Following the success of The Last of Us Part II in 2020, Naughty Dog will have kept relative silence this year, which didn’t stop its small (and big) hands from playing a good chunk of video game production. Here are their highlights.
Little or nothing has filtered out what keeps the Naughty Dog teams busy day and night, even if the clues suggest a multiplayer experience that could be construed as an extension of The Last of Us Part II. On the flip side, alongside Santa Monica, the teams have played everything the competition has to offer and are once again delivering the 2021 games that influenced them the most.
Dogs accept this message
Let’s crack the abscess right away: If Co-President Neil Druckmann hadn’t hesitated to place one for the Fall Guys last year, he won’t be voting for this new edition. Forgiveness. No doubt he’s too busy working on Naughty Dog’s “super cool game”?
Incidentally, a certain death loop is used by many of The Last of Us Par. celebratedt II, quoted by his co-director Kurt Margenau, his system designer Matthew Gallant and his development director Waylon Brinck:
Deathloop helped me break my bad habits in immersive Sims. The structure of the time loop gave me permission to give up the idea of flawless runs and adopt a more improvised and chaotic style of play. This was especially true when I was attacked by a talented gamer as Julianna and instantly turned the map I had secretly traversed into an engaging game of cat and mouse.
L.The GOTY of the Game Awards It Takes Two will also have marked the year 2021 with a few dogslike Rochelle Snyder, who is responsible for communications, or co-president Evan Wells, who did it with his son.
The loop bonus
Returnal dog tie, the GOTY of many editorial offices, with whom Vice President Arne Meyer and animation director Jeremy Yates are closely connected:
Returnal is a wonderful mix of beauty and horror and created a world that I lost myself in for MANY hours in 2021. Returnal was a master class in terms of design efficiency and created a really addicting gameplay loop that made my heart beat faster and my palms sweat. I loved the subtle storytelling about the environment and how the backstory slowly unfolded in unconventional ways.
Finally, let’s mention Fortnite, Frostpunk, House of Ashes, Inscryption, and Metroid Dread, all of which will also have shaped Naughty Dog’s year to a lesser extent. Come on, see you next year!
