Naughty Dog's The Last of Us 2 has been critically acclaimed since its release in June of last year and despite the controversy surrounding some of its plot-points, many consider it to be a touchstone for storytelling in video games. The Last of Us 2 is inherently a honed singleplayer experience, with its focus on contemplative narrative and story beats, however, a recent post on Naughty Dog's Twitter seems to indicate that a multiplayer mode is on its way for the game.
Though Naughty Dog are a company that is known primarily for its singleplayer stories, The Last of Us had multiplayer in the form of Factions, and other titles in the Uncharted series had multiplayer modes as well. For many players, these multiplayer experiences were less notable than the singleplayer, but Factions certainly had a pocket of dedicated players, and silence from Naughty Dog about The Last of Us 2 variant of this mode was palpable among them.
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The tweet from Naughty Dog indicates a number of job openings for positions at the company tackling multiplayer design. Considering the job listings, which range from UI and Level Designers to QA Testers, it would appear as though some major work is being done on the multiplayer side of things. It makes sense that Naughty Dog would need a large team to carry over the level of detail seen in The Last of Us 2's campaign. Naughty Dog's website lists a total of 56 openings at the time of this article, with around 11 of them being specifically for multiplayer design.
There is no specific indication in the job openings that the multiplayer being worked on for The Last of Us 2 is a new Factions game mode, with certain factors indicating something different could be in the works. An AI programming position specifically for multiplayer has many suggesting that a game mode in the vein of Battle State Games' Escape from Tarkov, could be in the works, whereby players have to tangle with AI and human opponents to scavenge maps for loot. Many have also put forward the idea of a battle royale mode for The Last of Us 2, which could be befitting given its post-apocalyptic setting, high-stakes, and methodical gameplay.
While much of this is speculative, and the return of Factions as The Last of Us 2's multiplayer is a strong possibility, the world Naughty Dog created certainly opens the door to many unique options for multiplayer. With many battle royale titles favoring fast, frenetic gameplay, a return to the slow and strategic nature of games like Player Unknown's Battlegrounds could be what the genre needs, and who better to craft it than Naughty Dog, whose attention to detail is second-to-none?
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Source: Naughty Dog
