In the gaming industry, you have teams that are so large that they can create multiple titles in a set span of years, and then you have teams that often focus on just one or two titles and work to make them stand out from the crowd. In the case of Naughty Dog, they are the latter in this story. They are a team that is known for taking the time to deliver an experience that people resonate with. Sure, they’ve had some setbacks and failures over the years, like with a certain multiplayer game that they scrapped after years of development, but they’re a team that can easily bounce back strong.
That brings us to Ben Hanson, who is the founder of MinnMax. He claims to have new information on what Naughty Dog is working on next, and it’s something that will likely get gamers excited for whatever is in the works:
“The tone was like, you are all not ready for how amazing this thing is going to be, and the tone was—I’m not going to say the game that they referenced to compare it to because I don’t want people to be like, MinnMax said it was going to be exactly like this—but they compared it to a game with a lot of player freedom.”
Obviously, that can mean a lot of different things, and there are numerous best-selling titles out there that harness “player freedom” in various respects. Given the games that the developer has created in recent years, it would be fair to guess that this is another open-world title, which would give plenty of freedom to roam around in. However, if we’re to be “blown away” by it, it would have to be something far more than just an “expansive title.” After all, we’ve had plenty of those in the last two years, and not all of them have been hits.
Another thing to remember is that the head of the crew, Neil Druckmann, noted in a past interview that he wants to go down the path of non-traditional storytelling to see what experiences they can come up with. He even noted that FromSoftware has done that kind of storytelling with its hit titles.
In the end, we just have to trust Naughty Dog to make something special and grand. Plus, we know that they are working on a third entry in a beloved franchise, so that will be something to look forward to as well.
