On the other hand, there are also those who seem perfectly happy with the current situation, and won’t mind waiting a little longer to get the sequel. According to them, it’s better to wait a bit more but get a quality release, rather than one that was rushed to meet some forced deadline.
Naughty Dog are definitely not the kind of developer to rush their products for any reason though. In fact, the studio seems more than willing to get criticized by their fans for taking too long, because they know that the final product will justify those times.
The studio is also well aware of how to navigate the industry when doing their marketing, so they probably won’t make any outrageous claims about the game so early on in its development. We expect that some time will pass before they actually address what they’re even planning, let alone what they’ve actually implemented.
Most critics expect the game to take between 3 to 5 years to complete, and while those seem like reasonable predictions, it’s also possible that we may go for much longer without the sequel. “Naughty Dog” have a much higher bar to jump over this time compared to the last game, and the studio could even find themselves facing a situation like Valve did with “Half-Life 3”. Hopefully we won’t get to such a ridiculous state with “The Last of Us 2” though, as the game still has a solid chance to succeed. But then, the situation with “Half-Life 3” is hard to reproduce.