Uncharted 4 was delayed to nail ending: "something happens that requires work"

Obviously Uncharted 4's delay was a bit of a bummer. But good things come to those who wait and, as Naughty Dog has explained before with The Last of Us, games are held back to make them better. Now, director Neil Druckmann has talked a little more about the delay and the reasons behind it.

“It was a very hard decision,” he explains in this month's OPM. "The Last Of Us was the first game we ever delayed – by a month – and we felt so guilty and so horrible having to do that, and yet shipping a game that wasn’t up to our vision would have felt worse". It's a similar story with Uncharted 4. "Much of the development and figuring things out happens as we go," Neil explains. "There were certain sequences where we were like ‘Okay, this is a pretty ambitious sequence, we will probably have to cut this...’

Obviously, for the finale of series packed with big moments fans would expect Uncharted 4 to end on a bang, and so does Neil: “Even when I’m describing the ending, it’s a pretty... Well, I guess this is a little bit of a spoil... Nah, I’m not going to say it! But there is something that happens that requires quite a bit of work for what we want it to do, and again we would have had to reduce that scope and reduce that ambition to meet that [original] deadline".

So, tough call. Scale back for Nate's send off and hit the original release date, or delay the game, disappoint fans but give him a fitting goodbye. “We were weighing those choices between fans and their expectations," explain Neil. "It was going to disappoint them to push this thing back, but this is the last chapter for Nathan Drake, so let’s give ourselves as much time as possible and go all-out for this series.”

You can read the rest of the in depth interview with Neil Druckmann in OPM's massive Uncharted 4 feature. The new Official PlayStation Magazine celebrates 20 years of PlayStation and includes a celebratory look back at the last two decades of Sony goodness and has a very special secrets of PlayStation feature. It will be on shelves on Friday September 25th. Alternatively you can download ithereorsubscribeto future issues.