A PlayStation 5 remake of the original Unexplored was abandoned in favor of The Last of Us: Part One. This is according to Martin Kemp (“Thekempy” on YouTube) who recently posted an excellent, exhaustive deep dive into Naughty Dog’s original Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End before the departure of its director, Amy Hennig. Honestly, it’s a fascinating watch.
Kemp was recently on episode 517 of the Sacred Symbols podcasthosted by former IGN editor Colin Moriarty. He talks about how an attempt to remake Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune for PS5 was underway at Nnaughty dog several years ago, with the help of PlayStation’s Visual Arts Service Group.
Apparently, the team remade a section of Nathan Drake’s first adventure with the level of graphics of Uncharted 4. However, after realizing the scale of what a full-fledged remake would entail, Naughty Dog changed direction and developed The Last of Us: Part I instead.
Was it the right choice? Despite Naughty Dog’s track record of re-releasing TLOU, there’s no denying that Part 1 offers an incredible upgrade over the PS3 original and was rolled out at just the right time, attracting new fans who had watched the hit HBO television series. In our review, we called it “an incredibly gorgeous remake of a true masterpiece. Don’t expect this high price tag to bring much more than cosmetic changes to this emotional tale.”
Drake’s Fortune is an all-time hit, although it’s hard to imagine a remake surpassing the combined excellence of Uncharted 4 and its standalone spin-off, The Lost Legacy. Still, we’re not completely against the idea of Naughty Dog revisiting this first game, especially if it gives the team the opportunity to expand and explore deeper Uncharted lore.
For now, the future of the series remains a mystery with rumors suggesting that it has been handed over to another first-party studio, namely Bend Studio of Days Gone. As for Naughty Dog, it’s been a while since we’ve had a substantial update on the team’s upcoming sci-fi adventure game, Intergalactic. Although it may have missed the recent State of Play broadcast, we hope it resurfaces sooner rather than later.
