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The Last of Us Online's game director Vinit Agarwal has shared that the multiplayer spin-off game was scrapped in part to make room for Naughty Dog's next single-player offering, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet.
Per an interview with Lance E. Lee, the canceled game's director reveals the project was essentially a victim of the post-Covid video game boom. As he explains, PlayStation and countless other publishers saw gamers spending more time and money in online games than ever – no surprise there, everyone was stuck inside – but the dramatic growth didn't last long once lockdown had ended.
That's when Naughty Dog came to an impasse of sorts. "Basically, at one point, a decision had to be made: Make this game or make the next game that Neil Druckmann was directing, the president of the company," Agarwal recalls, nodding his head at the studio's upcoming space romp, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet.
"So, kind of naturally you can understand what happened there," he adds. "They had to pick the game that was kind of the whole bread and butter of the studio rather than this experimental game we were working on, that I believe was gonna be really big, but unfortunately couldn't see the light of day."
Agarwal says the game's sudden and "soul-crushing" cancelation "was a devastating moment," one that he only found out about 24 hours before the news became public.
What's more is that it sounds like The Last of Us Online (or whatever its name would've been) was farther along than previously thought. Naughty Dog mentioned that The Last of Us Online began pre-production shortly before The Last of Us Part 2's launch in its cancelation announcement, meaning it would've been in development for roughly four years. Agarwal now shares that the number is closer to a whopping seven years, and it was apparently around 80% finished by the time Sony took it out back.
One might wonder why Naughty Dog thought spinning off The Last of Us, a famously single-player series, into a multiplayer direction was a good idea. To that, I'd point everyone to the first The Last of Us' Factions mode, which was a surprisingly great and engrossing detour made back when big-budget games often came out with both solo and multiplayer parts.
I would've loved to see what a fleshed out version of Factions could've been, but unfortunately in today's industry, where AAA live service games require massive amounts of money and manpower, it's unlikely that Naughty Dog would've been able to upkeep a big online experience while making the luxe story-driven games it's known for at the same time.
