Everyone’s favorite wise-cracking Nolan North-alike, Nathan Drake, will sadly not be joining us for Easter this year. Uncharted 4: Thief’s End has been pushed back by just over a month from its March 18 release to April 26 in North America and April 27 for Europe.
A blog post by Naughty Dog directors Neil Druckmann and Bruce Straley points out that the game needed “a bit more time” to meet expectations:
“This is our largest Uncharted, and the team has been working incredibly hard to meet the challenge of closing out the game’s development in a timely manner. However, as we started to approach our final deadlines and started wrapping up the game’s levels, we realised that several key sequences needed extra resources to bring them to the finish line.
After carefully considering all of our options, we decided to extend our schedule, making sure that we get a few more polish passes before submitting our gold master (the final disc for manufacturing).”
This may seem like a bit of a blow for some gamers, but many series such as Assassin’s Creed and the Batman Arkham games have received flack in recent years for buggy or unpolished games. It’s perhaps for the best that Nathan Drake’s latest adventure is held in the wings for a little while. Naughty Dog certainly seem to think so, saying that delaying was “…the best course of action for the game.”
Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End will be released as a PlayStation 4 exclusive on April 26 2016.