The Last of Us director, Neil Druckmann, opened up that he treats all the games he works on as if it’s his last. He has previously said he doesn’t feel like he has many AAA games left in him.
In an interview with Etalk, the Naughty Dog bigwig explained that he’d give it his all, going as far as giving a “definitive ending” to the game in case a sequel was off the table.
“Every game I make, every project I work on, I treat it like it could be my last,” he said. “So I just pour everything into it, I leave nothing on the table.
When we did the first Last of Us game, that’s how I treated it, I wasn’t sure I could ever get to make a sequel, so it had to have a definitive ending. Likewise, when I worked on Uncharted 4, same thing. When I worked on Last of Us 2, I was like I don’t know if I’ll ever get to do this again. It had this definitive ending.”
Further in the interview, he expressed how people can jinx themselves by already dreaming up a sequel as you work on the first game, which makes total sense; a sequel is typically only given to games that sell well.
“I think you’re jinxing yourself if you’re starting to think about the sequel when you’re working on the first game. So when I was making The Last of Us 2, yeah, sure. Every once in a while, an idea pops into your head of where it might go if we get the chance to do another one. But I just approach it as, ‘What if I never get to do another one?’…I’m not saving some idea for the future. If there’s a cool idea, I’m doing my best to get it into here.”
What do you think? Is this a good philosophy to go by? Let us know below!