If Naughty Dog, as projected, does announce The Last Of Us 2 Video game torrents at E3 in June this year, we can hope to expect a release date of late 2017 or early 2018. I say this from my background in dealing with following video game releases and seeing many of my friends’ developer timelines. It has been reported that once the DLC for Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End releases, development will go into full swing for The Last Of Us 2. So if that’s true, Naughty Dog wouldn’t want to make fans wait for too long after announcing the game officially, so I would say a year to two years of development before release, but that’s just my speculation. Naughty Dog is a beast when it comes to cranking out amazing games in a short span of time, mostly because people are wholeheartedly loyal to the company and their games, which include The Last Of Us, Uncharted and Crash Bandicoot.
While The Last Of Us 2 has not been officially announced by Naughty Dog, there have been certain slip-ups that have indicated the game may be in development. Voice actor Nolan North, who plays David in The Last Of Us (and has quite a resume of voice acting credits, including Nathan Drake from Uncharted) accidentally let it slip during a Metrocon panel last June.
Polygon also reported that a character artist from a studio that creates outsourced artwork for games had listed The Last Of Us 2 as a current project. And this all happened in June 2015. Then in September, Eurogamer reported that developer Naughty Dog had let the cat out of the bag accidentally. Uncharted: Nathan Drake Collection writer Josh Scherr said.
While he tried to catch his error, it was obvious the damage had already been done. So while the sequel hasn’t exactly been confirmed by Naughty Dog yet, it’s pretty obvious something is brewing behind the scenes over at Naughty Dog, so it’s safe to assume we can expect an announcement at E3 this year.