Highlights
- The Last of Us has become a highly popular IP for PlayStation, and its multiplayer spin-off will allow the franchise to explore new ideas and directions.
- Uncharted served as a precursor to The Last of Us and its success. However, it would need to rectify certain aspects to evolve if the franchise was to return.
- Uncharted has the potential to continue with new protagonists and explore different settings and stories, as seen in Uncharted: The Lost Legacy.
The Last of Us has only had two games in the last 10 years, but it has managed to become one of the most popular IPs for PlayStation, resulting in an HBO adaptation that now seeks to cover all its existing content. The Last of Us’ multiplayer spin-off will be a great way for the IP to branch out away from characters and settings fans have become incredibly familiar with, and it will be interesting to see how fans respond to new ideas and directions for the franchise under that lens. In fact, Naughty Dog’s Uncharted franchise arguably never had the amount of discourse or popularity that The Last of Us has.
Uncharted can sort of be looked at as a guinea pig for Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us success in multiple ways, including its mild implementation of multiplayer modes leading eventually to The Last of Us’ Factions. Uncharted also does have a much easier story to digest since it is largely comedic, and its spectacle set pieces were palatable in a way that action-packed blockbusters. Moreover, the franchise never dropped its leading man, Nathan Drake, which may have thwarted how much it was able to evolve otherwise. If Uncharted was to return, that would need to be rectified.
Uncharted Has a Wealth of World-Building Untethered to Nathan Drake
Uncharted is supposedly shelved now and that would make sense alone based on how busy Naughty Dog seems to be at the moment. There are multiple projects in development and if none of them are related to Uncharted it will be an incredibly long time before the series could be picked back up.
This didn’t prevent The Last of Us from receiving its own sequel seven years after its launch, but Uncharted also had a perfect bookend that Naughty Dog might not want to disrupt by pulling on any unnecessary threads. This would be unfortunate, though, since Naughty Dog excelled in fashioning engaging character interactions throughout its globe-trotting and treasure-hunting adventure.
Character interactions were really the only meat on Uncharted’s bones in terms of the narrative, and while Nate and his companions lacked the depth of emotion that Joel and Ellie experienced, it was still remarkable in how it distinguished Uncharted apart from other set-piece adventure games. Nolan North’s portrayal of Nate was no small part of that distinction, but Uncharted could surely continue with another protagonist whose journey might be as exciting and humorous.
Indeed, Uncharted: The Lost Legacy already achieved this with Chloe Frazer and Nadine Ross as lead characters in what was perhaps the most refined Uncharted experience, as if The Lost Legacy was the Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales to Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End’s Marvel’s Spider-Man. This proved that other characters could easily take a lead role and push the IP into equally outstanding settings and stories.
It has been long-anticipated that Nate and Elena’s daughter Cassie would become a new protagonist in a future Uncharted 5, and that could always be on the table as long as Naughty Dog wants it to be, though new protagonists could still certainly hold their own in the continuity if there is truly a reason to continue it at all. In the meantime, while The Last of Us gets to branch further away from the characters who have been plastered all across its IP, it is a shame that Uncharted has not also had the same chance.
