such diversity.
 
Last edited:

mortal

Banned
Honestly, whatever their next IP is, I hope the setting and premise draw inspiration from unique sources and ideas.
Even if it ends up being a fantasy or a sci-fi setting, I hope they take an unconventional approach, rather than treading familiar ground for those respective genres.
 

Eiknarf

Banned
But is it too much to ask for a new ND game for the PS5?
Or is everybody cool if we don’t get one until the PS6?
 

yurinka

Member
Well I don't think they are making Uncharted and a new IP.

I think it's just New IP and TLOU 3 that are in production so if that's the case that potentially pushes the New IP into 2026.

So really the only difference in our estimates is how many games are releasing before Part 3.

If 1 the late 2020s are possible. If 2 then thats not possible as you said.
Around 2019/2020, Bend started to work on an Uncharted spionff until around 2021, when their Bend new IP got greenlighted and they moved away from the Uncharted game to focus on their own game.

We don't know what happened to this Uncharted game, maybe was cancelled or maybe was continued at ND or at other studio.

We know that during TLOU2 development the only other big project they had was the TLOU2MP mode that evolved to its own game. Which means that ND didn't start to work on their current (at least) 2 SP games until around 2020 (once they shipped TLOU2) or closer to today.

We know one could be the Uncharted game from Bend. We know other one could be the fantasy new IP hinted in TLOU2. But we know that for sure none of them were TLOU3, because as of 2023, when the last part of this documentary was shot they still didn't even know what the TLOU3 story was going to be, and all they had was only a main concept and first early rough draft of the main story and they didn't even greenlight the project.

If they started to work in TLOU3, it would have been after cancelling TLOU Online in 2023, because very likely they did found a wy to rehash in TLOU3 most of the stuff done in TLOU Online in terms of characters, stages and story and merged it with the concept seed for the story that Neil wrote.

But is it too much to ask for a new ND game for the PS5?
Or is everybody cool if we don’t get one until the PS6?
AAA games nowadays need over 5 years to be made. ND released their last game in 2020, meaning that if lucky their next brand new game would be released in minimum 2026.

After TLOU2 they have been working in 2, maybe even 3 new games at the same time. Meaning, after their next game that would be released minimum 2026 you won't have to wait again a lot of years to see the next one released. Maybe only a couple years (think Insomniac).

Neil Druckmann went on to say on podcasts in early 2021 that they had only started to consider the next original singleplayer project after Part II shipped and that at the time they were still divided on which pitches (the Tommy TLOU spin-off among them) to ultimately move forward with. This was while the majority of the studio was working on the remake, yes, because neither The Last Of Us Online nor the next singleplayer project were ready absorb hundreds of people at that point in time.
Almost all ND was working on TLOU2 and its MP mode, which later became a standalone game. Once they shipped TLOU2, their next main big project was TLOU Online. They didn't have any big project, and that includes the remake, which only required a few people from ND to overview, support and provide material to the San Diego team of Sony Visual Arts studio who handled most of the remake, pitched it and until late 2019 when Hermen noticed it were even the leads of the project.

The remake, like the remasters and ports, movie and tv show were developed mostly outside ND. ND only had some people supporting and overviewiing them.

TLOU Online project was so big that they needed help from other studios like Bend, who were helping them with that project until around 2021 or 2022, when Bend fully moved to work on their own new IP.

As of 2023 they weren't sure with the Tommy spin-off/TLOU3, so at least until around when they canned TLOU Online it wasn't in production, when they said they had minimum 2 new SP games. In the past, a few years ago the (back then 2) ND presidents said they had plans to continue working on Uncharted, TLOU and new IP.

So pretty likely the two new SP games they had in the works when they canned TLOU Online were Uncharted (maybe they took the Bend project once Bend left it, or the Cassie project which who knows if it's even a VR game) and new IP (maybe the new one hinted in TLOU2, maybe some Marvel adaptation like The Punisher).
 
Last edited:
Convenient for you to include all the DLCs and only post half of their history.

Missed this part though.
hdvKyBR.jpg
My bad, I only quoted the last 15 years, which I thought was a fair look. If you stretch out just about ANY studios catalog to it's beginning the amount of "diversity" jumps exponentially.

But hey, if you want to paint current ND in a way that makes you feel better, by all means, soldier on.

I don't care, I'm happy they are moving on to something other than the same I.P.'s they've been milking for the last 15 years, I would love to see a current look at a new I.P. from them with their tech. Or....*scan's through your screenshot* go back to the I.P.'s I grew up with and loved that they've let stagnate for a long time.
 
Last edited:
My bad, I only quoted the last 15 years, which I thought was a fair look. If you stretch out just about ANY studios catalog to it's beginning the amount of "diversity" jumps exponentially.

But hey, if you want to paint current ND in a way that makes you feel better, by all means, soldier on.
Look at it this way in 30 years (Crash 1 1994) they have release 4 successful IPs and about to be a 5th (dont know it it will be successful).

With out including the new one, that breaks down to a new franchise every 7.5 years

Some studio take over half that (5 to 6 years) to release a game let alone an entire franchise.

Polyphony Digital
Turn 10
343/bungie before that
Sony Santa Monica


A few examples of industry leaders that truly have milked IP




No offense to you but i yhink your either young and you perceive time based on you age or you are Jaded and dont understand how long it takes to make a game. They only thing you have proven is they are efficient when compared to other studios.
 
Last edited:
Look at it this way in 30 years (Crash 1 1994) they have release 4 successful IPs and about to be a 5th (dont know it it will be successful).

With out including the new one, that breaks down to a new franchise every 7.5 years

Some studio take over half that (5 to 6 years) to release a game let alone an entire franchise.

Polyphony Digital
Turn 10
343/bungie before that
Sony Santa Monica


A few examples of industry leaders that truly have milked IP




No offense to you but i yhink your either young and you perceive time based on you age or you are Jaded and dont understand how long it takes to make a game. They only thing you have proven is they are efficient when compared to other studios.
Lol. I'm old enough to have played Way of the Warrior on the 3DO when it was released(it sucked btw). Crash Bandicoot was the first game I got on the Playstation. I'm not jaded, I'm just realistic.

You seem to think any valid criticism is some attack on the studio. I'm not sure why you can't just accept that they've milked the hell out of the UC and TLOU franchise. And I'd argue that it's easily not ND's fault they got stuck doing those games, dev costs are a very real consideration when making games.

And to try and frame it in the way of "New Franchise every 7.5 years" while dismissing the fact that development time of the 90's and the development time of the late 2000's are completely different tables to be considered, not some average that works out to trying to promote them as this studio that is pumping out great new I.P.'s every few years is really odd to me. You are going hard in the paint.
 
Last edited:
Lol. I'm old enough to have played Way of the Warrior on the 3DO when it was released(it sucked btw). I'm not jaded, I'm just realistic.

You seem to think any valid criticism is some attack on the studio. I'm not sure why you can't just accept that they've milked the hell out of the UC and TLOU franchise.

And to try and frame it in the way of "New Franchise every 7.5 years" while dismissing the fact that development time of the 90's and the development time of the late 2000's are completely different tables to be considered, not some average that works out to trying to promote them as this studio that is pumping out great new I.P.'s every few years.
Im not taking your opinion as an attack, we just seem to have a different view on the time frame an IP is considered stagnation. I am basing my opinion on the developers history and how thwy compare to other developers around the industry.

That is all, agree to disagree.

I too want a new IP for Naughty Dog but i would be fine with TLOU3 as well just like i would have been fine with Uncharted 5

Edit: development time in the 90s and 2000s was a vaild point that I didnt consider. However i still think when compared to other developers they move off their IPs faster.
 
Last edited:

yurinka

Member
Look at it this way in 30 years (Crash 1 1994) they have release 4 successful IPs and about to be a 5th (dont know it it will be successful).

With out including the new one, that breaks down to a new franchise every 7.5 years

Some studio take over half that (5 to 6 years) to release a game let alone an entire franchise.

Polyphony Digital
Turn 10
343/bungie before that
Sony Santa Monica


A few examples of industry leaders that truly have milked IP




No offense to you but i yhink your either young and you perceive time based on you age or you are Jaded and dont understand how long it takes to make a game. They only thing you have proven is they are efficient when compared to other studios.
If you guys talk about milking IPs, look at internally developed Nintendo games. They have a gazillion teams and as I remember their most recent IP they had was Splatoon in the WiiU, and before that the Wii minigames collections if you count it as an IP. Other than, decades of sequels, spinoffs, sequels of spinoffs, remasters and remakes. And that is the whole Nintendo, not a specific studio.

ND alone, as a specific studio released at least a new big IP every generation, with the exception of the PS3 one where they released Uncharted and TLOU and the previous one when they released none.

But as time passed, the game developments became way longer and way more expensive and their IPs way more successful. Meaning, each new generation they could release less games and had more pressure to work on sequels.

In they past they struggled when having two big projects at the same time, so to grow wasn't a solution back then. But more recently, seems they finally started to have a proper production team, and to get rid of crunch and to grow scaling the studio to be working at the same time in 3 big new projects (TLOU Online + 2 SP ones).

So pretty likely they are working on a new IP now, and if they continue having 2 or 3 teams they'll reduce the distance of their releases to 2-3 year between them.
 
Rocking good news, I might be the only dude on the planet who played about 2-3 hours of the first TLOU on release day and never touched the game again lol.
 

Hohenheim

Member
I think I heard they were working on a sex working game mostly involving tranny "lesbians". It's supposed to have a lot of dong, especially for a lesbo game.

I am woman.

get-rid-of-chest-fat.jpg
The Last of Us really brings out the shittiest shit on this forum. Jeez.

Cool that they're doing something new btw!
 

EDMIX

Writes a lot, says very little
most developers went on to work on the remake
And fucking yes, Naughty Dog did most of the heavylifting on the remake

lol Yea, that backpaddle won't go unnoticed.

So...Most of Naughty Dog was not working on the remake, we know this for a fact btw as it had many outsourced teams involved, which would be odd if "most developers went to work on the remake"

I don't see much evidence to support this btw as I"m not arguing the majority of who worked on the remake, merely that most of that team was not working on that remake as we literally have the credits showing us the outsourced teams.

But if you want to believe that both The Last Of Us Online and an hypothetical ND new IP had hundred people teams working on them at a preproduction stage... go ahead, but that idea is dead wrong.

Ok, but that isn't some odd, unheard of thing though bud, that is actually how they've been putting games out for generations now.

The Last Of Us 2 had well over 2000 plus people working on it, to say hundreds are working on some other project isn't some wild thing lol

They would likely not tell us years in advance anyway if they are even working on such thing. That development could have started before The Last Of Us 2, they went to assist in finishing The Last Of Us 2, then continued on that project as it could be an on and off thing or they could be working on many titles at once in chunks.

Anyone of those situations could very well be happening as its not like ND and Sony will tell us deep in advance what is being worked on by all.

So we'll see what their teams are working on years from now.
 
Last edited:

CLW

Member
Duh cant make anything new still gotta get out that remaster of the remaster of the remaster ultimate edition.
 

Eiknarf

Banned
lol Yea, that backpaddle won't go unnoticed.

So...Most of Naughty Dog was not working on the remake, we know this for a fact btw as it had many outsourced teams involved, which would be odd if "most developers went to work on the remake"

I don't see much evidence to support this btw as I"m not arguing the majority of who worked on the remake, merely that most of that team was not working on that remake as we literally have the credits showing us the outsourced teams.



Ok, but that isn't some odd, unheard of thing though bud, that is actually how they've been putting games out for generations now.

The Last Of Us 2 had well over 2000 plus people working on it, to say hundreds are working on some other project isn't some wild thing lol

They would likely not tell us years in advance anyway if they are even working on such thing. That development could have started before The Last Of Us 2, they went to assist in finishing The Last Of Us 2, then continued on that project as it could be an on and off thing or they could be working on many titles at once in chunks.

Anyone of those situations could very well be happening as its not like ND and Sony will tell us deep in advance what is being worked on by all.

So we'll see what their teams are working on years from now.
Wait
But in the documentary Neil said the team grew from like 40 people to 300

Where are we getting this “2000”?
 

EDMIX

Writes a lot, says very little
Wait
But in the documentary Neil said the team grew from like 40 people to 300

Where are we getting this “2000”?

This is with all the support teams and temp staff contracted out. (well most of gaming is contracted)


This is why i normally say we don't really know 100% what a team might be working on as they might have a few projects on the side and merely not state what they are.

(edit, i'm trying to see that documentary) lol
 
Last edited:
ND headcount is around 400-450. It's unrealistic that they make any more top-tier AAA. Uncharted and TLOU are the peak of their respective genres. For the next game to live up to that standard they need to drop Uncharted or TLOU. The easy option is Uncharted, because there is nothing left without Nathan Drake (don't even suggest the cheap move of his daughter being the main character).

The MP fiasco has shown they cannot cope with projects in which they lack expertise.
 
I hope Tommy's game one day becomes a real thing. I would love to play as him. Tommy managed to get out of the slaughterhouse that was Part II, but in exchange he had one of the worst endings: alone, bitter and disabled.
 
Top Bottom