Grubb’s answer comes after he was asked if the long-rumored Factions standalone game is coming to the PC. Grubb explained that while the TLOU off-shoot is not coming out, or at least, not titled as Factions, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. Grubb went on to explain that Naughty Dog are “moving beyond their original smaller ambitions to something more” but chose not to elaborate further as it was “as much as he was allowed to say.” Things have certainly taken quite the turn for the proposed multiplayer component for The Last of Us 2, but we supposed we should have expected this. Naughty Dog went through a lot in recent years, especially following the bad press the studio received for The Last of Us 2. Not to mention, Naughty Dog acknowledged that it will not release a multiplayer mode for the 2021 title, unlike its predecessor.
At the time, all Naughty Dog had to say was “TLOU Part 2 won’t include an online mode,” adding that the “vision of the team grew beyond an additional mode”, which appears to echo what Grubb just said. What’s particularly interesting about anything related to The Last of Us is that we’ve heard nothing from Naughty Dog or Sony about it. You’d think that either company would have had something to say about it, but that’s not the case. However, there have been several sightings, such as the hat that Neil Druckmann was wearing, as well as rumors and reports, like the Bloomberg report from last year. With so many different sources all saying the exact same thing, Sony and Naughty Dog are definitely up to something. It also doesn’t help that a Naughty Dog employee “revealed” two in-development projects over at the studio that sound a lot like The Last of Us remake and the series’ standalone multiplayer game. If nothing else, all these rumblings about The Last of Us help keep the franchise on top of everyone’s minds. The best-selling PlayStation franchise is set to make the transition from one of the greatest pieces of gaming in history to a TV show. The verdict is still out if the live-action adaptation can match the ambition and scale of the source material, but it’s certainly not for the lack of effort. The last we heard about HBO’s The Last of Us, the studio was putting its $10 million per episode budget to good use by recreating scenes from the video games, among others. Given Grubb’s confidence that The Last of Us Remake might launch later this year, possibly ahead of the show’s premiere in 2023, it’s only a matter of time before Sony and Naughty Dog come forward with news confirming all these speculations.
