Those who buy a digital copy of the upcoming title from Uncharted developer Naughty Dog, The Last of Us, will be able to play the game as it downloads onto the PlayStation 3's hard drive. This was confirmed in an interview of Naughty Dog's creative director Neil Druckmann in GameInformer. The game will be able to play once the game hits 50% completion of download. Sony has also promised that future games on the PlayStation 4 will be able to do the same thing, only even faster, once the console comes out.
The game will feature a robust single player mode, and also will have a multiplayer component as well. Lead artist for the game Nate Wells went to Twitter to hype of the game's multiplayer:
"I wish I could appropriately prepare you people for [The Last of Us]...But even if I were allowed to, I can't. And I really can't prepare you for the best [multiplayer] ever conceived."
We shall have to see if The Last of Us truly has the best multiplayer ever, or if Wells is merely overexcited about the game. Very little is known about the game's multiplayer, but Naughty Dog has a history of fantastic multiplayer, as anyone who has played the dynamic levels in Uncharted 3's multiplayer can tell you.
The Last of Us will be available on June 14, and follows the story of a world where most of mankind has been taken over by a fungus that has caused horrible mutations. The player takes control of Joel as he escorts the A.I controlled Ellie through the various abandoned cities and hostile territories of other survivors. The game is inspired by an actual fungus that takes over an ant's brain and forces it to spread the fungus and eventually causes the ant's head to split open. Naughty Dog then took this idea and applied it to humans, and thus The Last of Us was conceived.