The Last of Us Multiplayer Details Leaked
We’re weeks away from what is personally my most anticipated release of 2013. I’ve started a new policy that began with movies and breached into games where I avoid new trailers like the plague if I’m sure to watch/play it, so I’ve followed basically no news on the game. But when details started to surface today on the so-far secret multiplayer mode (all the news to date have only given details about multiplayer DLC, not actual game play), I made an exception to just check out what the game mechanics would be.
All in all, it sounds pretty cool. If nothing else, Naughty Dog is going a somewhat unique route. Rather than just some free-for-all or capture the flag standard fare, the multiplayer mode will have you select one of the game’s two factions (integration with Facebook allows you to automatically populate a faction with your friends if you wish), and you play through some light stories in a 12 week mini-campaign that will involve functions like classes and item crafting. Along the way the game will give you status updates as to how your fellow members are helping/hurting your faction, and you’ll collectively get to make some decision on plot elements (i.e., which characters survive an encounter).
Of course, this all plays out in standard looking death-match style play, but it’s nice to see developers trying to add some new wrinkles to the process. And you won’t be able to play this like a CoD match, since the single-player functions that are going to focus combat on constantly rising tension – such as extremely low amounts of ammo and no health regeneration, making every time you come out of a cover a monumental risk – will be present.
If you want some very light spoiler-filled descriptions check the links above, and here’s a video of the multiplayer mode in action: