Naughty Dog’s development team abandoned Jak & Daxter series reboot to develop critically acclaimed action-adventure survival horror, The Last Of Us, Neil Druckmann revealed.

During the IGDA 2013 keynote conference in Toronto, Neil Druckmann said, “Back in 2009, we had just shipped Uncharted 2 and it was very successful for us.

Our presidents, Evan Well and Christophe Balestra, decided that there were a lot of people in the team that were very talented but eager to do other stuff, maybe above the role they were at, so they were like, ‘let’s start branching out, let’s create this second team’.

Our task was to reboot Jak & Daxter. So we spent a lot of time exploring the world of Jak and Daxter and how we would reboot it; How would we reboot it? What would it mean to bring these characters back? What are some story ideas that we were getting excited about.”

As much as we liked these concepts and exploring these fantastical worlds, we found that the ideas we were getting passionate about were getting away from Jak & Daxter.”

He adds, We were ultimately questioning ourselves, if we were doing this for ‘marketing reasons’ or truly passionate about the Jak & Daxter series. We felt like we weren’t doing service to what fans of the franchise really want, even if the reinvented Daxter looks pretty damn good.

So we went to our boss, and asked, ‘do we have to do this?’ And he said ‘no, I just thought it would be easier for you guys if you started something [familiar]. But if you want something else, come up with something else.'”

Then the team created The Last of Us, but they might revisit Jak & Daxter in the future.

Watch the full keynote conference below:

Previously, ND revealed the future plans for The Last of Us DLC and Season Pass.