Uncharted 4 Was Almost Canceled After a Director Said It “Sucks”
Uncharted 4 was released on PS4 ten years ago and has sold nearly 20 million copies. However, according to a former Naughty Dog developer, the early versions of the game were not well received by everyone inside the studio.
Gabriel Betancourt, who worked as a lighting artist at Naughty Dog from 2012 to 2019, recently spoke in an interview with Kiwi Talkz about the early stages of development. He worked on several major titles, including The Last of Us, The Last of Us Part II, Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, and Uncharted 4.
Uncharted 4 Nearly Canceled After Harsh Internal Feedback From Director
He explained that the project had been in development for quite some time before concerns started to appear. He said (via Insider-Gaming), “I remember this one game prototype, and I won’t say which one, but there was a project that had been in production for two and a half years almost three, and corporate had said ‘we’re having questions about this.'”
Despite the success of previous games in the series, there were internal issues. According to Betancourt, the team was very confident and believed the project would succeed again without problems. To get feedback, they asked a director from another team to review the game. What happened next shocked everyone in the room. He added, “That director walked in, in the room full of all these people, he picked up the controller, and he said to everyone: ‘This game sucks.'”
The reaction in the room was strong. The project director — likely Amy Hennig — was very upset. When someone said the comment was rude, the visiting director continued, “No, but the game sucks, there’s no objectives, it’s hard to follow what’s going on, the controls are clunky, this isn’t like you guys, this isn’t what we delivered in the past.”
At first, the studio continued development and tried to ignore the criticism. But later, the situation became more serious. According to Betancourt, the leadership stepped in and gave a clear warning, saying, “You guys are in trouble. We’re gonna pull funding from this if you guys don’t fix this.”
As a result, the project director was removed, even though they had been successful before. The critic, along with two others, was put in charge of fixing the project, which led to major changes and a partial restart of development. After several more years of work, the game was completed and became a big success.
Although Betancourt never directly named Uncharted 4, it is likely the game he was referring to. The timeline aligns, and Amy Hennig’s departure from Naughty Dog in 2014 during its development further supports this.
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