The Last of Us: Part II - Why we won't get a demo

Neil Druckmann explains why Naughty Dog has no plans to make the press demo public and reiterates that the game is basically done.

Sony and Naughty Dog decided to crush many hearts when they confirmed the indefinite delay of the Last of Us: Part II. They said that this was mostly because of the logistical issues COVID-19 has lead to, so they wanted to make sure the game will be released at the same time around the world. While some took this news with okay spirit, others pretty much demanded to get a demo as a compensation of sorts. Those of you who follow the industry very close might have understood why this would be near impossible, and now the game's director has decided to explain it to everyone.

Because Neil Druckmann joined the latest PlayStation Blogcast and said the following when Sid Shuman asked about a potential The Last of Us: Part II demo:

"Yes, it's funny. I've been getting that a lot and I think it's just that people don't understand. It's very different when you have a demo for the game that you can release at a convention or press event and you can have people from Naught Dog there watching to make sure that it's all working well. And essentially we could just...actually, when we did the press demo, we just had the whole game there on the disc and we just cut off a piece of it so that people could play that but obviously we can't do that when you ship it worldwide on the PSN. It has to be way more safeguards put in place. It's almost as if we'd be starting from scratch to build that demo and that is a massive amount of work that we don't want to put our team through and we'd rather put our focus on finishing the actual game and getting it to people.

That demo is outdated now. It's not a great representation of the game and the game has improved greatly since that press demo."

Druckmann also reiterates that The Last of Us: Part II is basically done, as they're "at the one-yard line" and just squashing some bugs and doing the final polishing. Now they're just going to sit on it a bit to find out how to best get it to players around the world at the same time, so we wouldn't believe the theories about it being delayed to the PS5 launch. Unless the situation gets significantly worse over the next six months of course, but we like to stay positive.