Artwork published by a senior Naughty Dog artist has fans speculating that the studio is working on a fantasy-themed new IP.
Senior concept artist Hyoung Nam shared the images below on his ArtStation profile two months ago with a caption stating, “Inspire from new game. You know what I’m talking about.”
The images don’t necessarily mean that Naughty Dog is working on a fantasy title, but Nam’s caption does make us wonder what his source of inspiration is.
While we don’t know what Naughty Dog is up to, it’s actively hiring for an unannounced project. Co-President Neil Druckmann recently teased that the studio is working on “something very cool.” Job descriptions suggest that Naughty Dog’s next game will feature hand-to-hand combat, which does fit into a fantasy setting, but we’re just putting pieces of the puzzle together so don’t take our word for it.
A description for a melee/gameplay animator reads:
Naughty Dog has spent the last decade+ carefully curating some of the top gameplay animators and technical minds in the world. This group of individuals is what allows us to create characters with the fidelity and believability that we put into games like The Last of Us and Uncharted series. We are looking for talented gameplay animators to help us create compelling systems for our future project(s). Work may include helping shape the hand-to-hand combat system and/or bringing the various enemy archetypes and supporting cast to life.
Naughty Dog has previously indicated that it plans to give the Uncharted series a rest, and more recently, Druckmann suggested in a number of interviews that fans shouldn’t expect another entry in The Last of Us franchise anytime soon.
Now that the PlayStation 5 is out, it makes perfect sense for Naughty Dog to explore something new. As usual, we’ll update our readers when we have more information.
[Source: ArtStation via GamesRadar]
