After the success of The Last of Us Part II in 2020, Naughty Dog will have kept a relative silence this year, which did not prevent his small (and large) hands from playing a good part of the video game production. Here are their highlights.
Little or nothing has filtered out what occupies the Naughty Dog teams day and night, even if the clues point to a multiplayer experience that could be understood as an extension of The Last of Us Part II. On the other hand, the teams working on the side of Santa Monica have played everything that the competition has been able to offer, and once again deliver the 2021 games that will have influenced them the most.
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Let us immediately crack the abscess: if the co-president Neil Druckmann had not hesitated to place one for Fall Guys last year, he will not vote for this new edition. Sorry. No doubt he’s too busy working on “the super cool game” of Naughty Dog?
For the rest, a certain Deathloop is acclaimed by many officials of The Last of Us Part II, as quoted by its co-director Kurt Margenau, its system designer Matthew Gallant, and its development director Waylon Brinck:
Deathloop helped me break my bad habits in immersive sims. The structure of the time loop gave me permission to abandon 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 player playing as Julianna, instantly transforming the map I had stealthily traversed into a thrilling game of cat and mouse.
Lhe GOTY of the Game Awards It Takes Two will also have marked the year 2021 of some Dogs, like the person in charge of communications Rochelle Snyder, or the co-president Evan Wells, who did it with his son.
The loop bonus
Dogs tie Returnal, the GOTY of many editorial staff, with which vice president Arne Meyer and animation director Jeremy Yates are quite connected:
A marvelous concoction of beauty and horror, Returnal created a world I lost myself in for MANY hours in 2021. Returnal was a masterclass in terms of design efficiency, and created a truly compelling gameplay loop that has made my heart beat and made my palms sweat. I loved the subtle environmental storytelling and how the backstory slowly unfolded in unconventional ways.
Finally, let’s mention Fortnite, Frostpunk, House of Ashes, Inscryption and Metroid Dread, which will also have marked the year of Naughty Dog, to a lesser extent. Come on, and see you next year!