The Last of Us Factions 2 is in big trouble. A new report from Kotaku expands onalready troubling chatteraround the multiplayer title suggesting it was previously downsized following some negative internal feedback from Bungie. Now, contract workers with experience acrossThe Last of Us Part 2andUncharted 4: The Thief’s Endare having their time atNaughty Dogcut short, likely due to Factions 2 either being in a lot of trouble or the studio behind schedule to the point where it no longer requires a large roster of QA staff. A Kotaku source also claims that the project is currently on ice.
I can’t say I’m surprised, and it sucks that talented people are being put out of work due to a misguided project eager to ride on the coattails of multiplayer trends already out of style.Sony wants to develop ten live-service titles for PlayStation, with Factions 2, Bungie’s Marathon, and a Horizon MMO all in the pipelines. All of these games leverage existing universes while striving to create something that keeps profits pumping in ways single player games aren’t able to.
From a business perspective, I can see why corporations want to head down this road, and live-service games can break new ground and tell fascinating stories. But it isn’t the same when existing, already beloved universes transition into this online form when millions already love them for different reasons. Factions 2, what little we’ve seen of it, was presumably going to be an expansion of the first game’s multiplayer mode. It was meant to ship with the sequel at first, but Naughty Dog decided against its inclusion to ensure all its resources could be ploughed into the campaign.
A wise decision, but this blueprint must now be stretched into a free-to-play behemoth rife with battle passes, microtransactions, and all the bells and whistles we expect from a modern online game. I’m not sure The Last of Us is a universe suited to this sort of product, and neither does Naughty Dog if development woes are any indication. It is either too ambitious, or not ambitious enough in its execution.
If Sony can’t leverage the biggest property under its umbrella into an online game, it casts serious doubt over the company’s long-term strategy to build reliable live-service titles. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that games we adore for their strong narratives and characters won’t translate well to online experiences where emotion is replaced with mechanical progress and repetition. you may weave a seasonal story into Factions 2, but to suggest it would have the same impact as Joel and Ellie’s adventures in the format of linear matches is foolish. Only a shared open world could broach upon such an achievement, and even this has never been achieved longterm outside ofDestiny. It was never going to be worth the effort, time, and resources it took to make it. At the very least, its cynical end goal was obvious.
Factions was great in The Last of Us, and remains a cult classic thanks to visceral combat and nuanced social mechanics. You could link up your Facebook account, meaning people in your settlement would possess familiar names, living or dying depending on whether you won the next match. Light narrative context was peppered in too, but it was seasoning more than anything substantial, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Naughty Dog wanted to take this further in the sequel. How exactly remains unknown, but I could see players joining in with different factions and fighting for causes over the course of a season. Like Splat Fests in Splatoon, but with far more murder and less ice cream.
While I feel for all those having work ripped away from them, and the years of dedication that have gone into bringing Factions 2 to life behind closed doors, its failure speaks to changing of the tide in the wider world of video games. Ever since Fortnite burst onto the scene, and it changed the world of live-service titles forever, every major publisher and developer has tried and failed to replicate its success. Big players who got in early enough or have the capital to keep trying have stuck around, but the failures are piling up so high I’ve begun to lose count.
Major properties like Marvel, DC, and Halo have tried to pivot into this new world and failed, learning the hard way that leaving behind solo stories and mechanical depth in favour of online gold reserves is a recipe for disaster, and a surefire way to turn fans against you. Factions 2 had a good chance of joining these casualties, so maybe after seeing the writing on the wall Sony decided to call it quits and avoid tanking its own rep.
A more simplistic and old-fashioned multiplayer addition to The Last of Us Part 2 that didn’t attempt to do too much or turn this series into something it isn’t would have been successful and gone down well with fans, too. But everything nowadays needs to be bigger and better, stretched to its limits in favour of maximum profits instead of artistic integrity. I don’t yet know if this is the fate that befell Factions 2, but I’d rather see its plug pulled now than have it fumble out of the gate only to be greeted by its own demise.
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