The Last of Us Part 2 originally started out as an "open world game inspired by Bloodborne"

The Last of Us Part 2 was originally designed as an open-world action game that was heavily inspired by Bloodborne.

Confirmation came via co-game director Anthony Newman, who revealed during in the fantastic behind-the-scenes documentary, Grounded 2: Making The Last of Us Part 2, that for the first four or five months of development, The Last of Us Part 2 was a “purely melee focussed” game that “kept getting bigger and bigger as you explored”, as inspired by FromSoft’s fan-favourite adventure.

“When we started out making The Last of Us Part 2, Neil actually wanted to be very ambitious about changing the game almost entirely,” explained Newman.

“For the first four or five months, the game was kind of an open world inspired by Bloodborne. And it was purely melee focused, like it was all hand-to-hand combat.”

“It wasn’t just the melee combat, we were also looking at layout structure,” added lead game designer, Emilia Schatz.

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