Recently, Naughty Dog confirmed, much to the surprise of everyone, that The Last of Us Part 2 would be a single player-only experience, and that the multiplayer mode of the first game – Factions – would not be making return in the sequel. It’s an update that has disappointed a whole lot of people. Though far from the main draw of the game, The Last of Us’ Factions was still a great, extremely enjoyable experience, which was played and enjoyed by a lot of people.
Naughty Dog have now issued a statement to talk about the lack of multiplayer in The Last of Us Part 2. The developer states that during early development stages, the studio’s vision for how they wanted to expand Factions grew beyond a single mode, and they eventually decided that they couldn’t fit both that and the single player component – which is supposed to be Naughty Dog’s longest and largest one to date – into a single package.
The developer, however, also goes on to make an interesting promise- that Factions will eventually be making a return, and we will see the work that they did on it during the early stages of The Last of Us Part 2’s development one way or another. Naughty Dog clarifies that when or how that will happen isn’t something they’ve decided on yet, but reassures that we haven’t seen the last of Factions just yet.
There’s various ways they could go about reintroducing Factions. The most obvious one would be to add the mode to the game as post-launch DLC, but this update seems to indicate that it might be too big in scope for that. Alternatively, they might also decide to release it as a separate game dedicated purely to multiplayer down the line. That, or they’re saying that The Last of Us Part 3 – whenever that happens – won’t be ditching Factions. Either way, there is some comfort to be found in knowing that Factions isn’t permanently gone.
The Last of Us Part 2 is out on February 21, 2020. Naughty Dog recently released video showing a bunch of new gameplay footage- check it out through here.