10 Video Games You Didn't Realise Were Originally Open World
2. The Last of Us Part II
The Last of Us Part II has such a confidence of vision throughout - regardless of how some fans perceived it - that it's tough to believe the game was almost something very different entirely.
Yet last year's superb making-of documentary, Grounded II: Making The Last of Us Part II, saw the game's co-director Anthony Newman reveal that The Last of Us Part II was initially developed as an open world game.
Franchise co-creator Neil Druckmann wanted the sequel to be starkly different to its predecessor, and so for the first four or five months of development, Part II had an open world structure with hub worlds which Newman likened to Bloodborne, where the world grows larger the more it's explored.
Ultimately, however, this style of gameplay didn't line up with the story that Druckmann and co. were telling, and so the decision was made to retreat into a more linear experience.
You certainly can't knock Naughty Dog's ambition here, though given the series' story-forward approach, it absolutely made sense to let it dictate the mode of gameplay.