After rumblings this morning that The Last of Us II would see a delay, an official communication from Neil Druckmann on the PlayStation Blog confirm the news.

This is odd, especially with the media preview last month, as well as State of Play which featured a new trailer and a release date. Hype and buzz surrounding Naughty Dog’s biggest game to date hit an all-time high last month and the new trailer did a solid job at showing us what we’d be getting when The Last of Us II launched early next year.

According to Druckmann, the studio needs more time to keep their vision and quality up to standard. This was something the studio was concerned about as they begin closing sections of the game, and according to him, the either would “compromise parts of the game or get more time. We went with the latter, and this new release date allows us to finish everything to our level of satisfaction while also reducing stress on the team.”

As a firm believer in delays to ship the best version possible, this is okay. Developers need to be able to feel like a delay is alright and necessary, shipping a title of this calibre in an unfinished state is never ideal, so the fact they are doing this show how much they care.

It’s only a few extra months, right?