The Last Of Us Part II game director Neil Druckmann, in a podcast interview with Troy Baker, responded to fan criticisms that the game was too long. For the actual conversation, skip to around the hour mark in the podcast link below.
The actor and director discussed the development of the game’s script in real-time, with Troy mentioning that Naughty Dog’s marketing team had not once intercepted the script and asked for writing changes.
At this point, Druckmann intercedes and says: “I’ve seen someone – fuck I’m gonna get in trouble for this – I don’t care. Someone recently said ‘games are too long’ and part of their thread they’re saying like, ‘it’s because marketing wants to say how big games are and that’s how they’re gonna sell the game.'”
He goes on to say that during his 16 years at Naughty Dog, that “marketing has never – not once – given us a creative note to say ‘this should be in the game, or the game should be this long, or this short, or have this feature.”
He affirms that “the game is this long because we wanted to make it this long.”
Druckmann later adds: “It might be too long for certain people, it might be long enough for certain people, but it’s this long because that was our call.”
Meanwhile, Naughty Dog confirmed a new single-player game is in development.
Among the multiple job listings available, they include an opening for a Level/Environment Designer, Melee/Gameplay Animator, and a Tools Programmer.
Recently, The Last Of Us Part II took the top spot in PlayStation Store’s monthly download charts.
According to the official Playstation blog, the post-pandemic sequel was the most downloaded game from the PS Store in both the EU and throughout the US and Canada for June.
