Naughty Dog took to their Twitter last night to announce that they have had to reluctantly move the release date for ‘The Last of Us Part 2’ from this year all the way to May 29th 2020.
On the official Naughty Dog blog site, the following statement was posted by Neil Druckmann, Vice President of Naughty Dog:
To our fans,
Let me cut to the chase and get the news out of the way. The Last of Us Part II has a new release date of May 29, 2020.
I know. It was just about a month ago when we had our big blowout for the game, letting media play over two hours of it along with debuting our new story trailer and revealing the release date. The positive response we saw from our community was overwhelming. You can feel the energy among the team members. After working on something for so many years, it’s invigorating to get a glimpse of validation for all the hard work.
However, it was during the last few weeks, as we were closing out sections of the game, that we realized we simply didn’t have enough time to bring the entire game up to a level of polish we would call Naughty Dog quality. At this point we were faced with two options: compromise parts of the game or get more time. We went with the latter, and this new release date allows us to finish everything to our level of satisfaction while also reducing stress on the team.
While we’re relieved that we won’t have to compromise our vision, we’re disappointed that we weren’t able to avoid this exact situation. We wish we could’ve foreseen the amount of polish we needed, but the size and scope of this game got the better of us. We hate disappointing our fans and for that we’re sorry.
We hope you understand that this additional time ensures that The Last of Us Part II lives up to our collective ambition as well as our commitment to the highest level of quality. We know the extra few months will add to what may already be an excruciating wait for all of us. We are grateful for your patience and continued support. Come next May, you will finally rejoin Ellie in The Last of Us Part II.
Personally, as a huge fan of Naughty Dog, if they say they need the extra months to add more polish to game, then it only benefits not only the fans who are eagerly awaiting the chance to return to this world, but also for the developer team who will not be pressured to crunch the game to meet the original 2019 release date. We have all seen way too many reports on the final months of crunch time studios such as Bioware with the tragic tale of Anthem’s development and even Rock Star with ‘Red Dead Redemption 2’ and the post release stories of how terrible conditions the developer team worked under.
The delay news comes just one month after the original release date was revealed during the ‘PlayStation State of Play’, so though fans will be disappointed by this revelation, we can all trust that Naughty Dog are doing it for the right reasons.
