The Last of Us Part II’s Factions mode becomes its own larger, stand-alone game

At Summer Game Fest today, Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckmann talked more about what’s going on with the Factions mode of The Last of Us Part II—and it’s good, bad, and maybe a bit of mixed news.

The bad news is that this new version of Factions is nowhere near ready to release yet, and we won’t even be hearing more about it until next year. The good news is that the scope of the mode is growing far bigger than originally planned, into not only its own stand-along game, but also what seems like it might be some sort of open-world experience with crafted characters.

Where I’m mixed is that I really loved The Last of Us‘s Factions mode, and I’m not sure that “bigger” is really going to be “better” for me. I liked it for what it was, as it was a unique and interesting multiplayer game that had depth while not being too deep. I also loved Uncharted 2‘s multiplayer, only to watch that grow into something that lost what was special about the mode. Is that going to happen again here?

At the same time, there could be something really interesting to do with all of the ideas we saw in Factions when you expand those ideas out into a far more ambitious project.

Either way, we’ll all have plenty of time to wonder about what this latest version of Factions will become, as it ain’t going to be anything anytime soon.