Naughty Dog President, Evan Wells, has posted an update on the studio’s blog about the team changes for the staff working on The Last of Us 2. Nothing major has changed, but some employees have gotten a promotion that will make them more involved with the highly anticipated video game.
Wells posted the following announcement: “In recognition of his expanded role, contributing on critical, studio level decisions, Neil Druckmann is now Vice President of Naughty Dog. He’s been a vital part of the management team for some time now, and we’re proud to formally acknowledge his involvement. In addition to his new position, Neil will continue as the Creative Director on The Last of Us Part II.
We’re also excited to announce that Anthony Newman and Kurt Margenau are the joint Game Directors on The Last of Us Part II. Both Kurt and Anthony joined Naughty Dog during Uncharted 2 and have been instrumental in leading the design department, and have been key contributors on our subsequent games. Emilia Schatz and Richard Cambier are the Lead Designers that round out the extremely talented design department’s leadership team.”
With these changes, this could mean 2018 will be a full year of heavy development for the video game. It’s probably likely we won’t see the game released in 2018 since this year is already stacked with a lot of AAA video games. It will be smarter for Naughty Dog to release the sequel sometime in 2019.
That said, we should see some gameplay footage at E3 2018 since all that we’ve seen so far is cinematics. Hopefully the sequel is as good as 2013 original!