Naughty Dog almost took The Last of Us Part 2 (TLOU 2) in a completely different route than what was initially released in 2020. The game would have been more akin to an “open world inspired by Bloodborne.”

Thanks to Grounded II, a documentary based on the making of The Last of Us Part Part 2, we now know how the studio was originally planning to have TLOU 2 game play out. During the documentary, Anthony Newman, co-game director, explained that “in the first four or five months, it was actually an open world inspired by Bloodborne.”

“It was purely melee-focused, like it was all hand-to-hand combat,” Newman said. Further into the doc, Emila Schatz, the lead game designer, said that the studio wasn’t just looking at “the melee combat,” but it was “looking at layout structure.”

“Bloodborne had a very--sort of an open space that sort of kept getting bigger and bigger as you explored. I really like that feeling you get of mastery over the world. It starts to become almost a character in the game itself.” Schatz said. “And so, that was also something we were looking at.”

When Naughty Dog began working on TLOU 2, the studio aimed to have it “as different as humanly possible from the first game.” But as time went on, the studio went back on its decision because it wasn’t working with the story it was trying to tell.

This wasn’t the only news to come out of the documentary. Co-writer and co-director of the first two games, Neil Druckmann, said shared some remarks that make The Last Of Us 3 sound more likely than ever now.