It looks like fans will hear about "The Last of Us 2" as early as next year, with developer Naughty Dog almost done with the single-player downloadable content (DLC) for "Uncharted 4: A Thief's End."

Naughty Dog creative director Neil Druckmann said early this year that they will give their full attention to the sequel after the story DLC for "Uncharted 4."

According to a report by Let's Play Video Games, this long-awaited expansion will be launched at the PlayStation Experience (PSX) 2016 this December, which means that the team could now slowly transition to "The Last of Us 2."

The folks over at the said publication also got to speak with Troy Baker, the voice actor for Sam Drake in "Uncharted 4," at the MCM Comic-Con in London where he teased that the story DLC should happen "very soon."

Baker also teased that it is "by far the biggest story DLC [Naughty Dog] has done," which suggests that the size of it just had the team too preoccupied to work on "The Last of Us 2."

Druckmann told GamesRadar that they have been working on prototypes for the sequel when they were pulled for "Uncharted 4." Back in April, he said that their focus is the "Uncharted 4" single player DLC.

"And then, once we have enough resources, resurrect all those prototypes, see where we're at, see where the teams at, what they're excited for and go from there," the creative director went on to say.

From the looks of it, Naughty Dog is already working on "The Last of Us 2," if not preparing to continue what they started. This also suggests that fans might hear about it as early as next year.

As for a possible release date, it looks like it will take a while for the game to get here. The original went into development in 2009 and was released for the PlayStation 3 by 2013.

If this will be the case for "The Last of Us 2," it might be a while to get there with a 2018 release being the earliest.