With the release of The Last of Us Part 2 Grounded II documentary today, the team at Naughty Dog has given fans an in-depth look at the making of the game. Tons of new details about the game were revealed, but it was towards the end that series’ co-creator Neil Druckmann essentially confirmed The Last of Us Part 3.

The Last of Us Part 3 “Officially Announced”  

To wrap up the documentary, Neil Druckmann spoke briefly about the future of the series. While he doesn’t downright say they’re developing a third game, he did confirm that he finally has a concept idea for a third one, and says he feels it will probably happen. Here’s the full quote of him talking about it.

“I did some other interview where someone asked me… about The Last of Us, and would there be any more stories or something. I mentioned we have written a story that takes place after Last of Us II that stars Tommy. I hope one day we get to make it. The headlines across the industry were like, “Naughty Dog has outlined The Last of Us Part III.” And that’s actually wrong. It was always a small story, it was never a full title.

At the time, we had higher priorities at Naughty Dog, to fix our pipeline, to fix work-life balance issues. Just based on where we were, I didn’t wanna prioritize this story, so that story was shelved.

I still believe one day it will see the light of day. I don’t know if it’ll be a game or a show… TBD. The first game had such a clean concept of…the unconditional love a parent feels for their child. The second one, once we landed on this idea of…the pursuit of justice at any cost, justice for the ones you love, it felt like there’s a clean concept here and there’s a through-line from the first game about love. If we never get to do it again, this is a fine ending point.
 
The last bite of the apple, the story’s done. The great thing about working at Naughty Dog is that we don’t have to. It’s always like, we would love another Last of Us, but if you guys are passionate about something else, we’ll support this other thing. Very privileged position to be in. I never take that for granted.

I’ve been thinking about, “Is there a concept there?” And for now years, I haven’t been able to find that concept. But recently that’s changed. I don’t have a story, but I do have that concept, that, to me, is as exciting as Part I, as exciting as Part II, is its own thing, yet has this through-line for all 3. So it does feel like… there’s probably one more chapter to this story.”

Of course, we don’t expect an official announcement to happen in the documentary with a teaser and all, but this basically confirms that part three is something they believe will happen. It may not be for a long while, mind you, as it’s only in the concept stage, with the studio working on a new single-player game already

With that said, what are your hopes for the story of the next chapter of The Last of Us? Should we keep on following Ellie and Abby, or perhaps maybe focus on a new character that may eventually cross paths with the two?