Naughty Dog has revealed that The Last of Us 2 originally sought inspiration from Bloodborne, but realized over the course of development that the idea didn’t fit with the story that the team wanted to tell. This was revealed in the latest episode of TLOU 2 development documentary, Grounded 2.
Why The Last of Us 2 abandoned its Bloodborne style direction
According to co-game director Anthony Newman, Naughty Dog wanted to make TLOU2 “as different as humanly possible” from the first game — an idea encouraged by Neil Druckmann, who was passionate about a new direction. The team toyed with the idea of making TLOU2’s combat purely melee focused, and making its open layout like Bloodborne’s.
“Bloodborne had a very open space that kept getting bigger and bigger as you explored,” explained lead game designer Emilia Schatz. “I really like that feeling that you get of mastery over the world. It starts to become almost a character in the game itself. That was also something we were looking at.” Unfortunately, however, this didn’t gel with TLOU2’s story.
In the same documentary, Druckmann revealed that he has the concept for The Last of Us 3, and he feels that the series’ story has room for “probably one more chapter.”
