We have a pretty huge, and somewhat unexpected, rumor that’s come up about The Last of Us franchise.
Daniel Richtman claims that The Last of Us 3, contrary to earlier statements, is actually in production. We’ll quote DomTheBomb’s tweet sharing this rumor:
“Naughty Dog is reportedly already in advanced production on The Last of Us Part 3 and has cast actors/filmed some scenes.”
Obviously, this directly contradicts the word of no less than Naughty Dog studio head Neil Druckmann. A week ago, Druckmann told fans this:
“..don’t bet on there being more of ‘Last of Us.’ This could be it .“
While Druckmann did not flat out deny that there was a The Last of Us 3 in production, he hinted quite heavily that at least, the studio was not interested in it. Naughty Dog has already unveiled their next new original IP, called Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet. So it’s reasonable to expect that they will be busy promoting that game, and finishing up development with an eye towards releasing it.
It’s not easy to parse what is going on here. It could simply be that Richtman is completely misinformed. But we do have to wonder if there’s something with how Druckmann phrased his statement so that both claims may consistently describe the current situation.
We will posit our own hypothesis. Remember that Naughty Dog recently cancelled The Last Of Us Online, after years of development. It’s possible that there is a The Last of Us 3 video game in production now, but Naughty Dog is currently on the fence about cancelling it as well. It’s not the best scenario that fans would want to hear, of course, but it’s a reasonable explanation for how both statements can be true.
As you may remember, Naughty Dog explained that they allowed The Last Of Us Online to grow in scope too much, to the point that they had to decide if they were willing to transition into becoming a dedicated live service game studio. This was the reason they ultimately chose to cancel the game. They may be at a similar crossroads when it comes to The Last of Us 3. It’s not necessarily that the game is going through development hell, but something may not be coming together for the project as it currently stands, that’s making their studio head question if they should cancel it too.
But as we said, this is our best guess for now. And it’s possible that something comes along that gets the project moving forward and Druckmann changes his mind on the whole thing. Fans may wish that Naughty Dog went ahead with releasing The Last Of Us Online, and may want to ask that they release a potentially cancelled The Last Of Us 3. But we should remember that Naughty Dog has a reputation to uphold, and if these projects really aren’t living up to what they’re known for, cancelling them may be the better choice in their eyes. But we’ll wait and see if Naughty Dog or Druckmann responds to this rumor for now.
