Just last week marked the 18th anniversary of Jak X: Combat Racing. I’m not sure many people took the day off to celebrate it, or that a single social media account of a single gaming outlet decided to say ‘Happy 18th, Jak X: Combat Racing—now go off and get blind-drunk like the irresponsible late teen you are, because you’re now of age to do so.’ Has anyone even played Jak X: Combat Racing? I haven’t. Apparently it wasn’t too bad, but clearly it didn’t embed itself in the gaming vernacular quite like its predecessor Crash Team Racing did.
So why the hell am I prattling on about Jak X: Combat Racing?
Well, Jak X: Combat Racing in itself isn’t why that anniversary matters (sorry, Jak). Rather, that 18 years signifies the last time that Naughty Dog made a videogame not called Uncharted or The Last of Us. Crazy to think, right? These guys used to make all kinds of games, including a forgotten RPG back in the dark days of the 90s. From the PS1 era onwards, Naughty Dog got into a nice rhythm of creating a distinct new IP for each new generation of PlayStation (Crash on PS1, Jak and Daxter on PS2, Uncharted and Last of Us on PS3), but in recent years has become singularly fixated on The Last of Us, to the point where we could easily write Naughty Dog off as one of those single-game studios.
A Prolific Past
Evidently, people want something new from Naughty Dog, which is why we’re quite frequently treated to unfounded rumours that Naughty Dog is working on an all-new IP. Last year, for instance, fans got excited when a collection of posters on a wall in The Last of Us Part 1 depicting dragons, unicorns, and other fantastical imagery, led people to deduce that Naughty Dog was working on a new fantasy IP. Then there was the quickly quashed rumour on Reddit just the other day that Naughty Dog’s next game would take place in a dieselpunk kind of setting.
Now, those rumours above are clearly bollocks, but even though they stem from fans’ fantasies rather than the creative mind of Neil Druckmann, doesn’t the prospect of Naughty Dog applying its expertise to a fantasy, or dieselpunk, or any kind of setting beyond the heavily played-out universes of Uncharted and The Last of Us flood your mind with joy? And conversely, doesn’t the reality of what Naughty Dog is currently working on—a Last of Us multiplayer game whose development seems to be on the brink of collapse following myriad directional changes and job cuts—make your eyes glaze over with apathy?
It’s clear at this point that, within its field of story-led action-adventure games, Naughty Dog would do a great job on whatever they put their immense experience, creativity, and technological resources into. Wouldn’t it be great to see them borrow a page from the books of studios like Arkane or Remedy, who are constantly imprinting their identity and talents onto new IPs and creative directions? Fantasy, sci-fi, whatever it may be, the thought of Naughty Dog untethering themselves from their over-trodden IPs and doing something new (like they used to) is extremely tantalising.
To be clear, The Last of Us is a great work, and of course there are legitimate directions a third entry could go in. But after the conclusion of The Last of Us Part 2, it certainly doesn’t need it, and there’s something to be said for a bleak piece of near-poetic work as this bowing out on the sombre, elegant note it ended on rather than getting a sequel, or being overly commodified via a multiplayer service game as is currently happening.
Trapped by Success
With the success of the HBO show, we could even face a scenario where we see demand spike for a continuation of the story past Season 2/Part 2, at which point Naughty Dog may find itself making a third entry, when without the show that might not have been on the cards at all. For a game to be created out of sheer commercial demand rather than creative inspiration would be the worst scenario of all.
These days, the idea that any Sony-owned studio would be tasked with a new IP when it’s got a perfectly lucrative existing one to keep milking is absurd. The general pattern at Sony seems to be that an existing IP needs to run dry before a studio is given the freedom to work on a new one. When Killzone ran aground, Guerrilla Games got to make Horizon; when Infamous ran out of steam, Sucker Punch Productions were given the reins on Ghost of Tsushima. Insomniac were up to all kinds of fun and varied stuff before being acquired by Sony in 2019, and for the foreseeable future it looks like they’re now the ‘Marvel IP’ studio, having worked on the Spider-Man games and now moving onto Wolverine.
The thought that studios like Santa Monica Studios or Naughty Dog would work on anything other than God of War or The Last of Us, respectively, has become hard to imagine, and that’s a sad state of affairs. But with Naughty Dog’s multiplayer project on thin ice, maybe there’s a slither of hope that they’ll want to take a break from the prestigious IP they seem to have become trapped in, and try their hands at something new for the first time in a very long time.
The Last of Us Part II
- Franchise
- The Last of Us
- Platform(s)
- PS4, PS5
- Released
- June 19, 2020
- Developer(s)
- Naughty Dog
- Publisher(s)
- Sony Interactive Entertainment
- Genre(s)
- Action, Third-Person Shooter