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.”