Naughty Dog is hard at work (maybe too hard, from the sound of it) on Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, but somewhere in the Santa Monica-based studio it sounds like there are other ideas bouncing around as well. Studio president and HBO defector Neil Druckmann is once again subtly teasing that a third Last of Us game is probably coming, which feels more ill-advised with each passing year.
Druckmann posted a couple of sketches on his Instagram account that date way back to 2003. Both images depict a man with a young girl who, after years of iteration and art style changes, would become the grumpy old smuggler and surrogate daughter duo Joel and Ellie. Neither drawing really resembles the characters we finally got. One of the early versions of Joel straight up looks like Resident Evil’s Leon Kennedy with his boy band haircut, albeit in the exaggerated Jak and Daxter style.
Those sketches aren’t the news here. Rather, it’s the fact that Druckmann’s caption seems to hint that a third Last of Us game is on the way.
Been a wild journey. Grateful for every part of it, especially the few stops that remain on the road ahead.
Stops on the road ahead? That sure sounds like another game is in the works. Druckmann has teased a hypothetical Last of Us Part III before, but has also gone back and forth on whether or not it will ever happen. Last year, he said that fans shouldn’t “bet” on a third game, which was a year after he pretty confidently said there was a story he still wanted to tell. All this push and pull is probably making fans who want to see Ellie again sick to their stomachs with anticipation. For me, it’s the thought of Ellie being put through even more trauma that leaves me feeling queasy.
The Last of Us Part II’s ending had a hopeful ambiguity to it that I really loved, and it felt like it closed the loop of the original game’s ending in a way that was compelling. Some might say that’s a sign I should trust Naughty Dog to pull it off a third and final time, but after watching the game’s narrative get mangled in the HBO live-action series and put on an assembly line, I would like for everyone involved to stop playing with fire and just go make other things.
