Last of Us online was a highly anticipated endeavor taken up by The Naughty Dog studio, as they had been working on it since the pre-production of Last of Us Part 2.
The game, however, could not materialize and had to be shut down permanently. Some new factions of the incident have recently come to light, and it confirms the immensity of scope and hard work that went into the production of The Last of Us online.
The Last of Us Online Had An Immense Scope Of Work
It has recently come to light that Last of Us online was much more than a side project for Naughty Dog, where 100s of people were involved over a period of 4 years, which started sometime during the making of Last of Us Part 2.
During a recent podcast, Friends per Second, hosted by Ralph Panebianco, Lucy James, and Jake Baldino revealed certain factions of the development process of the game that had not been discussed before.
The podcasters hosted American journalist and author Jason Schreier, who talked about the tremendous work that went into making the game before the production was inevitably shut down.
He talked about the 4-year-long development process that involved a team of hundreds working dedicatedly towards making the game happen. He said:
Naughty Dog factions game was in development for something like 4 years, with a team in the hundreds. Like that is an expensive proposition for something that was a miss, and by that, I mean that project like getting cancelled was not a bloodless endeavor; there were some heads rolling at Sony as a result of that one.
This comes as a great surprise, as it was earlier believed the game was not as extensive and not much effort was put in before.
Naughty Dog Announced The End Of Last of Us Online Last Year
The Naughty Dog announced the end of The Last of Us online last year on December 14, 2023, via a note on their official website, stating in great detail why the production can no longer continue.
It mentioned that as the production of the game progressed, many revelations were made by the team along the way, which made them realize that this game’s immense scope would require all the people in the studio to work on it if it were ever to become a live service game.
This was something that the studio could not get behind, as Naughty Dog is known for their single-player narrative-driven games, and The Last of Us would require them to change the workings of the studio from that to becoming a solely live-service game studio.
Hence, it was decided that the project be shelved as it would have changed a lot for Naughty Dog, and it was not ready for such a big change to happen as of now. What do you think about it? Let us know in the comments below.
