Regarding video game sequels, developers tend to take one or two paths when deciding how to “improve things.” The first path that most developers take is to upgrade the game while not losing what came before. You see this with small quality-of-life improvements or using new technology to do things you couldn’t have done well with the previous version. That way, it “plays the same” but has new elements to entice fans. That’s what The Last Of Us Part 2 did when it originally came out on PS4. The catch, however, is that they were originally going to go to the “other path.”
That “other path” was to completely change everything you “thought you knew” about the franchise and how it played so that you would have an entirely new experience versus a rehashed one. It’s a bold move and one that Naughty Dog admitted they considered during the “Grounded II” documentary series. They noted how, initially, they wanted The Last Of Us Part 2 to be so different that they were being inspired by the FromSoftware title Bloodborne:
“In the first four or five months, the game was actually kind of an open world inspired by Bloodborne. It was purely melee-focused, all hand-to-hand combat,” Co-game director Anthony Newman revealed in the video.
That, indeed, would’ve been quite a change, as that would’ve eliminated guns from the picture, which are a huge part of the game’s arsenal. Lead game designer Emilia Schatz added to this by saying that the “layout” of the game would’ve felt entirely different, too:
“Bloodborne had a very open space that kept getting bigger and bigger as you explored. I really like that feeling that you get of mastery over the world. It starts to become almost a character of the game itself. And so that was also something we were looking at.”
So, what happened? Well, not unlike many “grand departures” from the core material, they realized that what they were trying to build “didn’t fit” the game. Specifically, the title’s story wouldn’t work in that open-world setting. As a result, they started to “dial it back,” and it became the more familiar, yet still fresh, setting and style that the game would launch with.
There are still plenty of differences between the first and second stories, including in the gameplay, and the sequel was hailed by many as an “evolution” of sorts from what the first one did. So perhaps the first path was indeed the better option.
Here’s the full video to watch:
