Bloodborne’s influence is so great that it even played a role in the development of The Last of Us Part 2.
We’ve seen many times over the years that games can undergo some pretty drastic changes during development, sometimes turning into something completely different over time. You never really know what a game looked like during the early stages of development, and The Last of Us Part 2 is a great example of that, as it’s revealed that Neil Druckman actually had the game open to a big opening. There were thoughts of becoming a world title. Inspired by Bloodborne.
This information was included in the recently released The Last of Us Part 2 documentary on YouTube, which gives Naughty Dog fans an in-depth look at how the developer managed to make the sequel and what the team did. Challenges overcome. At the 17-minute and 45-second mark, some of the developers explain that Neil Druckman was “very excited” about making The Last of Us Part 2 as different as possible from the original game.
Grounded II: Making The Last Of Us Part II
To do this, Naughty Dog apparently drew heavily from Bloodborne, particularly the game’s meaty combat and ever-expanding world. According to these devs, for the first four to five months of development, The Last of Us Part 2 was a gore-inspired open-world title focused entirely on melee combat.
He goes on to explain that Bloodborne’s setting structure was also a huge influence on early development, as Naughty Dog’s developers appreciated “mastering the world” and the sense of familiarity you get while playing. Many of these ideas were dialed down, and the open-world design “didn’t work with the story” of The Last of You Part 2, although you can still see elements of the early design in the finished product.
It’s no surprise that Bloodborne influenced The Last of You Part 2 in such a way that it was one of the few generational titles to launch on PS4 at the time. Bloodborne and Dark Souls have inspired hundreds, if not thousands, of games since they launched, so it shouldn’t be all that surprising for one venerable PlayStation game to be inspired by another. Now, if only Bloodborne could take inspiration from The Last of U and finally give us the Master again, that would be great.
The fact that Bloodborne served as inspiration for The Last of Us Part 2 wasn’t even the biggest revelation in the entire documentary. That honor goes to Druckmann, who claimed at the very end that he felt there might be “one more chapter” in The Last of Us story, which is as close to confirming The Last of Us Part 3 as possible. That’s as far as we’re going to get.