With Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us Remastered now available on PlayStation 4 – and The Last of Us leads Neil Druckmann and Bruce Straley heading up Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End – the developer’s Co-President Evan Wells was asked by Eurogamer if this meant The Last of Us’ mature and grim nature might rub off on Drake’s latest adventure:
Uncharted is a completely different franchise, and appeals to its audience for completely different reasons. I don’t think The Last of Us marks a new direction in tone that all of our future games are going to take on. We’d alienate a lot of our Uncharted fans. We want to keep it a light-hearted romp. I think from a technical standpoint we’ve learnt some things from the Last of Us that will feed into Uncharted – in fact it strengthens our desire to keep them distinct.
As Wells previously revealed, Uncharted 4 is “a stand-alone adventure like all of them are; we don’t expect people to have played the past games to enjoy the current one. But you’re going to get to experience Drake and his crew in a new way.”
Be sure to check out that Eurogamer interview with various members of the studio, as it goes through the history of Naughty Dog, all the way from how they were “tired after four projects of Crash” and decided to make Jak & Daxter, to The Last of Us and Bruce Straley saying that creating a new IP is “the hardest thing that any developer is ever going to face.”
