Uncharted 4 Delayed to Help Get the Ending Right

Naughty Dog has shed more light on its decision to delay Uncharted 4: A Thief's End from fall 2015 to March 2016. Co-director Neil Druckmann says in a new interview the decision to push the PlayStation 4 game out a few months was not an easy one, but was required to make sure the team nailed the ending.

"It was a very hard decision," Druckmann said in the latest issue of OPM (via GamesRadar). Uncharted 4 is the final game in the series to star Nathan Drake, and Druckmann teases that the studio has something special in mind for the very last scene. Getting this right took more time than previously anticipated.

"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," Druckmann said. "And again, we would have had to reduce that scope and reduce that ambition to meet that [original] deadline."

Druckmann said he knew the decision to move the game back would frustrate some fans, but it was ultimately decided that a delay was in the best interest of the overall experience.

"It was going to disappoint [fans] to push this thing back," he said. "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."

Uncharted 4 launches on March 18 exclusively for PS4. You won't have to wait that long to play an Uncharted game on PS4, however, as The Nathan Drake Collection debuts in early October. This bundle includes remastered versions of the franchise's three PlayStation 3 games and also comes with access to the Uncharted 4 multiplayer beta, which starts in December.