Will Uncharted: The Lost Legacy be the last in the franchise?

Uncharted: The Last Legacy could be the last game in the franchise according to an interview with Naughty Dog in Game Informer. Starring Chloe Frazer and Nadine Ross, Uncharted: The Lost Legacy was announced at PlayStation Experience 2016 and is set one year after Uncharted 4.

Nathan Drake hung up his adventurers cap last year with Uncharted 4, but this standalone expansion is very much a part of the same universe. Frazer, who first appeared in Uncharted 2, will work alongside Uncharted 4’s Ross as they search for the Tusk of Ganesh.

Naughty Dog is developing the expansion internally. Once it’s finished, Naughty Dog will move on from Uncharted and focus on new projects. Studio Co-President Evan Wells said in the interview that “Naughty Dog doing an Uncharted after this is unlikely.”

We really love the franchise, but the studio has limited resources and lots of other ideas

Naughty Dog is currently developing both The Lost Legacy and The Last of Us Part II. Wells added, “I would never say never, but we’ve got The Last of Us Part II on our plates and there’s so much other stuff that [we want to explore].” Before Uncharted 4 was released, designer Robert Cogburn explained why it was planned to be the studio’s last;

You struggle with having to answer the same questions over and over again in any franchise. That’s not to say the questions will be the same in games we make going forward, but as a studio we grow tired of answering those same types of questions in the same fiction. It’s gonna be fun for us to really embark on new ideas and start fleshing those out [in a new series]

Naughty Dog may be done with Uncharted, but Sony may not be. Sony owns Naughty Dog and by extension the Uncharted franchise and may decide to have another studio develop a fifth entry in the series. It’s unlikely, but it could happen.

Uncharted: The Lost Legacy is due for release this year on PS4.