Uncharted Designer Benson Russell Doesn't Want a Remake — and Says It 'Doesn't Make Any Sense'

A designer who helped build the Uncharted series says he has no interest in seeing the original game remade or remastered.

Benson Russell, who worked at Naughty Dog as a game designer on Uncharted 1 through 3 and on The Last of Us, made the remarks in an interview with FRVR, the games platform company. His comments were reported by VGC on 13 August 2026. VGC

Russell's argument is straightforward. The first Uncharted, released in 2007, is "still in the zeitgeist" and already playable on modern consoles, so remastering it "doesn't make any sense." The original trilogy was already remastered once — Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection arrived on PS4 in 2015 and remains available on the PlayStation Store. A later pair, Uncharted 4 (2016) and the standalone expansion Uncharted: The Lost Legacy (2017), were remastered in 2022 as the Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection.

Russell drew a contrast with System Shock, the 1994 sci-fi horror game that received a full remake in 2023. That remake "makes a lot of sense," he said, because the original game suffered from poor key bindings and accessibility issues that made it difficult for modern players to pick up. Uncharted, in his view, does not have that problem.

A full remake of the first Uncharted would also carry creative costs. Russell said remaking it would require rewriting the story, which would change its spirit, its scenes, and the key set pieces — the scripted, cinematic action sequences the series is known for. Once you start rewriting, the thing that made the game what it was starts to slip away.

He extended the same logic to The Last of Us Part 1, Naughty Dog's 2022 remake of its own 2013 game. Such titles are "old games for a reason," Russell said.

Rather than revisit old ground, Russell said he would prefer to see Naughty Dog "take the spirit" of the Uncharted series and build something new — perhaps a game set in an earlier historical era, exploring the same spirit of adventure in a different time.

For fans of the series, the last full Uncharted game remains A Thief's End, released in 2016. Naughty Dog has not announced a new entry. Russell left the studio years ago, so his word is not a company decision — it is the perspective of someone who was in the room when those games were made, and who thinks some things are better left where they are.