XXXXXX

While Naughty Dog has only teased the third installment in The Last of Us franchise, co-writer and director Neil Druckmann discussed recently sequels are never part of his initial plans. Talking along with Sony Santa Monica head Cory Barlog at the DICE Summit in Las Vegas, the two chatted with an audience about their doubts about their creative process.

After taking a few pre-submitted audience questions, one came across which asked about the development of sequels and how to maintain character development over multiple games. Druckmann said he goes one game at a time and doesn't think that far ahead.

"That's a very easy question for me to answer, because I never think about multiple games because I'm the game in front of us is so all-consuming," he responded (via IGN). "I think you're jinxing yourself if you're starting to think about the sequel when you're working on the first game. So when I was making The Last of Us 2, yeah, sure. Every once in a while an idea pops in your head of where it might go if we get the chance to do another one. But I just approach it as, 'what if I never get to do another one?' I'm not saving some idea for the future. If there's a cool idea, I'm doing my best to get it into here."

Druckmann expanded on how his method for character arcs works which simply boiled down to if they can't move forward, he said he jokingly would kill them off.

"I'm half joking, but we just find the next game. When we made Uncharted 1, we had no idea we would do the train sequence of Uncharted 2, or where Nathan Drake would be. We figured it out when we made Uncharted 2. And eventually, the same when we worked on Uncharted 3, same when we worked on Uncharted 4, where we look back and say, 'How do we not repeat ourselves? Where else could this character go? What else could get him back into the adventure?'," he explained.

"And we have to come up with a new answer," he continued. "And if we don't have a new answer then we should ask ourselves, is this the right character? Is this the right game for us to work on? Or is it time to find something new?”

Speaking of new, back in November, Druckmann confirmed during the Jewish Visionaries in Gaming discussion--appearing alongside BioShock designer Ken Levine--that he was working on his first new game since 2020.

"I can't talk about it or our bosses will get very mad at me," he said at the time.

Season 2 of HBO's The Last of Us premieres on Max in April and will cover some of the events The Last of Us Part 2.