A former Naughty Dog employee wants nothing to do with an Uncharted remake

Despite its immense popularity on the PS3 and PS4, Uncharted has been almost completely abandoned by PlayStation. Aside from a compilation and a feature film, the series seems to have been sidelined.

As a result, many gamers are calling for Nathan Drake’s return, whether through a new installment or a remake/remaster. Benson Russell isn’t particularly keen on the latter idea. He worked at Naughty Dog from 2007 to 2015—that is, from the launch of Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune to the completion of Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End.

According to Russell, a remaster or even a remake would serve no purpose whatsoever.

“Uncharted as a thing is still in the zeitgeist. There’s already a version you can play on modern consoles [to] get the experience. What’s the point of remastering [or remaking] it?

I just don’t see the point of remaking it. You’d have to rewrite the whole story to make it better which means you’re going to change the spirit and you’re going to change the scenes and what the first one was about, right? You’re going to have to add all these scenes or take things away and a lot of the key set pieces—are you going to keep those? Are you going to have to redo them because they don’t fit your story?

We need to take the lessons of Uncharted 4 and make a new game that’s in the past or wherever you need it to be. It doesn’t make any sense [to remake it],” the designer continued. “I honestly thought the same thing about The Last of Us Part 1… these are old games for a reason.”

What’s more, he adds that a remake of the first Uncharted would be “more like a cash grab than it would feel like anything necessary at this point”.