Benson Russell, a former Naughty Dog developer who worked at the studio for more than a decade and was involved in the first three Uncharted games, has said he’s not interested in a remake of Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune.
Speaking with FRVR, Russell, who also worked on The Last Of Us during his time with Naughty Dog, said he doesn’t see the point in remaking a game like Uncharted when there are older, less accessible titles that would benefit from a modern overhaul.
System Shock… a remake of that now makes a lot of sense, because not just can you play it, but it had horrible key bindings, it kept a lot of people out of it from wanting to play it. Uncharted as a thing is still in the zeitgeist. There’s already a version you can play on modern consoles [to] get the experience. What’s the point of remastering [or remaking] it?
He also addressed suggestions that a reason to remake Uncharted would be to incorporate Naughty Dog’s modern approaching to storytelling, something which again he didn’t see the point in doing.
I just don’t see the point of remaking [it], you’d have to rewrite the whole story to make it better which means you’re going to change the spirit and you’re going to change the scenes and what the first one was about, right? You’re going to have to add all these scenes or take things away and a lot of the key set pieces – are you going to keep those? Are you going to have to redo them because they don’t fit your story?
Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune was released for the PS3 in late 2007, and was remastered as part of the Nathan Drake Collection.
There were rumours a few years ago via the XboxEra podcast that Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune could receive the remake treatment, although nothing ever materialised. At the time, podcast hosts Nick Baker and John Clarke noted that “it doesn’t necessarily mean this is 100 percent happening,” instead stating it was under consideration.