Remakes have become their own genre in the games industry — but not everyone buys into the trend. One of the original Uncharted’s designers has spoken out against remaking the series, and his reasoning lands harder than you’d expect, even for people who usually like remakes.
Designer Benson Russell, who worked on the first Uncharted, shared his thoughts on the FRVR podcast. In his view, a remake of Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune simply doesn’t make sense: the game is already playable on modern consoles and delivers the same experience it did back in 2007. Rewriting the story to “improve” it would mean changing the very essence of the original — its tone, its atmosphere, its key scenes.
Russell also broke down the practical problem. A remake would almost certainly force the team to either cut certain sequences or rework them for a new narrative structure — at which point it stops being a faithful re-release and becomes, in effect, a different game wearing the old title. He admitted he felt the same way about the remake of The Last of Us Part I a few years earlier.
Instead of retelling Drake’s story a second time, the designer suggested a different path: take what worked in Uncharted 4 and build a genuinely new entry in the franchise, set in a different time period or an entirely new location. That, he argued, would push the series forward instead of freezing it in remake form.
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Why This Matters for Players
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It’s a rare take: usually it’s fans pushing for remakes while developers either agree or stay quiet.
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The argument cuts at the genre’s core logic — if the original is easy to access and holds up well, the case for a remake gets a lot weaker.
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Part of the community backed the idea, pointing out that modern remakes often trade the original’s spirit for a visual upgrade.
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Sony and Naughty Dog still have no official plans for either a remake or a new Uncharted game.
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Russell’s comments are a former team member’s personal opinion, not a signal from the studio.
What’s Next for Uncharted
So far, this is a designer’s opinion, not an announcement. Naughty Dog hasn’t confirmed a remake or a new installment. But the conversation itself says something about where the industry is heading — a growing fatigue with endlessly repackaging old hits, and a search for a better balance between nostalgia and moving a franchise forward. If Sony ever does decide to revisit Drake, it clearly has someone on hand who can tell it exactly how not to repeat The Last of Us remake’s mistakes.
