Eight months of Uncharted 4 work scrapped, claims actor

Naughty Dog scrapped eight months of work on Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End following Amy Hennig’s departure, the actor who plays Nathan Drake has claimed.

Speaking at Metrocon, as spotted on Neogaf, North said the team had been shooting Hennig’s story, but it was all “thrown away” when The Last of Us directors Neil Druckmann and Bruce Straley took over the project. As well as Henig’s departure, a number of other key staff also left the studio including, game director Justin Richmond and lead artist Nathan Wells.

The actor was reluctant to speak further on what may have happened at the studio that resulted in the departures and changes to the story, but said the new leads likely “just wanted their own flavour” to Uncharted 4’s plot. North said the new story would still be fun, but the tone will be slightly different.

“We had shot eight months of her story and it was all thrown away," he said.

"The Last of Us guys came in, and you have to understand, new producers, new people, they want to do it. I don’t know what happened exactly. Amy is still a very, very dear friend of mine, and she’s brilliant, but The Last of Us guys were the next team there so they took over and they just wanted their own flavour. They got rid of some of the other people that were involved and just redid their thing.”

After leaving Naughty Dog, Hennig joined Visceral Games to work on a new Star Wars game for EA. North said she was working on a “brand new Star Wars franchise in the style of Uncharted”.

He added it would not be Star Wars 1313, revealed by LucasArts during E3 in 2012, which also seemed to take cues from the Uncharted series. He added however it will be along the same lines as this.