There’s Still Time For a Happy Ending
The Last of Us: Part II dropped last year, and it’s fair to say that reactions were mixed. While the game drew rave reviews from critics and swept just about every industry award show, fan reaction was more divided due to the focus on LGBT characters and the death of the first game’s hero, Joel, early in the game.
Still, the team wanted to tell a story, and they succeeded. Does that mean the story had a definitive ending? Hell no; Abby and Lev were last seen headed for a Firefly outpost in California whereas Ellie was last seen wandering into the woods, with fans debating whether she’d reunited with her girlfriend, Dana, to this day. (She totally did.)
Fans who loved the second game have been begging for a sequel to give some closure to these characters, however we feel about them, and it looks like we’re in luck as Neil Druckerman has announced that a story outline for the third game has already been written, but with a catch: the team aren’t planning on making it quite yet.
Druckerman also confirmed that there has been “quite a bit” of discussion about a third game in the series, but stresses that it isn’t in development at the moment.
“We’ve now had two games that I feel speak to something universal as well as telling a very personal story for these characters,” said Druckmann. “With one game, there’s no pattern of what a franchise is. With two games, now there’s starting to be a pattern – now I feel like there are some structural and thematic themes you would have to stick to if you were making a third game.”
“After we finish one of our big titles, we take a long time to explore different ideas, whether it’s going to be Last of Us 3, whether it’s something new, whether there’s some old franchise we want to go back to.”
“I like to fully explore all of those, and then look at, okay, we have all of these ideas in front of us. As a studio, what do we want to commit to? Because it’s a huge commitment – monetary, time, passion, talent, so you think about all the opportunity costs that come with that.”
Will you dive back into the world of The Last of Us? Let us know in the comments, on Twitter, or on Facebook.
