There’s a really interesting new rumor about the next The Last of Us game, that takes aim at a report from no less than Jason Schreier.
Last May, Schreier reported in Bloomberg that the long awaited The Last of Us Factions multiplayer game was significantly scaled down and put on the backburner. Schreier told a story of Bungie being asked to assess the project, and telling Sony that the game can’t hold on attention for very long. It had sounded like the game was almost cancelled, but instead scaled back as Sony still sees potential in it.
We have to point out here that one of Naughty Dog’s employees, Lead Editor Samuel Prince, had this to say about Schreier’s story a month after its publication:
“I don’t love all the name-calling in this thread as I try my best to keep it wholesome™. But maybe next time he (Schreier) writes an article about a studio without a single named source, think about how much he loves clicks and take his stories with a grain of salt.”
At the time, you could have taken that tweet to indicate that Schreier and Prince, or perhaps other Naughty Dog employees, don’t like each other, and that would be logical as Schreier shared insider information. Whether they like each other or not would have nothing to do with whether Schreier’s report is accurate.
Now, another insider, thetipsterVG, has chimed in on Schreier’s report. When asked to share any Naughty Dog related rumors, thetipsterVG had this to say:
“i’ll say this the jason schreier article about the TLOU multiplayer is complete bullshit and TLOU Part III is in heavy development.”
Of course, one can choose to dismiss that thetipsterVG is making this up and Schreier is more credible. But I do need to point out here, that Schreier actually gets information wrong all the time.
Jason Schreier is not like most writers about video game news, such as myself. Before becoming a full-time reporter for Kotaku, he picked up experience as a local news journalist, and also did work for multiple outlets.
Having that kind of training and experience does give Schreier’s reports more legitimacy than most leakers. But we should remember that professionally trained journalists also get things wrong, and they do so all the time as well. It could be because the journalist chose to trust the wrong sources, or made bad calls on sketchy information.
This may have fallen by the wayside, but the most recent debunking for Schreier’s sources, was for Call of Duty Modern Warfare III. Schreier insisted that this game was a Call of Duty Modern Warfare II expansion, and not that it would be made the sequel. While we now know what Activision had planned after all, it was clear that Schreier did not have the complete picture.
So it is absolutely credible that Schreier’s big report is wrong, either in total or in some of the details, and that Naughty Dog is actually progressing very well on their upcoming The Last of Us game. We don’t know if we’re getting a standalone The Last of Us Factions, or if it’s part of The Last of Us Part III, or if the multiplayer game has been reworked to actually be The Last of Us Part III. But we should pay attention to what rumors are coming out because consensus is a potential indicator that a rumor could be entirely correct.
