'The Last Of Us Part 2' Dropping Multiplayer To Focus On Single-Player

If you played the original The Last Of Us, odds are you spent at least a little bit of time with the game's online multiplayer Factions mode. It has to be said, for a game that was predominately an essential single-player experience, Factions was far, far better than it had any right to be. Quite a few players got super-invested in the mode, spending time with it long after they'd played through the entirety of Joel and Ellie's adventure.

Onto the bad news then, as Naughty Dog has confirmed that The Last Of Us Part 2 will not feature an online multiplayer mode. In a statement posted to Twitter, the developer reiterated that The Last Of Us Part 2's single-player campaign is "far and away the most ambitious project that Naughty Dog has ever undertaken." On a similar note, the evolution of the Factions mode was getting to point that it was probably too big to include with the game. To fully support the studio's single-player vision, Factions needed to go.

"As development began on the evolution of our Factions mode from The Last of Us: Part I, the vision of the team grew beyond an additional mode that could be included with our enormous single player campaign. Wanting to support both visions, we made the difficult choice that The Last of Us: Part II would not include an online mode," Naughty Dog wrote.

It's not all doom and gloom though, as the developer did offer some hope to those wanting to enjoy some more multiplayer survival action set in The Last Of Us universe. While we won't be getting to play Factions as part of The Last Of Us Part 2, Naughty Dog teased that players will " eventually experience the fruits of our team's online ambition."

Only last year The Last Of Us Part 2 Co-Director Anthony Newman told Polygon in an interview that the game would feature multiplayer, so I imagine this was a fairly recent decision on the part of Naughty Dog. Still, I choose to see this as good news on the whole. If Naughty Dog thinks this is the right course of action to go bigger than ever before with its single-player experience, more power to them. The studio's impeccable track record with single-player games suggests to me that we should probably trust it knows what its doing.

The Last of Us Part 2

If nothing else, the prospect of a multiplayer mode that's so ambitious that it warrants its own standalone release somewhere down the line is an exciting prospect. Coming from any other developer, this news might come off as as bit of a cash-grab... but again, I reckon Naughty Dog has earned our trust.