The Last of Us star Troy Baker will return in Naughty Dog’s next game

Troy Baker – best known as Joel in The Last of Us, as well as Nathan Drake’s brother Sam in the Uncharted series – is set to collaborate with Naughty Dog once again.

In a GQ profile of the prolific video game actor, the publication also confirmed Baker will have a part in studio head Neil Druckmann’s next project.

“In a heartbeat I would always work with Troy,” Druckmann also told GQ, after the publication learned of Baker’s return.

We still don’t have any more concrete details about what Baker’s role will be in the upcoming game. In fact, we don’t actually even know much about the game itself.

Back in June, Druckmann confirmed Naughty Dog had a number of games in the works, including “multiple single-player projects”. At this time, Druckmann said the studio would not just be known for The Last of Us forever, and that future projects would be as story rich as the studio’s previous works.

“We create experiences that are steeped in story and character, especially relationships,” Druckmann said. “The stories have some sort of philosophical core that everything is going to revolve around and feed into.”

There has been speculation that Naughty Dog is working on a fantasy-themed release. This began after several posters with fantasy-like elements were spotted adorning the walls in The Last of Us Part 1.

Meanwhile, earlier than that, the team’s senior concept artist Hyoung Nam set tongues wagging after they uploaded three new pieces of work to their ArtStation account in early 2021. This series was titled “The Women of North”, with the first of these images showing a warrior, sitting atop a slain dragon.

Nam tried to explain these pieces away, by retrospectively stating they were meant to be an homage to the notably dragon-free Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, and had nothing to do with anything happening at the developers. Hmm…

As for Baker, next up he is portraying Indiana Jones in MachineGames’ upcoming release, The Great Circle.

“You’ll be pleased to hear (literally) that Troy Baker does a great gruff Indy voice, and sounds pretty much spot on with a young Harrison Ford,” our Ian wrote in Eurogamer’s Indiana Jones at The Great Circle’s preview.

“In the wrong hands, this might have been the most distracting thing about The Great Circle, but thankfully MachineGames has chosen wisely on this one.”