You probably know Naughty Dog. They just finished work on a little indie project called Uncharted 4, but they’re apparently already looking to the future.
Naughty Dog’s lead game designer, Emilia Schatz has confirmed through a job listing on Twitter that they have already started work on their next game.
Looking for level designers, especially if you have art and modeling experience. Want to help make ND's next game?https://t.co/n2aZf3hDP5
— Em Schatz (@thegreatbluebit) May 20, 2016
Obviously, the first thing most of us would want to assume is that they’re hiring for The Last of Us 2, and judging by the job listing itself… it just might be.
The role is for a game designer to work on a single player game, with third person action and gameplay.
It reads:
Design and produce fun and emotionally engaging third-person action gameplay and levels, from high concept planning to object placement and scripting.
Obviously that doesn’t automatically make it The Last of Us 2. There are tons of third person single player action games out there, and this could be an entirely new IP from Naughty Dog – but it doesn’t immediately rule out The Last of Us, and that’s enough to give us hope, right?
Just to further fan the flames of speculation – back in April, Naughty Dog director Neil Druckmann confirmed that after work finished on the Uncharted 4 DLC, they’d take a look at some of the ideas they have knocking around for a sequel to The Last of Us.
Druckmann said:
Our next focus is the single player [Uncharted 4] DLC and then, once we have enough resources, resurrect all those prototypes; see where we’re at, see where the teams at, what they’re excited for and go from there.
A dreamer might suggest that by hiring, Naughty Dog are currently beginning to gather the aforementioned “resources”.
Everyone keep a keen eye on Troy Baker’s IMDB page over the next few months, okay?
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.