It recently emerged thanks to a report by Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier that a remake of The Last of Us was allegedly in development at Naughty Dog (with Sony’s VASG aiding in production, after having started out as lead developers on the project). Since the report was published, the question most people have asked, and asked more than a few times is: why? Being a game that launched in 2013, was remastered in 2014, and is still as modern and polished as games releasing in 2021 are (if not more), why does The Last of Us even need a remake?
Well, at least part of the reason is that… Naughty Dog didn’t have anything else to do. Speaking during a recent podcast at MinnMax, journalist Jason Schreier, author of the aforementioned report, stated that Naughty Dog chose to bring The Last of Us’ remake into full production because their other upcoming projects were in pre-production at the time, and that as such, the remake would have given a large number of developers at the studio something to do. Meanwhile, wanting to get familiar with the PS5’s hardware was something else that prompted Naughty Dog to jump on this opportunity.
As big and beloved as The Last of Us is, the reception to news of a remake being in development has been lukewarm at best, and the fact that it’s being developed partially because its developers didn’t have anything else to do isn’t very encouraging.
Schreier did mention that Naughty Dog is currently also working on a multiplayer project (which is likely going to be The Last of Us: Factions, or something along those lines), but such a project would not have required the full attention of the bulk of the studio’s employees.
Meanwhile, Neil Druckmann, who recently became co-president of Naughty Dog, stated that the developer has “several cool things” in the works. He has previously also said that Naughty Dog’s next project could be anything from The Last of Us Part 3 to an entirely new IP.
