Earlier today, developers Naughty Dog had to make an announcement that many people were dreading. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the many, many complications therein, the development team behind the highly-anticipated The Last Of Us Part 2 has decided to indefinitely delay the title.
To be clear, “indefinitely” doesn’t mean permanently. Naughty Dog and Sony still very much intend to bring the title to bear as soon as possible, but the current chaotic climate of the world has impacted production to the point where they have to delay it and aren’t certain on when it will be available for release. Rather than share an optimistic release date that they have to later take back, they’re keeping us in the dark on possible releases. You can read up on a write-up on the situation from our writer Chris here for more information.
To keep the fans placated during these trying times, the development team released a few more screenshots. Part of this is to keep everyone happy, but it seems like a good bit of the motivation behind it may be a bit of a proof-of-concept. By showing off what they have so far, they’re confirming that the title is close to being finished and that we shouldn’t have to wait too long to see the full release.
We placed a tweet to the images above so that you can check them out yourself. The lighting effects and above-city mountainscape in the first picture really is breathtaking, though the motion blur of the grass is a bit of an eye-melting interaction. All three of the others are fantastic as well, though its hard to tell what moments are from gameplay and which are graphically-enhanced cutscenes.
On the other hand, Naughty Dog typically doesn’t differentiate their graphical quality between cutscene and gameplay. This always lends a wonderful cinematic feel to the game as a whole, as well as making everything just a bit more immersive.
Of course, graphics aren’t everything, and we’re still hoping for wonderful gameplay behind the glitz and glamour of just how real the characters look. The sun can shine as brightly and realistically as it needs to shine, but if the game underneath it is buggy or unsatisfying, who cares?
With that in mind, this further set of delays is incredibly frustrating but forgivable. It’s nice to see that the team is doing what needs to be done to release the game in its best form instead of just releasing it as soon as possible to grab the millions of dollars the highly-anticipated title is sure to bring in.
