We've got some good news and some bad news for The Last of Us fans out there.
The good news is that Naughty Dog has officially confirmed the long-rumored multiplayer game. Unfortunately, the next TLOU game will be a standalone multiplayer project, which is in line with previous reports.
According to Naughty Dog's Neil Druckmann, the studio has worked on the multiplayer spin-off for the past two years, adding that the game will be "as big as any of [our] single-player games, and in some ways bigger." Finally, we also learned that the multiplayer game will have a unique story and will take place in what looks like San Francisco (The Last of Us takes place in Boston, Utah, Texas, and Wyoming.)
Unfortunately, that was all that Druckmann had to share about the game until next year.
Naughty Dog's The Last of Us multiplayer game was always an open secret. After the success of the original game's multiplayer mode, Factions, the sequel was all but expected to have a similar feature. However, as Naughty Dog must have found out while working on it, the multiplayer aspect had the potential to stand on its own two legs, which is why the add-on has now become a spin-off. Although the studio did not say it, we have a hunch that the upcoming multiplayer game will feature live-service elements and will be part of Sony's massive slate of live-service games through 2026.