"No, they've announced multiplayer"

Naughty Dog has insisted that the inclusion of multiplayer in its upcoming survival horror title The Last of Us will not have an impact on the game's solo experience. As with Uncharted 2: Among Thieves back in 2009, anticipant fans were nervous about the confirmation of an online component yesterday. But according to community strategist Arne Meyer, they’ve got nothing to be worried about.

“We don't approach multiplayer in any of our games as tacked on," he wrote on the PlayStation Blog. "And we also always have separate teams working on the different components so that we can maintain full focus on making single-player and multiplayer up to our standards.”

Meyer added that the online experience – whatever it is – will stand up on its own. “If we felt like it would be tacked on, we wouldn't have added it. We want all our game experiences to be of the highest quality and that's what we work extremely hard to deliver."

The Uncharted developer has proven with its previous two releases that it can balance single-player and multiplayer development – but Meyer reiterated that the online component has not taken resources away from the solo experience. "Multiplayer has never taken away resources from the single-player game in any of our games,” he said. “The folks working on the single player campaign always have the resources and support to complete that portion of the game to the vision they planned for.”

We’re eager to see what the multiplayer actually entails. A basic co-op survival mode appears to make the most sense – but we expect the developer to deliver something a little more ambitious than that.

[source blog.us.playstation.com]