The Last Of Us Factions Standalone Multiplayer Game Cancelled

Developers Naughty Dog offered an update on the development of “The Last Of Us Online”, the standalone multiplayer game previously referred to The Last Of Us Factions.

The game has stopped development.

Pre-production for the multiplayer game befane during the development of The Last Of Us Part II. That game was missing a multiplayer mode, which the first The Last Of Us game had, called Factions. Back in 2019, the team had hinted that a multiplayer The Last Of Us experience is still in development, just that isn’t part of Part II.

Here’s part of the statement from Naughty Dog on the cancellation:

“In ramping up to full production, the massive scope of our ambition became clear. To release and support The Last of Us Online we’d have to put all our studio resources behind supporting post launch content for years to come, severely impacting development on future single-player games.

So, we had two paths in front of us: become a solely live service games studio or continue to focus on single-player narrative games that have defined Naughty Dog’s heritage.”

It’s an interesting way of framing the situation, given that Naughty Dog had done live support for Uncharted 2, Uncharted 3 and The Last Of Us’s multiplayer modes while still delivered a fantastic single-player experience. But looks like that their attempt go bigger and made Factions into a full multiplayer live service rather than just a mode was too big of a jump.

On another note, the statement also shared that “we have more than one ambitious, brand new single player game that we’re working on here at Naughty Dog”. So fans of the developers’ tight gameplay experience that can tell compelling narratives should still be excited for the future ahead. As long as it’s not another depressingly ugly story like The Last Of Us Part II was.

Source: Naughty Dog

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