Naughty Dog kunde ha lagt ner Uncharted 4: A Thief's End

Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, released in 2026 by Naughty Dog, not only has concluded the story of Nathan Drake but also has become one of the greatest games for PlayStation and one of the best games of generation. But at one point during the development, studio even considered canceling the game because of product’s low quality, as was revealed by a former Naughty Dog developer.

Gabriel Betancourt, who worked as a Senior Lighting Artist at Naughty Dog for almost 7 years and was involved in the development of games such as The Last of Us, The Last of Us: Left Behind, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, and The Last of Us: Part II, has appeared on the latest episode of Kiwi Talkz podcast, where he shared that during the development process, game’s director was surrounded by employees who were always saying “yes” and when one of developers from a different team tried the game, he called it “suck”. As a result, development team was given an ultimatum: either they would have to overhaul the game, or the project would lose its funding and, as a result, be canceled. You can check out the highlights from Betancourt’s interview below:

“I remember this one game prototype, and I won’t say which one, but there was a project that had been in production for two and a half years almost three, and corporate had said ‘we’re having questions about this.’ The franchise was successful up until that point, there was no reason to question that this thing would be successful.

But at that time, the leader was surrounded by people who were always saying yes, and they were living in the glory of their success going onto their fourth project, and now they’re delivering this deadline for a demo, and I think they just took it for granted. We’ve already had success before, we’re gonna have it again, we’ve done this three of four times already, so we’re just gonna be this great thing.

One of the directors from another team was asked to weigh in, and I wasn’t there, I only heard the story, and that director walked in, in the room full of all these people, he picked up the controller, and he said to everyone: ‘This game sucks’.

“No, but the game sucks, there’s no objectives, it’s hard to follow what’s going on, the controls are clunky, this isn’t like you guys, this isn’t what we delivered in the past. In the meeting, people walked out of there really upset. This director, I’m surprised he had the gaul to say something like that.”

You guys are in trouble. We’re gonna pull funding from this if you guys don’t fix this. As a result, the director of that project was pulled away, even thought they had been successful, and the naysayer, along with two others, were put in to help fix it, and then game had to be redone. Then, two and a half to three years later, so five to six years total production, the game became a success.”

Although Naughty Dog hasn’t revealed their plans about Uncharted franchise, as they are fully concentrated on Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, studio’s new sci-fi IP, according to insider Alir, studio is actually working on Uncharted 5, which will also include the return of Nathan Drake – but seemingly in a supportive role.

The game is reportedly will be directed by Shaun Escayg, the director of Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, who posted a potential teaser to a new game series title earlier this month.