Neil Druckmann is 'Working on Another Game' That He 'Can't Say Anything' About - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 04 September 2023 / 3,498 Views
Naughty Dog vice president and director Neil Druckmann in an interview with Entertainment Weekly speaking about The Last of Us HBO series teased the next game he is working on.
"My job is really strange, I'm given feedback on this theme park thing, I'm working on the TV show, and I'm working on another game, so I'm just kind of jumping around on different projects," said Druckmann.
Druckmann when asked about The Last of Us Part 3 added, "As far as the next game at Naughty Dog, I can't say anything. My comms director over there will slaughter me."
The "theme park thing" he is referring to is the Halloween Horror Nights walkthrough attraction at Universal Orlando Resort based on The Last of Us.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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"Director of a video game company is working on a video game" - NEWS
That is something that we had already heard.
Enough of these edgy games. Its time for Jak 4.
Jak 4 could also be an edgy game considering what happened with Jak sequels.
Not nearly as edgy as TLoU.
Well I guess that confirms he's still in the video game development business..
I'm pretty sure it's not The Last of Us or Uncharted. It's probably a new IP or some other IP.
Article got it wrong a bit,
Neil isn't vice,
He was co-president but Evan wells retired so he is the president of naughty dog
Probably for the best since I don't see a new ND game launching before holiday season 2024
Neil is the kind of guy that has a lot of ideas some great and some bad, but lacks the ability to know which is which. He really needs someone to bounce his ideas off of to filter out the bad again.
What ideas were bad? I've would rate every Naughty Dog game at least a 9.
Killing off of beloved characters are usually bad ideas.
Couldn't disagree with you more. I think the weakest type of storytelling is when an author trembles at the thought of hurting or killing a beloved character because of the outrage that might cause. Storytelling should have stakes and bad things need to happen to good people every now and then to show that they're really human and not superheroes.
I agree to a degree. I don't think it was a bad idea to kill Joel, but how they executed it was very poor. The fact that his death happens due to him and abby just coincidentally running into each other is just awful story telling. Joel and Tommy suddenly acting out of character is bad storytelling.
This very much: they could have written Abby as eavesdropping in on a Tommy/Joel conversation wherein she hears them using their real names with each other and switching to fake names after they meet her. Abby would then easily discern Joel's real identity. Easy writing fix.
Still, Joel's basically getting replaced by Abby which just feels like a downgrade imo...
Nah, it's not bad story telling because you don't like it.
If you don't like how they event took place that's fine. But there's nothing to suggest that Joel should've acted any different. He's most likely saved other ppl before. He's essentially safe at his new dwelling. And Abby actively helps them until the realisation hits everyone. Joel had become comfortable with his situation.
Ppl change. It's been 5 years since the original game. Expecting him to somehow remain unchanged would be bad story telling.
We see not long before his death that he is just as if not even more protective of Ellie and there is nothing to suggest that he has become soft over the 5 years. If they want to show that his character has changed they have to actually show it otherwise it's just bad writing. The game also over relies on coincidences which again is a big sign of poor writing. The story is very easy to pick apart.
I'm sorry, but fiction by its very nature is a series of coincidences , otherwise you wouldn't have a story at all. If characters didn't say or do things at very specific moments, then the story you experience would not happen .
Joels story arc in TLoU2 isn't about protectiveness. It's about reconnection. His actions aren't about protecting Ellie, but to show her that he cares for her and wants to fix the mend between them. This is in fact actual character growth since it mirrors his actions in TLoU1 which would be characterised by selfishness, whereas in TloU2 it's about selflessness.
So yes, Joel is a different person.
Abby would have found Joel eventually, she already found his settlement. It was not that big of a leap to run into him on his patrol routes.
And the whole name thing, when was it ever a thing in TLOU that people wouldn't give out their names? It's not like your name means much in a destroyed world with no electronic records and people being scattered around with huge distances between them. And Joel could not have imagined that somewhere out there would be a woman who has been plotting his death for years and would be coming after him. He had settled into a more peaceful life and gotten used to it.
He took down the fireflies a big organised group and the game literally starts with him telling Tommy to keep it a secret. If anything it is idiotic that him and Ellie are using there real names at all. God the more I think about it the worse the writing gets and this is literally just the start of the game there are story issues littered throughout the entire game. It's unfortunate because there are some great aspects to the game as well. Generally relying to heavily on coincidence is considered poor writing. The area they are in is large having them just so happen to be in the same place at the same time just minutes after we first start playing as abby is to big of a coincidence especially for the inciting incident of the entire story.
I think Tommy is referring to Ellie and maybe the people in Jackson when he talks about keeping Joel's secret. The firefly thing happened years ago at that point and Joel is not expecting anyone coming all the way from Utah (let alone Seattle which he doesn't even know about) to Wyoming to kill him after all that time. The fireflies didn't even know where to look for him, until the WLF napped a couple of their guys and found out about the settlement. You can argue about the coincidence, but it wouldn't have made any difference in the end if Abby ran into him earlier or a bit later. The outcome would have been the same and yes, it was very upsetting. I don't think any of the fans were thrilled that Joel died, but that doesn't mean it's bad storytelling, it's just a storyline you don't like because you feel bad. You can't expect that your favorite hero has unlimited plot armor for all eternity, especially in a world such as TLOU where it's brutally "realistic" considering the circumstances.
For me, as much as it sucked to lose Joel, the game as a whole was a masterful and unprecedented study into perspective and how it can affect everything. I was furious at the beginning, but in the end I was able to see the tragedy from both sides and understood there are no good guys or bad guys in this story, and it rocked my world. Made me think about a lot of things in real life as well. You didn't like it, and that's totally okay too.
I've already said I don't have a problem with Joel dying. His death makes sense as an inciting incident for the story but the execution of it felt very rushed and poorly thought out. The outcome may end up being the same but how you get to that outcome is extremely important. Also I just don't find it believable that Joel would not be more careful. He murdered a bunch of fireflies and stole what some consider humanities last hope. The ideas the game puts forth really aren't unprecedented tge idea of showing the same story from different perspectives has been around for a very long time and this is not a particularly good example of it. There is some potential to the ideas they had for this game but unfortunately the execution of these ideas was fumbled badly throughout. Still I'm glad you enjoyed it, wish I could as well.
I agree that it can be a benefit to storytelling but it can come at a cost. TLoU2 was controversial and divisive. If I were a game maker, that's not what I'd want to see in my fanbase: I'd want my fanbase to be united in their love for my product rather than suffering some sort of rift.
It was a thought experiment, and a very bold one at that. What we love and hate is all a matter of perspective. If the first game had been about Abby and in the end this random guy comes in and kills her father, we would have been raging at Joel and wanted revenge.
They wanted to see if people would be able to see past their bias and look at the situation from the other point of view. Could they feel empathy for the other side, which would be just as valid, but very difficult because they wouldn't know that side as well as Joel's side? Turns out that some people can and others can't. If nothing else, at least it was a very interesting sociological experiment.
"If the first game had been about Abby and in the end this random guy comes in and kills her father, we would have been raging at Joel and wanted revenge."
I doubt I would considering Abby's father was about to kill a young girl. Joel was defending Ellie while Abby was just getting revenge. The two are not the same thing.
Yes, they are not the same thing. Ellie had to be operated on in order to create a vaccine, calling it just "killing" doesn't do it justice. Besides, it can be argued that Ellie would have wanted that herself. Joel not letting it happen destroyed his and Ellie's relationship for a long time, perhaps irreparably, even though Ellie said in the end that she would like to try and forgive him. Contrast that with some guy barging in and straight up murdering a doctor while he's in surgery trying to do something to save humanity.
I'm a father myself and I can totally understand where Joel was coming from. Most likely would have done the same thing myself, if there was no way to subdue the doctor without killing him. Either way, both sides are justified in their anger.
That whole bit about creating a vaccine is bizarre to me. Was killing Ellie necessary? The cowpox/smallpox vaccine did not necessitate the death of the cow.
Ellie as a living source for study samples would have been best, the surgeon just strikes me as incompetent. What if killing Ellie ruins whatever is making her immune?
You say earlier that I would have been raging at Joel for killing the surgeon. Wrong, I would have been raging at a surgeon/medical team that seemed so f***ing stupid!
That is not the basis of bad story telling. TLOU grounded itself in reality and said nothing is sacred, a lot of gamers were just butt hurt things didn't go as they imagined...
There's lots of valid critique about the game, but a main character being killed off is not one of them. It's not Mario or some other endless franchise featuring a Mascot... The whole game is about the cruelness & endless cylce of violence
Generally most of the story in last of us 2. It's very interesting to look into the background of that game, because you end up seeing that Neil took a bunch of ideas that were rejected for the first game for being bad ideas and threw them into the sequel. I get that some people like the 2nd games story, but it is not good storytelling.
Here comes more progressive garbage.
