As we all know, UNCHARTED 3; Drake’s Deception is upon us, so the countdown the big UNCHARTED 4; Nathan’s Nemesis reveal has begun in earnest. A spanner was thrown into the works last night, though, with the announcement that the game some of you may have heard about; The Last of Us, is Naughty Dog’s next release. The Spike Video Game Awards was the stage for the premiere of the trailer, which I have handily emedded in case you have yet to see it.
As, technically, this is an UNCHARTED dedicated site, I feel the need to address what this may mean for Nathan Drake’s future. We are of course delighted that Naughty Dog are branching out; moving on; whatever you want to call it; but I personally am not ready to have to try to get over Nathan Drake. With that in mind I am happy to tell you that it seems the beginning of the era that brings The Last of Us does not necessarily signify the end of that which brought Nathan Drake into our lives. For a long time Neil Druckmann has had his Twitter biography inform us that he is Creative Director at Naughty Dog. We all know that Amy Hennig is Naughty Dog’s Creative Director, and therefore I was confused. I should have joined the dots. All the signs were there, but as someone who had recently had trouble with a Spot the Difference puzzle (in my defence I had given birth the day before) I failed to put two and two together.
Not only does Naughty Dog have two Creative Directors, one of whom was not listed as such in the credits of UNCHARTED 3, but also their careers page on their website has been full for some time now. I know this because I’d been keeping a keen eye out in case they needed to hire someone with my skills. They didn’t, but the point is that I should have noticed just how many people they have been hiring. It was confirmed last night that Naughty Dog now have two full teams, one of which has been apparently working on The Last of Us for some time, leaving the other which is presumably still headed by Amy Hennig to continue as they were. Of course this does not mean that that team will carry on Nathan’s story, but it certainly seems that they can.
I will write a second article looking at the trailer itself and will aim to post that tomorrow. Until then feel free to let us know how happy or otherwise you are about this news.