After the huge critical and commercial success of The Last of Us 2, what does developer Naughty Dog have planned next? That’s the question on our minds after the famed game studio – also behind the Uncharted and Crash Bandicoot series – posted a number of job listings for what seems like a PS5 title.
Naughty Dog’s careers website currently has a whole host of vacancies – everything from single-player level designers to temporary texture artists – but a couple in particular raise interesting questions about what the studio is planning next.
As noted by GameSpot, one specific listing for a Tools Programmer mentions “next-generation graphics analysis, profiling and debugging” – and given the close relationship Naughty Dog has with PlayStation, it’s pretty certain this is referring to the incoming Sony PS5.
Not the last of it
We wouldn’t be surprised if something related to The Last of Us 2 was in the works, with a PS5 remaster of the recent title being pretty much inevitable at some point.
We know that the studio is also planning some kind of multiplayer experience rooted in The Last of Us universe, after a planned online mode for TLOU 2 was turned into its own separate project – one that could launch as a standalone title possibly as soon as early 2021.
A multiplayer title would fit with other details in these job listings, including mention of a “hand-to-hand combat system”, though something else entirely could also be on the cards.
