Naughty’s Dog’s unannounced game will reportedly focus on “player freedom”.
According to MinnMax founder Ben Hanson during the latest episode of The MinnMax Show, a source “very in the know, who worked on the game” said that fans “aren’t ready” for the studio’s next project” and that it will feature “a lot of player freedom” (via VGC).
“The tone was like, you are all not ready for how amazing this thing is going to be, and the tone was – I’m not going to say the game that they referenced to compare it to because I don’t want people to be like, MinnMax said it was going to be exactly like this – but they compared it to a game with a lot of player freedom,” Hanson said.
When asked if the game in question was Hitman, which has an incredible amount of player freedom, Hanson said it wasn’t.
At this time, Naughty Dog hasn’t officially announced its next title. The studio, which is perhaps best known for the Uncharted and The Last of Us series, is famous for keeping its development plans under wraps until it’s ready.
However, earlier this year Naughty Dog’s co-president Neil Druckmann confirmed that “multiple single-player” projects are in development at the studio, saying “I promise you, we will not be The Last of Us studio forever”.
Last year, Druckmann also said that he’d like the team to focus less on cutscenes and a “traditional narrative” in future projects.
“I’m more recently intrigued by stuff like Elden Ring and Inside, that don’t rely as much on traditional narrative to tell a story,” Druckmann said in an interview with The Washington Post.
“I think some of the best storytelling in The Last of Us – yes, a lot of it is in the cinematics – but a lot of it is in the gameplay, and moving around a space, and understanding a history of a space by just looking at it and examining it. To me that, right now, is some of the best joy I get out of games – [those] that trust their audience to figure things out, that don’t hold their hand. That’s the stuff I’m really intrigued by going forward.”
In December 2023, Naughty Dog canceled its The Last of Us Online game after concerns that it would impact the studio’s future single-player games, a project that was reportedly in development for four years.