While Naughty Dog may not have revealed any new details on the upcoming The Last of Us multiplayer project, it took the time on The Last of Us Day 2021 to ensure fans that it is actively working on it and that it will "reveal more when it's ready!"
Naughty Dog's Rochelle Snyder shared the news in a community update after thanking the fans and the team who have all collectively made The Last of Us into the success it has become. Jokingly, Naughty Dog then included this question as a fan would write;
"Yeah, that's lovely and great Naughty Dog, but what are you doing with The Last of Us right now?"
"In short, we’re working on it," Naughty Dog answered. "We see the community comments as many of you clamor for multiplayer and want updates. For now, we’ll say that we love what the team is developing and want to give them time to build out their ambitious project, we’ll reveal more when it’s ready!
"To that end, we’ve been busy growing our team inside the kennel since The Last of Us Part II launched and are currently in full swing of hiring for MP-related positions (hint hint), so if you or somebody you know qualifies for anything you see on our jobs page, apply!"
For those who are unaware or may not remember, Naughty Dog announced that it had made the "difficult choice" to not include an online multiplayer mode in The Last of Us Part 2 after the scope and ambition of the game's single-player campaign reached a level even the team had not anticipated.
However, considering the love many have for The Last of Us' Faction mode, Naughty Dog reassured fans that it would be returning in some form in the future.
While we still don't know if this will be a standalone game, part of a future collection of The Last of Us games, and or part of a new game, we do know that Naughty Dog is hard at work at making it a reality. In our opinion, a standalone The Last of Us multiplayer game is actually a great idea.
Even though that wasn't the most substantial update, Naughty Dog and HBO did share the first look the upcoming The Last of Us series, which gave us our first look at Pedro Pascal's Joel and Bella Ramsey's Ellie.
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Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.