The Last of Us Online's director is now working on an 'AAA indie' multiplayer experience at a new studio

Vinit Agarwal, who worked as the game director for The Last of Us Online during his decade-long tenure at the studio, left Naughty Dog to pursue his vision of merging cinematic storytelling with multiplayer.

This concept was honed through games like Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, and The Last of Us Part II, where he worked on boss battles. Vinit spoke in an interview with GameSpark on August 13 and explained his roles at the studio:

“My main titles were Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, and The Last of Us Part 2. I worked on both multiplayer and single-player. I was mainly in charge of boss battles, and Naughty Dog’s boss battles are generally one-on-one situations.

So I wanted players to feel like they were fighting a human player, not an AI, even in single-player. To be more specific, I worked on the final boss in A Thief’s End and the fight between Ellie and Abby in The Last of Us Part II.

I used all of my knowledge of multiplayer to create the feeling that you were fighting a human. A big part of what inspired me to go independent was seeing the potential in combining Naughty Dog’s specialty, cinematic action, with multiplayer.”

Agarwal announced that he was moving to Japan to form a new studio in July. The unnamed international studio is operating between the U.S. and Japan, and is co-led by Naughty Dog alumnus Joe Pettinati. 

Drawing inspiration from From Software’s Hidetaka Miyazaki, the team is setting its eyes on a “AAA indie” approach, focusing on cinematic action-packed multiplayer, using Unreal Engine 5.

The project is still in early development, with Agarwal stating that it is playable in prototype form. He further added, “There’s nothing much we can say yet, but the new game is a multiplayer game, and we aim to bring the cinematic action we’ve been familiar with from our previous titles to multiplayer.”

Naughty Dog earlier announced that the studio had canceled The Last of Us Online in December 2023 after four years of development with hundreds of team members on board.

This decision came amid the studio’s desire to avoid shifting its focus to live-service games. Naughty Dog arrived at this conclusion after numerous consultations with Bungie.

Former PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida had described the project as “great” before it was canceled, noting that The Last of Us Online was shelved so Naughty Dog could focus on single-player experiences instead.