Gabriel Betancourt, a former developer at Naught Dog who worked at the Sony-owned studio between July 2012 and February 2019, has indicated in an interview with KiwiTalkz that Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End was nearly scrapped at one stage, with one studio head proclaiming ‘it sucked.’
During his time with the studio, Bentacourt worked on a number of major titles at Naughty Dog including The Last of Us, The Last of Us Part II, Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, The Last of Us Left Behind, and the aforementioned Uncharted 4. He discussed at length a project that was nearly scrapped after a director on another team wasn’t impressed with a demo presented to them, and while not mentioning Uncharted 4 by name, the mention of a ‘fourth’ entry and a franchise that ‘was successful up until that point’ makes it very likely it’s Uncharted 4.
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’.
It’s pretty well known among fans at this point that Uncharted 4 underwent some major changes during production, as it was originally helmed by Amy Hennig before Neil Druckmann and Bruce Straley took over. During this time, the game seemed to have Sam Drake filling a more villainous role, with the character played by Todd Stashwick. Nolan North revealed some details about this version back in April 2022, stating that about seven months of content was shot before Hennig was ‘dismissed from Naughty Dog,’ and that Charlie Cutter was originally set to have a major part in the title.
Uncharted 4 was released for PS4 in May 2016 and was remastered for PS5 in January 2022 as part of the Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection.
[Source – KiwiTalkz via Insider Gaming]