The Last of Us director Neil Druckmann wanted to make sure the first game “was complete” because “I wasn’t sure they would ever let me direct a game again”

The Last of Us continues to be wildly popular, but when making the first game in the series, creative director Neil Druckmann wanted to make sure that the “story could stand on its own” without a sequel, because “I wasn’t sure they would ever let me direct a game again.”

Speaking to Game Informer in an interview about the upcoming second season of The Last of Us TV show, Druckmann is asked what the greatest challenge was when it came to moving to The Last of Us Part 2 after the first game. It sounds like it all came down to the fact that it didn’t really need a sequel in the first place, as he explains: “When we made Part 1 [the game], it was purposefully designed because part of it was that I wasn’t sure they would ever let me direct a game again. But I wanted to do something that was complete, had a beginning, middle, and end, and if I never got to do it again, then the story could stand on its own.”