I have very fond memories of booting up The Last of Us I on my PlayStation 3 and playing through its incredibly detailed and massively entertaining world turned asunder by mindless zombies only looking for their next meal.
The Last of Us is a massively successful 3rd-person narrative-driven adventure game that made many of us fall in love with story-based single-player games again. I, for one, can still remember the chill that ran down my spine when I encountered my first clicker and had to quietly evade it to get to the next level. That was a very standout experience for me. The game was amazing, and when its second instalment came around in 2020, I was all for it.
So, as you can tell, I was very disappointed to hear that Naughty Dog, the team behind the Last of Us series, was cancelling their multiplayer mode, “Last of Us Online.” It would seem that production for the game was not going as planned, and the Sony executive and Naughty Dog executive team were growing anxious about the game’s delayed and expensive production cycle.
In a blog post from the developer’s official website, the Naughty Dog team stated that they had scrapped the multiplayer mode in favour of throwing their full focus behind other single-player narrative games. I was sad to see the news that they were cancelling the multiplayer mode. I was also very glad to see that they were working on another single-player game because that is where they shine brightest. Could a Last of Us III be in the works? Or does the PlayStation Studio plan to release an entirely new game?
According to their blog post, the Studio stated that it has been in pre-production on The Last of Us Online even while working on The Last of Us Part II. In an interview, the team’s creative director said, “We were enthusiastic about the direction in which we were headed.”
Naughty Dog claims that it would have to drastically hinder production on future single-player games to release and support The Last of Us Online, “putting all our studio resources behind supporting post-launch content for years to come.
“We could either continue to concentrate on the single-player narrative games that have defined Naughty Dog’s history or become a fully live-service gaming studio.
Naughty Dog is obviously taking the latter route, as evidenced by the fact that the company claims to be working on “more than one” sizable new single-player game.
When did the Alarm Bells begin to go off?
The production of The Last of Us Online had previously appeared to be in peril, with Naughty Dog announcing a delay in May, just after Bloomberg reported that Sony was re-evaluating the game’s direction. (Along with the delay announcement, Naughty Dog unveiled plans for a “brand-new single-player experience.”) According to Kotaku’s October article about Naughty Dog laying off certain workers, The Last of Us’ Online was “basically on thin ice.” And it seems that the Last of Us Online
Opinion
The Last of Us Online’s termination furthers Sony’s wider retreat from its aspirations for a live service. It now only intends to produce six live service games by March 2026, down from its original estimate of 12 titles.
It is sad to see that Sony has backed off from their plans to expand The Last of Us, but I think it is for the best because Naught Dog is not a renowned developer of games as services, and it seems that Sony could see the writings on the wall and were smart enough to cut their losses before it all came tumbling down.
Conclusion
While this may seem like an expensive failure on Sony’s part, it is also great to see the company able to identify an iceberg ahead and steer clear of it as opposed to crashing straight into it. On the other hand, Naught Dog still has a lot of great things coming down the line; The Last of Us Part II, Remastered by Sony and Naughty Dog, will be available on January 19, 2024. The second season of the popular HBO series is scheduled to premiere in 2025.
Sources: The Verge, Bloomberg, Naughty Dog Blog, Kotaku