In other obvious Naughty Dog news, it seems like the team is back in the Uncharted saddle. Alex Co at MP1st has the report, which VGC claims to "partially" corroborate.1 Here is Co:

"According to sources familiar with the situation, Naughty Dog is working on a new Uncharted game...Also of note, this is an all-new Uncharted game, and not a remake of any kind...Directing this new Uncharted project is Shaun Escayg..."

Apologies for all the ellipses, but I am skipping some Uncharted 4: A Thief's End spoilers, as well as obvious, unnecessary SEO fluff.

The most obvious bit is that Shaun Escayg is directing the game. I can't believe I forgot to write about this when my friend Logan shared with me a few months ago, but Escayg posted on Instagram a very Uncharted-coded image from Fort George in Trinidad & Tobago with the caption "Research..." It is so obvious that Escayg and a team are at work on an Uncharted title. Here's the image itself, so you don't have to log into Instagram just to see it.

260216_Shaun Escayg_Uncharted_Research

Escayg was the co-director of Uncharted: The Lost Legacy and the Creative Director of The Last of Us Part I. He was a Lead Cinematic Animator on all of Naughty Dog's games from the original release of The Last of Us in 2013 until those director roles. He knows his Uncharted.

"In addition to that, we were told that this new Uncharted project is the next game Naughty Dog will work on and release after Intergalactic, with The Last of Us Part III as the next project after that."

This timeline makes sense to me. Neil Druckmann just announced that a couple of The Last of Us projects were in "very early stages." With Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet being teed up for a 2027 release, you have to imagine (i.e. hope) that the studio would put something out before another seven-year-gap.

What strikes me is that this could very well finally be Naughty Dog living out their two team dream. This all started after the release of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves when the studio split to make Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception and The Last of Us. The plan was to keep the split, but Uncharted 4 became a whole situation that resulted in the teams converging. They split up again for The Lost Legacy, but the tight turnaround essentially meant everyone hopped on board to finish out that game before moving to full-blown production on The Last of Us Part II. During that development, the multiplayer component of Part II was spun out into The Last of Us Online and became its own team. We know how that project panned out, unfortunately.

When Intergalactic was revealed in 2024, The New York Times reported that "more than 250 Naughty Dog employees" had worked on Intergalactic since the release of Part II in 2020. The speculated headcount in Santa Monica is 400~ in-Kennel dogs. Now, that 250 number from The New York Times does not indicate that it was 250 from the get-go, but just the headcount over the course of the new IP's inception. In fact, reporting from Jason Schreier seems to indicate that the team had fallen back into their "all hands on deck" routine with TLOUO. Here's a quote from Schreier in his video PlayStation's Live-Service Initiative Could Not Have Gone Worse:

"So, Last of Us Online, that game was canceled. A lot of people at Naughty Dog were working on that game. I think there's a belief out there that it was just kind of a side project while most people were working on Intergalactic. No, the opposite is true. Intergalactic did not have the majority of staff until after Last of Us Online was canceled, and then most people in the studio came over to work on Intergalactic, but many people in the studio, I would say the majority of the studio was working on either Last of Us Online or the remasters, the remakes that they were doing throughout the 2020s, which is why we haven't seen a brand new game from them since 2020."

There were layoffs in QA and art close to the official cancelation, but reports indicated that this was mostly, if not all, contractors. With so much staff, you have to wonder what everyone was working on and if this was the right time to try a proper two team approach once again.

I do suspect that since the outset of 2024, the bulk of the studio has been working on Intergalactic, but I can picture a world where a new Uncharted game gets spun up from pre-production and starts ballooning. Thinking about the rumored release order, this could be a healthy cycle for the team and Druckmann's directorial roles. We may (hopefully) get Intergalactic next year, then an Uncharted title three years later in 2030 and then one of the two TLOU projects in 2033~ when I am almost forty years old. This type of cycle also gives a possible Intergalactic sequel a chance to percolate.

Schedules and ambitions change though. Druckmann talked about this very prospect in an interview with Variety in September 2025.

"I’m sure if Intergalactic is successful, you will see it again. Whether that will be our next game right after that, I can’t say, and I leave that door open. Not to be coy for this particular question, we want to see how we feel once we’re done with it and look at the options in front of us, because we have some other ideas that we’d like to explore as well."

Given the early stages of those TLOU ideas, I think it'd be safe to bet on the return of Uncharted being the next game out of Naughty Dog post-Intergalactic. I also think a 10+ year gap between Part II and Part III is a proper amount of breathing room. This potential lineup is encouraging to me. It has been discouraging to witness the lack of new releases from my favorite studio the longer the generation goes on. There was a major opportunity cost with The Last of Us Online that Naughty Dog is going to be paying off for years to come. I suspect these games will pay it off in spades when all is said and done.

Footnotes

  1. Second time that I have cited Co and MP1st for PlayStation rumors recently. Seems like we may have a new PlayStation reporter if these pan out. At least, new to me. ↩