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It's official: After canceling the live-service Last of Us 2 Factions, Naughty Dog is re-committed to making the kind of games it's known for: "story-driven, character-based" ones.
To be fair, the studio has already implicitly made that statement with the announcement of its next game, the single-player, cinematic, space adventure game Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, but in a new video celebrating Naughty Dog's 40th anniversary, it's stated explicitly.
"I hope the future holds more of what ND has always done: being at the forefront of making entertainment that is of the highest possible quality, telling the stories it wants to tell, with depth and meaning," says studio co-founder Jason Rubin.
Even more to the point, studio manager and head of operations Alison Mori says "I know our studio will continue to create amazing story-driven, character-based games that touch upon the human experience."
This probably wouldn't be a story if it weren't for Naughty Dog repeatedly dipping its toes into online multiplayer and live-service models over the years, starting with the original Last of Us Factions mode. Naughty Dog had been working on a standalone, live-service Factions 2 for almost four years, but canceled it late in 2023.
Of course, Naughty Dog hasn't ruled out online multiplayer companions to its single-player, story-driven offerings, and there's no telling whether Intergalactic will one day get its own version of Factions, but it's encouraging to see the studio so strongly embrace what makes it so special to longtime fans like me. For my money, there still isn't a big budget studio I can depend on for Hollywood-tier production and HBO-level storytelling as reliably as Naughty Dog, and I'm glad that, for now, the studio's live-service aspirations aren't a distraction from that.
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