Uncharted 4: A Thief's End's fans may have been disappointed time and again when developer Naughty Dog kept pushing back the Sony exclusive game's release.
Now, Naughty Dog's creative director and the game's programmer Neil Druckmann has finally broken his silence on the delay. He revealed in an interview with the Original PlayStation Magazine (OPM) that Uncharted 4: A Thief's End's release has been delayed owing to tweaks being made to the video game's ending.
This is the first time Druckmann has shed light on the game's delay. So far, only the official statement from the developer was released.
For the unfamiliar, Uncharted 4: A Thief's End was originally poised for a 2015 release. However, in March this year Naughty Dog announced that the release was being postponed to spring 2016. The developer, however, did not give a specific release date.
It was only last August when we reported, that Naughty Dog spilled the beans on the game's exact release date - March 18, 2016.
Now, the programmer has opened up in an interview with OPM and has given an insight on why he decided to delay the game's release by a year.
"Much of the development and figuring things out happens as we go. There were certain sequences where we were like 'Okay, this is a pretty ambitious sequence, we will probably have to cut this..." he reveals in the interview.
The process of making the game perfect and align with their vision was time-consuming, and the stupendous ending required "quite a bit of work." While he did not spill the details, he let on that if they had stuck to the original deadline, then the scope of the ending - the ambitious vision - would have had to be compromised.
The series' finale he feels carries the weight of big moments which the fans are expecting. The games loyalists would undoubtedly want Uncharted 4: A Thief's End to end with a bang. To keep adrift with the expectations and not disappoint eager fans, it was necessary for the Naughty Dog team to put in more work and tweaks, which shifted the deadline of the game's release.
While the delay may have disappointed fans, an ending which would not be a fitting goodbye to the series would have disenchanted loyalists further.
"We were weighing those choices between fans and their expectations," explained Druckmann.
