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Naughty Dog, you stole our hearts with Crash Bandicoot. You stole hours more from our lives with Jak and Daxter. Then you stole our breath with Uncharted. By the time The Last of Us came around, we were yours! You’ve made some of what are considered to be the best games of the modern era. But if I’m being completely honest, it’s time for a new franchise.
With near universal praise for 2013’s The Last of Us, the arrival of a sequel in 2020 was no surprise. And although it was particularly divisive, its not withouts its defenders (myself included). And now with the (admittedly spectactular) HBO series, the franchise has been cast back into the spotlight, introducing new audiences to the lore and allowing players to revisit the story with a fresh new take. However, the ending of The Last of Us Part II does little to set up any further installments. There just doesn’t seem to be a whole lot more story to tell involving those characters.
Then there’s the Uncharted series, one that remained a consistent crowd pleaser through four mainline games and two spinoffs. As beloved as the series is, however, it would be best to leave the story as it stands. Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End was such a high note in an already stellar series; it did an outstanding job of wrapping up the Nathan Drake saga with a neat little bow. Shortly after, we were treated to Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, a standalone adventure centering around and expedition led by Chloe and Nadine, both of which are characters we were introduced to in previous entries. I will say the approach that Naughty Dog took for this spinoff is a wise one – allowing players to further explore side characters while enjoying the same type of gameplay was a winning combination. Honestly, the same method could easily be be applied to The Last of Us as a way to squeeze another game out, but it’s a path that can easily lead to franchise fatigue.
So where do we go from here? It will no doubt be difficult to keep up a trend of franchises that each seem to top its predecessor, but it’s kind of your thing! Perhaps a change of trajectory is in order to keep things feeling fresh – a slight turn away from the violently dramatic while still retaining the signature gameplay that’s so effortlessly married to a cinematic tone. If there’s enough resources, revisiting earlier franchises or even creating a new platforming IP would be refreshing to see while simultaneously working on a larger triple A experience. I won’t pretend to know the ins-and-outs of the company to definitively say if this is a viable option, but it sure would be nice to see from a player’s standpoint. Although Crash Bandicoot is currently under the ownership of Activision, working together on a new Naughty Dog developed installment would be quite the announcement. Or perhaps Sony would be willing to sign off on a new Jak and Daxter title to help hush fans as they wait on something bigger and better. The million dollar question is what that bigger and better project will be, something I will leave up to the experts at Naughty Dog.
