Naughty Dog isn’t messing around. In one hour’s time it dropped trailers for two unannounced games – Uncharted: The Lost Legacy and The Last of Us Part 2 – alongside a trailer for the fan-favorite from E3 2016, Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy.
The reveals happened on stage at the keynote for PlayStation Experience 2016, Sony’s fan expo that it’s holding in Anaheim, California this weekend.
Naughty Dog, a developer best known for, well, Uncharted, Crash Bandicoot and The Last of US, recently won a few accolades earlier this week at The Game Awards 2016 for Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, but apparently saved some of its biggest titles for Sony’s event.
While an appearance from the wacky marsupial would’ve been enough for one show, Naughty Dog sandwiched the event with the first Uncharted game to take place post-Nathan Drake and a brief sneak peek at The Last of Us Part II, the sequel to one of 2013’s highest acclaimed titles.
The trailers are provided for your viewing pleasure below, as is a brief analysis of what you can look forward to playing from Sony’s top-dog developer sometime in the next few years.
Uncharted: The Lost Legacy
It’s hard to believe that Naughty Dog made the decision to press on with the Uncharted series post-Nathan Drake so soon after the release of Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End. Although we’re sad to see Nathan Drake take his final bow, his replacement is a formidable one – Australian treasure hunter Chloe Frazer.
As far as first looks are concerned, The Lost Legacy’s debut trailer is actually quite long at around eight minutes. We see Frazer skirt her way past guards in the opening sequence only to put the beatdown on them a few minutes later. Despite not seeing one Drake in sight, all the tenets of Uncharted are here – hair-raising tension, urban exploration and dangerous situations that always escalate into an all-out brawl.
We’ll look forward to hearing more about the game at next year’s E3.
Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy
This one is a carry-over from Sony’s E3 press conference from back in June. We knew Crash was making a comeback, but we weren’t show when or in what form. Now we do.
Dubbed the N. Sane Trilogy, the Crash Bandicoot PS4 remaster will completely re-create the character models, sounds and animations from the two decade-old franchise in a way that’s both stunningly fresh but ultimately familiar. And besides getting a look at the boulder level in high definition, we were also given a vague release window: “2017”.
While Crash is the most notable game to get a facelift from Sony’s back catalogue, it’s not the only one. President of Sony's Worldwide Studios for Sony Computer Entertainment Shuhei Yoshida announced that it would be one of five classics to get updated visuals next year, the other four being Parappa the Rapper, Loco Roco, Patapon and the futuristic racing game series, Wipeout.
The Last of Us Part 2
You can’t say Sony didn’t end its keynote on a high note. The creator of PlayStation Nation used its last few minutes on stage to show the world its first look at The Last of Us Part 2.
From what it looks like in the teaser, the game will clearly take place after the events of the first game with Ellie looking well past her teens and into her early 20s. Hand shaking and covered in blood, she picks up a guitar and sings Shawn James’s “Through the Valley” before being interrupted by Joel.
The trailer was short, and didn’t offer a ton of insight besides Ellie’s cryptic claim that she was “going to find, and going to kill, every last one of them”. Who the “them” is she’s referring to isn’t totally clear – though we do have a few suspicions – but regardless it’ll be a game we’ll be excited seeing and potentially playing for ourselves this time next year.
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