The Last Of Us director confirms he's started work on next game

Well, well, well. This is very exciting. Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckmann has confirmed that he’s writing and directing a new game. The only problem is, we don’t know exactly what that game is. No one can stop us from theorising though.

We’re long overdue for a new game from Naughty Dog. Last year saw the release of the critically acclaimed The Last of Us Part I for PS5, followed by the critically panned PC port. It was back in 2020 though that we last received an original game in the form of The Last of Us Part II. We were due to have had a look at the studio’s TLOU multiplayer game by now, but that project’s reveal was scrapped after Bungie reportedly raised concerns over the longevity of it. Announcing the delay, Naughty Dog did tease that a new single-player experience is in the works. Could this be the game that Druckmann himself is working on?

PlayStation’s next major exclusive is Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 which swings onto our consoles on 20 October.

Eagle-eyed fans recently noticed that Druckmann had updated his Instagram bio. It now reads, “Writer/director unannounced game”. We can certainly narrow this down. Either Naughty Dog has a new IP in the works (it’s long been rumoured that they could be cooking up something in the fantasy genre), or Druckmann is hard at work on The Last of Us Part III. In all honesty, the latter makes much more sense.

There’s been a major demand for Part III ever since Part II debuted - and the franchise is more popular than ever thanks to the recent HBO TV adaptation. Both Abby and Ellie’s stories were left open-ended and Druckmann is so protective over The Last of Us franchise that I simply cannot see him handing over the reins of the third game over to someone else. This is me simply speculating though. We’ll have to await official confirmation.

Hopefully, Naughty Dog will give us a crumb of a clue soon. It’s also believed that a re-release of Part II is on the way. The re-release is assumed to be a native PS5 version of the game, although it would be fun to see some added DLC. Before long, The Last of Us fans will once again be feasting well.