In huge news for fans tired of its cinematic schtick, developer Naughty Dog's next game will reportedly feature "a lot of player freedom". That's according to a tantalising tidbit from MinnMax founder Ben Hanson and "somebody very in the know, who worked on the game".
Transcribed by VGC, Hanson relayed word of one of the several single-player projects currently in development at the studio, and it sounds like quite a departure from recent Naughty Dog games: "The tone was like, you are all not ready for how amazing this thing is going to be, and the tone was—I’m not going to say the game that they referenced to compare it to because I don’t want people to be like, MinnMax said it was going to be exactly like this—but they compared it to a game with a lot of player freedom." Hanson added that the game Naughty Dog's next was compared to was not Hitman, which does narrows things down slightly.
Speaking to The Washington Post last year, Naughty Dog big dog Neil Druckmann said that he's interested in getting away from traditional narrative in future titles, citing some pretty compelling inspirations: "I’m more recently intrigued by stuff like Elden Ring and Inside, that don’t rely as much on traditional narrative to tell a story. I think some of the best storytelling in The Last of Us – yes, a lot of it is in the cinematics – but a lot of it is in the gameplay, moving around a space, and understanding the history of a space by just looking at it and examining it."