The developers have revealed that in the early months of the project, the Naughty Dog team had a very different vision.

We recently reported that Neil Druckmann, co-creator of the franchise, revealed that he already had a concept for the third installment of The Last of Us. He talked about it in the documentary Grounded II, which is embedded below. Anthony Newman, co-director of the game, talked about how the first 4-5 months were an open world game inspired by Bloodborne. It was all melee, hand-to-hand combat, so instead of guns, the characters would attack each other with their fists. It’s hard to imagine.

They later dropped the open-world concept because it didn’t fit with the story: “It wasn’t just the melee combat, we also looked at the layout structure. Bloodborne had a very open space that got bigger and bigger as you explored. I really like that feeling of mastering the world. It almost starts to become a character in the game itself. And so that was something that we looked at. We started by making it as different as possible from the first game and then kind of dialed it back. The open world thing didn’t work with the story we were trying to tell,” said Emilia Schatz, lead game designer.

In the video, Druckmann also talks about how Naughty Dog found out who leaked the footage from The Last of Us 2 to push its release. It was a young Dutch fan in his twenties, and thanks to him, the game was the subject of serious debate before its release. According to Druckmann, the leak almost ruined the release of the studio’s game and was annoying for them. The Dutchman hacked into the company’s servers, but Druckmann put the frustration behind him and focused on finishing the game’s development, making it a huge success in 2020 with one of the last major PlayStation 4 exclusives making its way to PlayStation 5.

Coming back from the worst and achieving success is something to cherish.

Source: VGC, GameRant