Rumour: Naughty Dog Chose to Remake The Last of Us 1 for PS5 Instead of Uncharted 1

Lost treasure

Sony and Naughty Dog get a lot of stick for how much focus they put on The Last of Us, but it seems as though they at least entertained the idea of revisiting Uncharted.

Speaking on the Sacred Symbols podcast, YouTuber Michael Kemp — who made that video dissecting Amy Hennig's version of Uncharted 4 — says Naughty Dog was planning to remake Uncharted: Drake's Fortune for PS5 before pivoting to The Last of Us Part I.

He alleges the studio, along with PlayStation's Visual Arts Support Group, was working on it as early as 2018.

Apparently, they remade an early cutscene from Uncharted 1 using up-to-date visuals as part of a pitch for the project — but it was decided the game would need much more than a graphical upgrade to bring it up to modern standards, and so The Last of Us was chosen instead.

"They remade that [scene], basically with Uncharted 4's graphics as a test, and they presented that and went, 'We could do this.' I don't know if they got approved or not, but then they realised, okay, Uncharted 1 needs a bit more modernisation in terms of the levels and set-pieces. So they decided, 'No, we'll not do that, we'll do one that needs a little bit less modernising,' and that's how they ended up with The Last of Us [remake]."

This tallies with previous insider information, as well as a report from Bloomberg (paywalled).

Adding to all this is that Uncharted-related files show up within The Last of Us 2; a couple of years back, a dataminer made this discovery and shared the results on Reddit:

Uncharted Remake was/is in the works. All datamined from a 2020 build of TLOU 2.
by u/Cold-Ad3330 in uncharted

So, if all this is true, the question now is whether Sony will return to this Uncharted 1 remake project. I could see it happening eventually; I don't know whether the movie sequel is still happening, but that seems like a good opportunity to release a "new" Uncharted at the same time.

Would you like to see the original Uncharted game get a remake? Tell us in the comments section below.

[source youtube.com, via insider-gaming.com]