However, you will eventually experience the fruits of our team’s online ambition, but not as a part of The Last of Us Part 2. Wanting to support both visions, we made the difficult choice that The Last of Us Part 2 would not include an online mode. Likewise, as development began on the evolution of our Factions mode from The Last of Us Part 1, the vision of the team grew beyond an additional mode that could be included with our enormous single player campaign. As we’ve stated, the single player campaign is far and away the most ambitious project Naughty Dog has ever undertaken. We wanted to address multiplayer in The Last of Us Part 2. However, Naughty Dog ultimately made the decision to drop multiplayer from Part II, delivering the following message to their fans last year: The plan is now to create this as a separate release. Originally intended to be a part of the main release, the scope of Part II grew to the point that multiplayer had to be sidelined and removed from the game. Given that we’re at the dawn of a new generation, any standalone follow up would also let Naughty Dog focus on the new console and experiment with its capabilities.Īdditionally, there’s already further The Last of Us content confirmed to be on the way, in the form of a multiplayer game. Since then, Sony’s first party studios have changed their approach to adding content after a game’s release, focussing more on standalone releases rather than DLC with the likes of inFamous: First Light, Uncharted: Lost Legacy and the upcoming Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales. Even then, it grew beyond the original scope, and it was eventually decided to be a standalone release with a higher price point. That naturally helped to set the budget for the project and expectations within the studio. Looking back at the original game, the Left Behind DLC was part of an expansion pass sold alongside the main game and included in collector’s editions and pre-orders.