Games Inbox: When will The Last Of Us Part 3 be released?-GameCentral-Entertainment – Metro

The Last of Us Part 2 – there’s got to be another one, right? (Sony Interactive Entertainment)

The Tuesday letters page tries to imagine what Final Fantasy 17 will be like, as one reader contemplates being a Nintendo insider.

To join in with the discussions yourself email gamecentral@metro.co.uk

Time is a factor
So, I see there’s a lot of rumours about Naughty Dog’s next game at the moment. It’s called Timeless Travel and Troy Baker, who played Joel, is in it. Could this be leading up to a reveal at The Game Awards, maybe? I heard there’s rumours of Sony readying announcements and it doesn’t seem likely they’d have a State of Play this late in the year.

I also wonder if maybe this is all a smokescreen and their next game is The Last Of Us Part 3. After the success of the show, I don’t see any world in which Sony doesn’t not push for a third game as soon as possible and beg and bully Naughty Dog into doing it.

If they did something else first, and it wasn’t out for a couple of years, it’d be at least seven years or more before they could make The Last Of Us Part 3. By that point the show will have nothing to adapt, the actors will have got too old, and it won’t be the hot thing anymore. Heck, by that point half of the people involved in the original two games will probably have retired too!
Clovis

GC: That rumour about the time travel name seems to be a fake, although Troy Baker being involved is true. But there’s barely a game he doesn’t provide a voice for, so that’s not necessarily significant.

Playing the odds
I should’ve just pretended to be a Nintendo insider months ago, because a January reveal and a March release was always the most likely outcome. I’m not saying that’s what’s going to happen – being likely means there’s only a one in 10 chance when it comes to Nintendo – but without any other information I don’t see the point in betting on anything else.

Everything so far points towards Nintendo trying to do things as similar as possible to the original Switch, including what the hardware looks like. The only thing they can’t really make the same is a reveal this year, but I feel January is the closest to that they can get. What’s going on with the games is the biggest mystery though and we haven’t even got into that yet.
Xane

Rusty Valve
The thing that gets me with Half-Life 3 rumours is that we’ve still never had an answer for what do Valve developers do all day? Considering they haven’t released a proper single-player game in 13 years. I guess their multiplayer experts still have something to do, updating the old games, but who do they still employ that knows anything about how to make a single-player game?

Either they’ve been on gardening leave for a decade or they have some epically long lunch breaks. I’d say fair dues, but I remember being really into Half-Life 2 and the story back in the day and yet I’ve long since forgotten what happened or why I cared. Apparently there was a retcon in Half-Life: Alyx, but I’ll never get to play that because you need a PC VR headset. Valve were the Naughty Dog of their day and yet now it’s like they don’t exist for games.
Driscoll

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Half and half
I’m not sure any of the more recent Final Fantasy games are considered massive successes but like many people writing in I have been very impressed by the Final Fantasy 7 remakes. In terms of the next mainline game I think the best case scenario is that we have something that’s halfway between the remakes and 16, in terms of tone and freedom.

I didn’t really like anything about 16 but if 17 is the gameplay of the remakes but with a slightly more serious story and characters then that will be a decent compromise as far as I’m concerned. The problem for Square Enix is they want Final Fantasy to be as big as something like God Of War, which was clearly an influence on 16, but I just don’t think it can really get there and be anything like we’d normally expect from the series.

Big games and big budgets need to be a big success, and I worry what the end result of only doing okay is going to be.
Korey

Christmas rush
It makes me laugh that Microsoft say Avowed was delayed because the Christmas release schedules were too crowded and yet to everyone else they seem the emptiest they’ve been since forever. I guess they mean they didn’t want it coming out at the same time as Indiana Jones but is there really any realistic sense of that selling well?

By making it a timed exclusive all they’re going to do is give it a reputation of being a flop by the time the PlayStation 5 version comes round and then that won’t sell either. Just look at what happened when Microsoft made the second Tomb Raider reboot at timed Xbox exclusive. I don’t think they’ve really got the mindset of a third party publisher yet, if they think this is a good way to do things.
Benson

Sensible move
I think mentioning Kinect and PlayStation Move is a very sensible thing, as it shows that Microsoft and Sony are never shy about copying Nintendo, when they think they’re onto something, and that definitely explains the current interest in handhelds. Although I find it odd Microsoft keep talking about Steam Deck and other PC devices, when they’ve sold peanuts in comparison to the Switch.

If they’re wise, Sony and Microsoft will be looking to copy Nintendo and that means a hybrid console that is not much more powerful than the previous generation. I also think this would be very good for the industry at large, given the current problems with budgets and how long it takes to make a game.

I don’t even think the reader the other day, saying the PlayStation 6 should be less powerful than the PlayStation 5, was necessarily wrong. I’m not saying they’d do it but there’s no doubt in my mind that would be more sustainable and probably lead to better games too.

I’m not saying I think this is likely, just what I think should happen. The next generation will be very important, to see how sensible Microsoft and Sony really are and if they can be forward-thinking or just focused only on short term profit, at the cost of the future.
Ishi

PlayStation TV
I was thinking the other day, looking at monitor deals for Black Friday, it’s kind of odd we’ve never really had any that were designed specifically for consoles. We’ve barely even had many TVs that are aimed at games.

There’s a few that emphasise it but there’s not like a clear must have TV if you own a PlayStation 5, which is odd considering Sony makes them. I’m not saying I’d rush out and buy one, but it does seem an obvious trick they’re missing.
Gallo

From only
Full circle. Sony has officially veered towards the journey of an acquisition that was always meant to be: the ownership of FromSoftware. I see many chastising this transition and I’d like to remind these nonchalant whiners that From’s first foray into the exclusivity of PlayStation titles was in 2009. Demon’s Souls and the debut of a master of the genre, Miyazaki himself.

From and Sony have worked together on two titles and I can safely state, these two titles have become insurmountable success. Why is it that Xbox wasn’t approached to produce Bloodborne or even Demon’s Souls? Why did From or Miyazaki never even approach them? Because Sony were the correct choice and I can solemnly state that, they are the correct choice to own this publisher. Xbox is a failing brand.

Console production seems less of a priority. Their titles such as Doom: The Dark Ages and Indiana Jones are releasing on PlayStation 5 & their current titles have fallen under the radar. Hellblade 2, for example, and despite myself being excited to play that in January it’s quintessentially become a forgotten title.

I’d personally love this to become a reality. Sony have produced these two titles, because they were the correct choice for a publisher. I mean, even Sekiro wasn’t produced by Xbox or Tencent. Activision stepped in and even then, that was a multiple platform release. Sony has always been bestowed with the superior exclusives and thus this was true for the PlayStation 2 era. Xbox fell behind then and they continue to do so. They have insidiously failed with Blizzard and even Bethesda.

Would they honestly honour the wishes of FromSoftware and produce a worthy follow-up to Elden Ring? Of course, they’d fail stupendously and quite frankly I’d love to witness more PlayStation exclusives developed by From Software. They’ve succeeded twice. What’s a third or a fourth?

One final note. Take a gander at Phantom Blade Zero. Who else but Sony could produce such a luscious looking treat? That may be our future, take it in. Don’t fight against it. Unless you’d rather see pointless remasters instead, of new ideas and worlds.
Shahzaib Sadiq

GC: Sony has no involvement in making Phantom Blade Zero. They have however made plenty of ‘pointless remasters’ recently.

Inbox also-rans
Read a stat today that only 1.5% of Steam users are using a VR headset. That is so much worse than I expected. VR is so dead, I don’t really understand why companies are continuing with it.
Lumpy

I would really like a Parasite Eve remake but I think the problem is it’s a really long game, so it’d be too expensive. A fourth game to act as an apology for the third would be almost as good though, if it played like the original.
HawkSlayer

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The small print
New Inbox updates appear every weekday morning, with special Hot Topic Inboxes at the weekend. Readers’ letters are used on merit and may be edited for length and content.

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