The ending of Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End would suggest that Nathan Drake’s adventuring days are over, and Naughty Dog appears to be in total agreement. Speaking in a new interview for BuzzFeed, Neil Druckmann, who’s currently riding high thanks to successful projects that include HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation, mentioned that Naughty Dog was “done” with Uncharted and that it had moved on from the franchise, implying no more Uncharted games. Naughty Dog is open to making The Last of Us Part III, however, but only if it can figure out a “compelling story” to tell.
From a BuzzFeed report:
When asked about the future of the franchise, Neil began, “We’ve been pretty open that the next Last of Us game is going to be this multiplayer experience, where you’ll be able to enter the world of The Last of Us with your friend and get to experience the tension and the brutality of that world — and a brand new story and cast of characters that live in another city that we haven’t seen yet in the world of The Last of Us. This is going to be another chapter in the universe of The Last of Us.
“Beyond that, I know there’s a bunch of people wondering about The Last of Us Part 3 and whether that will be a thing or not. All I could say is, at Naughty Dog we’re very, very privileged that our publisher is Sony — which means Sony funds our games, supports us, and we’re owned by Sony. They have supported us every step of the way to follow our passions — meaning that just because something is successful, people think there’s all this pressure and we have to make a sequel. That’s not the case. For us, Uncharted was insanely successful — Uncharted 4 was one of our best selling games — and we’re able to put our final brushstroke on that story and say that we’re done. We’re moving on.
“Likewise, with The Last of Us, it’s up to us whether we want to continue it or not. Our process is the same thing we did when we did Part 2, which is if we can come up with a compelling story that has this universal message and statement about love — just like the first and second game did — then we will tell that story. If we can’t come up with something, we have a very strong ending with Part 2 and that will be the end.”