Naughty Dog will make The Last of Us Part 3 at some point in the future as the game already has a story ready to be transformed into gameplay. Creative director Neil Druckmann says that one day he hopes the story will see the light of day.

Speaking on an episode of the Script Apart podcast, Druckmann emphasised that the general outline for The Last of Us Part 3 is done and it explores what happens after the events of the second game. Whether or not it will ever be made is a different story.

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There is no doubt that Naughty Dog will work on the next instalment in the series though. However, it may be a few years before that development kicks off. Druckmann says that there has been quite a lot of internal discussion about The Last of Us Part 3 but also stated that a game of that size takes a lot of work.

“I don’t know how much I want to reveal… [co-writer Halley Gross] and I did write an outline for a story, that we’re not making – but I hope one day can see the light of day – that explores a little bit what happens after this game. We’ll see.

These games take so much to make. [Part 2], I’ve been thinking about it for seven years, between when the last game came out and when this came out […] You want to make sure you’re jazzed by the idea that you have, it feels like it’s challenging.

Druckmann also says that The Last of Us series now follows a pattern and that the third game will have to follow this pattern and themes.

“We’ve now had two games that I feel speak to something universal as well as telling a very personal story for these characters. With one game, there’s no pattern of what a franchise is. With two games, now there’s starting to be a pattern – now I feel like there are some structural and thematic themes you’d have to stick to if you’re making a third game.”

At the moment, Naughty Dog is currently working on a big game. We don’t know what it is yet but Druckmann confirmed this news saying that the studio will explore what to do next after they “finish one of our big titles.”

We take a long time to explore different ideas, whether it’s going to be Last of Us III, whether it’s something new, whether there’s some old franchise we want to go back to. I like to fully explore all of those, then look at, like: okay, we have all of these ideas in front of us. As a studio, what do we want to commit to? Because it’s a huge commitment – monetary, time, passion, talent, so you think about all the opportunity costs that come with that.”

Recent news claimed that Naughty Dog is currently working on a standalone The Last of Us multiplayer game as well as a full remake of the original entry. However, that has yet to be confirmed.

Source: IGN