How Naughty Dog created the ending of Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End

Posted byby Dean Takahashi
May 25, 2016
Updated June 19, 2025
10 min

Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End is a momentous video game, not only for its beauty and gameplay but because it brings to an end a beloved series that started way back in 2007 on the PlayStation 3. Neil Druckmann and Bruce Straley, the co-directors of the game, said that one of the first decisions they made on the game was to decide that this Uncharted would be the final installment for Nathan Drake. That’s where the meaning of the subtitle, A Thief’s End, comes into play.

This interview has spoilers about many different scenes in Uncharted 4, including the ending –Ed.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.