The paw of pedigree

As the next generation kicks into gear, all eyes are on Sony subsidiary Naughty Dog. The colossal first-party developer was always well regarded following the success of the Crash Bandicoot games, but its status catapulted during the PlayStation 3 era due to the popularity of the Uncharted trilogy and last year’s survival horror opus The Last of Us. The big question is: what’s the Californian company going to do next?

We already know that it’s busying itself with Uncharted PS4, but the developer consists of two teams now, with the creators of Joel and Ellie’s cross-country excursion heading up the second group. And with hotly anticipated expansion pack The Last of Us: Left Behind due out any day now, it stands to reason that the studio has started to turn its attention to the future. But what exactly is on the cards?

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“We have started brainstorming some stuff,” creative director Neil Druckmann told Eurogamer.net. “To be honest, some of them are sequel ideas, and some of them are brand new intellectual properties – we’ve spent the last few weeks brainstorming new IP. So we have to get some good steps and see... It's kind of like how we approached Left Behind. Can we tell people a story that's really worth telling, and that's not repeating itself?”

The developer added that if it can’t find a compelling narrative, it’ll look elsewhere for something different. “Where can we get inspired – what is something that's really going to challenge us, and push storytelling in this medium forward?" he pondered. It’s going to be interesting to see what the outfit eventually does – personally, we’re predicting some kind of sequel to last year’s survival horror, set far away from the events of the previous game. Honestly, we’ll take anything, though.

[source eurogamer.net]