Naughty Dog defends The Last of Us multiplayer

Just this week, Naughty Dog confirmed that The Last of Us would feature multiplayer, but not all were thrilled by this decision. Responding to comments on the PlayStation Blog, Naughty Dog community strategist Arne Meyer defended the PlayStation 3 game's multiplayer component. He said resources were never taken away from single-player to work on multiplayer.

"We don’t approach [multiplayer] in any of our games as tacked on," Meyer said. "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 said Naughty Dog has faith that multiplayer in The Last of Us will "stand on its own," and that if there were any ever concerns of it feeling "tacked on," then the studio would not have added it in the first place.

It was not much of a surprise for The Last of Us to feature multiplayer. The company's most recent games, Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, both featured multiplayer components after the original Uncharted: Drake's Fortune did not.

The Last of Us is Naughty Dog's first game outside of the Uncharted universe since 2005. It is a postapocalyptic survival game set in the United States that follows the efforts of main characters Joel and Ellie as they fight to survive.