Or where anything is going
Four months from the launch of Uncharted 4, developer Naughty Dog has no idea what direction the franchise will go next. Uncharted 4 is subtitled A Thief’s End for good reason. It’s said to be the last chapter in protagonist Nathan Drake’s story.
The conclusion to Drake’s arc won’t necessarily signal the conclusion to the series, however. Uncharted is one of the biggest brands in gaming, and those don’t usually just die because a story has been told. Naughty Dog’s director of communications Arne Meyer says the studio doesn’t know what the future has in store.
Speaking with GameSpot, Meyer said “Do we continue the series or not? If things don’t feel fresh or it doesn’t feel like we have an actual story to tell, it doesn’t feel like we’re able to try new things or innovate with gameplay, then we’ll start thinking about stepping away from it. Every time it’s worked out in that we’re like, ‘oh yeah we have a story to tell.'”
That uncertainty also includes the single-player DLC for Uncharted 4. Meyer commented “I was talking with Neil [Druckmann] about a month ago when that was just revealed. It was interesting because people are thinking maybe we’ll hold back some of the story or stuff like that. But he’s like, ‘I have no idea what we’re going to do with that.’ We’re so busy on the actual game and I was talking to him and saying that we’re taking a big risk here because we have no idea what we’re going to do yet.”
He continued “We’ve committed to putting something together and it has to be a high level of quality and have a really engaging story, and we’ve said that this is the final chapter. We have all these things we need to resolve at some point but we have no idea what [the single-player DLC] is,” he said.
It’s crunch time for Uncharted 4, so Naughty Dog likely doesn’t have its eyes set too far ahead. But, when that moment comes, the studio will have to make some decisions. Meyer sums everything up by saying “It may be scary from the outside to say this, but we don’t have a franchise plan or anything, or even a big idea of where anything is going.”
Uncharted 4 Dev on Single-Player DLC: “We Have No Idea What We’re Going to Do Yet” [GameSpot]
