Data miner Thekempy has shared new details about a cancelled remake of the first Uncharted game. According to him, Naughty Dog was very close to giving the green light for a remake of Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, but ultimately shifted its priorities.
During the Last Stand Media podcast hosted by Colin Moriarty, Thekempy said that around 2018 or 2019 Sony’s internal support studio Visual Arts Support Group was already working on an early version of the project. To pitch the idea, the team even created a small playable demo segment.
According to the data miner, the team recreated a scene where Nathan Drake and Elena Fisher travel to an island with Victor Sullivan. After an aerial attack, the plane is shot down and the characters escape by parachuting out. This sequence was built in the Uncharted 4 engine to demonstrate how a full remake could look to leadership.
Supporting this claim, enthusiasts previously discovered a reference to this sequence in the files of The Last of Us Part 2. This likely happened because both games used the same engine and shared parts of a common codebase where leftover assets remained.
However, during evaluation, developers concluded that updating the first Uncharted would require too much work. It was not only about modern graphics but also a full rework of level design, cutscene direction, and gameplay systems.
Because of this, the studio decided to focus on The Last of Us remake instead, as it required significantly fewer changes. Still, the idea of a Uncharted remake is not fully off the table. Thekempy noted that he does not know whether it is in development now, but believes Naughty Dog could return to it in the future if it makes sense.
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