From jumping out of a burning plane to crawling out of a train dangling off the side of a mountain, Nathan Drake proved time and again that he's a hard man to kill. However, the people of Naughty Dog take supreme pride over their remarkable storytelling from both its Uncharted franchise and the sensational Last of Us. Sometimes this could mean taking extreme measures to remind fans that Nathan Drake is still a mortal man.
Naughty Dog creative director Neil Druckmann sat down with The Sun to discuss Uncharted 4 and what Naughty Dog has planned after announcing that A Thief's End will represent the last arc of the franchise.
“He’s at the height of his popularity, so it’s not a good business decision. But I feel like the best way to honour him is to go out on top, to finish his story," said Druckmann. "Whether that’s it for Uncharted? I don’t know. At the end of the day Sony owns Uncharted and they can do whatever they want.”
Despite the possibility of Sony bringing back the Uncharted title back again in the future, Druckmann says that "it will be really hard to do a sequel with Nathan Drake” following the end of the game.
Given the strong feeling of permanence in Druckmann's words, it suggests that Uncharted 4: A Thief's End will, as its title suggests, take a somber turn. On one hand, it really doesn't make sense for Naughty Dog to kill off such a beloved hero. On the other hand, the brazen game studio has killed off major characters not once, not twice, but three times-- Joel's daughter Sarah, his partner Tess in The Last of Us; and Ellie's best friend Riley from the Left Behind DLC. While none of these characters were main protagonists, it shows that Naughty Dog isn't afraid to take storytelling risks that will surprise its fans.
“With the Last of Us - and even more so with [DLC] Left Behind - we were making an action game, but it was ok not to have action wall-to-wall. It was ok to have two girls in a Halloween store putting masks on and joking around with each other," Druckmann continued. “Getting the confidence to do that and bring that to Uncharted became really interesting, because it helps show more the human side of Nathan Drake.
“But also something we learned from the Last of Us is not all set pieces have to be big and explosive. Some of them can be small and intimate - and that lets us get much more interesting and introduce different pacing than in the previous Uncharted games.”
When all is said and done, Druckmann emphasized that Uncharted 4: A Thief's End is truly the end of Nathan Drake.
“Maybe there’ll be a prequel, maybe it will be a different character, I don’t know,” said Druckmann. “But this is the end for Nathan Drake.”
Finally, doesn't this trailer sound like an obituary?
