The Last Of Us new game has been officially pulled by Naughty Dog
Now that it’s been confirmed, Naughty Dog has cancelled its original The Last of Us multiplayer game.
Although it is primarily a one-player company, The Naughty Dog is known for making fun games for multiplayer. I can remember the multiplayer in the 2009’s Uncharted 2: Among Thieves was a blast, and it was later developed to Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception which was improved with Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End. This is why I was disappointed when the multiplayer modes were left out of Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection as well as the Uncharted Legacy of Thieves Collection.
When Factions came out as a part in the game The Last of Us in 2013, and then the PlayStation 4’s Remasteredversion in 2014, Naughty Dog had arguably created the best multiplayer game until now. Factions merged the world of legend of The of Us with the saga of The Last of Us, with an emphasis on survival as well as trading for the clan’s goods as well as requiring the players to be well-oiled in order to achieve victories against your adversaries. When Naughty Dog announced a couple years ago that a separate multiplayer title was being developed alongside the 2020 release of Part II of the series, Last of Us Part II The fans were naturally excited about.
However, it was reported that reports were making news suggesting that The Last of Us multiplayer game was having issues and was not progressing as fast as Naughty Dog had hoped. In the month of May 2023, Naughty Dog announced that the Last of Us multiplayer game was delayed despite the fact that it didn’t have any official date for release. We then heard of The multiplayer game was “on the ice” but “not completely removed”.
Unfortunately, Naughty Dog has verified the fact that The Last of Us multiplayer game is indeed ended. According to an Naughty Dog blog article in which the company stated: “We realise many of people have been waiting for news regarding the game was dubbed “The Last of Us Online. It’s not easy to describe this. The studio has taken the challenging decision to end the development of this game.”
“We are aware that this announcement will be a difficult time for many particularly our loyal The Last of Us Factions group, who’ve been watching our plans for multiplayer for a long time,” it continued. “We’re also devastated by the studio, as we wanted to put the game in your hands. We’d like to provide us some details on what led to our choice.
“The multiplayer team was developing the game as we worked on the game Last of Us Part II and creating the experience that we believed was original and had huge potential. The multiplayer team was working their idea for The of Us Online of Us Onlineduring this period the vision became clear as the game’s gameplay became sophisticated and satisfying as we became excited about where we could take us.”
Naughty Dog concluded: “In the process of ramping up production to full-time the vast scope of our goals became apparent. In order to release and promote the launch of The Last of Us Online it would require us to dedicate all of our studio resources in providing post-launch content for many decades to come, significantly effecting future development of single-player games. We had two options before us: to either be a solely live-streamed games studio, or keep focusing on single-player narrative games which are the foundation of Naughty Dog’s legacy.
“We have a great deal of pride in all of the people at the studio who contributed to this endeavor. The lessons and investment in technology gained from this game can be applied to how we design our future projects and prove invaluable to our direction as a team. We’re working on several ambitious and new single-player game is in development here at Naughty Dog. We are eager to tell you the details of what’s to come as soon as we’re ready.”
In fairness for Naughty Dog this choice doesn’t come without a hitch and I believe we’ll unanimously agree that we would not like its single-player titles to be affected. The studio has also confirmed that additional single-player titles are currently being developed. In any case in the smaller scale I’d love to have Factions come back in The Final of Us Part III along with multiplayer modes for the next Uncharted.
For the foreseeable and near in the near future, The Last of Us Part II Remastered will launch for PlayStation 5 on 19 January 2024.
