Everyone’s Begging for The Last of Us 3, But I Just Want Uncharted 5

I’m Happy for Intergalactic Fans, But This Isn’t the Naughty Dog I Want

Naughty Dog is finally waking up this generation. Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet is their big new sci-fi epic, Neil Druckmann is back in the director’s chair, everyone’s parsing motion-capture teases on Instagram, and the usual suspects are already whispering about The Last of Us Part 3 being in early development. On paper, this should be my moment as a PlayStation tragic. Instead, I’m sitting here thinking: can we please just get Uncharted 5 already?

Not a reboot, not a “spiritual successor,” not a mobile spin-off-an unapologetic, bombastic, pulpy follow-up to the saga of Nathan Drake and the thieves’ world he dragged us into. While people argue about whether Intergalactic will actually hit before 2027 or when TLOU3 might show up, I’m way more interested in whether Naughty Dog remembers how to have fun. Because that’s what Uncharted is for me: not prestige misery, not Oscar-bait storytelling, but pure, joyful chaos built on some of the best setpieces this medium has ever seen.

Intergalactic Looks Ambitious as Hell… and Weirdly Off-Brand for Why I Love Them

Let’s be clear: Intergalactic sounds huge. Sony’s been calling it Naughty Dog’s “most ambitious and costly” project. It’s a third-person sci-fi adventure about bounty hunter Jordan A. Mun on a alien world called Sempiria, with all the usual talk about deep narrative, moral choices, and combat freedom-people keep comparing it to some blend of The Last of Us intensity and Souls-like structure. That’s not small potatoes.

The problem is, we already know the cost. Bloomberg and others reported that Naughty Dog pushed something like seven weeks of mandatory overtime at the end of 2025 just to get an internal Intergalactic demo done before Christmas, despite all those previous “we’re done with crunch” promises. The game skipped The Game Awards 2025, and reporters like Jeff Grubb and Jason Schreier have both said the same thing: it’s delayed beyond 2026, and 2027 is the earliest realistic window. This isn’t some tight, focused project. It’s a giant, slippery beast that’s already bending the studio around it.

I’m not against new IPs-if anything, I want more of them. I’ll play Intergalactic the second it drops. But look at what Naughty Dog actually is when you strip the PR down: a studio that used to ship banger after banger on a set cadence, and now struggles to manage two projects at once without burning people out or canceling something along the way. When their lane was cinematic adventure with sharp pacing, we got Uncharted 2, 3, 4, The Lost Legacy. Since they pivoted into “we’re a prestige drama factory,” it’s been delays, cancellations, and a singleplayer output that feels like it’s moving through molasses.

Give Me Nathan Drake’s Stupid Jokes Over Another Trauma Epic

I still remember the first time Uncharted 2 clicked for me. Not the climbing, not the shooting—the moment on the derailed train hanging over the cliff. Drake mutters some sarcastic nonsense, hauls himself up, and suddenly I wasn’t just playing a level; I was in a perfectly directed action sequence that reacted to me. Explosions, collapsing carriages, Drake swearing under his breath while I scrambled for footholds. It wasn’t “realistic.” It was better than realistic. It felt like the feeling of a blockbuster distilled into interactable space.

That’s the version of Naughty Dog I fell in love with: the team that knows how to make me grin like an idiot while I’m hanging from a crumbling ledge in some impossible situation, laughing at Drake saying, “Oh no, no, no, no,” for the hundredth time. Uncharted 4’s Madagascar chase, the ship graveyard in Uncharted 3, the entire train level again in Uncharted 2—these moments live rent free in my brain. And they’re not powerful because they’re grim. They’re powerful because they’re playful, spectacular, and human.

I enjoy The Last of Us games. The first one is a classic, and Part II is one of the ballsiest swings in AAA game storytelling. But when I boot those up, I’m not looking to unwind. I’m mentally preparing for two hours of emotional sandpaper. Sometimes that’s exactly what I want. A lot of the time? I’d rather be chasing some cursed artifact with Nate, Elena, Chloe, and Sully, listening to them bicker while the world collapses around them in beautiful 4K HDR.

The Last of Us Fatigue Is Real, No Matter How Good It Is

This is the part where people usually accuse you of “hating” The Last of Us if you dare to say you don’t want Part 3 anytime soon. That’s nonsense. The games are technically incredible, the HBO show is one of the few game adaptations that doesn’t embarrass itself, and the performances are top tier. But between the TV series, the endless discourse around Part II, and the way Sony has leaned on that IP for prestige points, I’m burned out on that flavor of misery.

We know Part 3 is at least being kicked around. Naughty Dog itself nodded to it in their Grounded documentary back in 2024, framing it as an idea Druckmann already had a concept for. More recent chatter says it’s in some form of early development but absolutely not top of the priority list while Intergalactic dominates resources. And that’s where my frustration spikes: if time and human energy at Naughty Dog are finite—and they absolutely are—why is the default assumption that the “other slot” is just automatically The Last of Us again?

Between multiple remasters, the show, the scrapped multiplayer spin-off in 2023, and now whispers of a third game, it feels less like a story being told because it needs to be and more like an IP being mined because it’s safe. If I’m choosing what sits across from Intergalactic on the whiteboard, I don’t want another 30-hour march through despair. I want the thing that balances the portfolio: the breezy, swashbuckling, globe-trotting pulpy adventure that made half of us buy a PS3 in the first place.

Naughty Dog’s Track Record Says They Can’t Do Everything

One of the most annoying myths around studios like Naughty Dog is this idea that they can just spin up another team and everything’s fine. History says otherwise. Back in the PS3 era, they were already feeling the strain trying to juggle Uncharted and early work on what became The Last of Us. More recently, they poured years into that The Last of Us multiplayer project—only to kill it in 2023 after reportedly realizing it would need Destiny-level ongoing support. That’s a massive resource sink for zero payoff.

Now we’re in this PS5 generation where, for years, their big “new” things have been remasters or TV tie-ins while Intergalactic quietly ballooned. Officially, the studio has said it’s running two major projects under Druckmann’s leadership. Unofficially, you hear insiders describe a “flip-flop” around the secondary project and even a “frozen” game that was apparently paused so people could crunch on Intergalactic. Translation: they’re not some infinitely scalable content mill. When Intergalactic demands more bodies, everything else slows down or stops.

Now we’re in this PS5 generation where, for years, their big “new” things have been remasters or TV tie-ins while Intergalactic quietly ballooned. Officially, the studio has said it’s running two major projects under Druckmann’s leadership. Unofficially, you hear insiders describe a “flip-flop” around the secondary project and even a “frozen” game that was apparently paused so people could crunch on Intergalactic. Translation: they’re not some infinitely scalable content mill. When Intergalactic demands more bodies, everything else slows down or stops.

So this becomes a brutal math problem. If you can only really push one and a half games without melting your staff, what do you pick after the space opera? Another 10-year cycle of TLOU discourse? Or the series that could show off the PS5 (and whatever mid-gen refresh we’re on by then) with outrageous setpieces and smart, character-driven banter instead of another bleak apocalypse tour?

Uncharted 5 Is the Sequel That Actually Makes Sense After Intergalactic

The funny part is, Sony already knows the value of Uncharted. There’s a movie. There’s mainstream recognition. Even people who don’t play games know “that treasure-hunter guy” in the same breath as Tomb Raider. And Uncharted 4 did this clever trick of giving Nathan Drake a satisfying ending while very obviously leaving the door open via Cassie, his daughter, and a wider world of thieves who don’t necessarily have to be straight white dudes with a quip addiction.

Uncharted 5 doesn’t have to be “Nathan Drake: The Retirement Heist.” It could be Cassie’s story, mentored by an older Nate who pops in as the world’s most irresponsible dad. It could be Chloe and Nadine taking the lead again after The Lost Legacy, which already proved the franchise survives just fine without Nate in the driver’s seat. It could even be a new crew entirely, with Drake framed as a living legend whose adventures you’re constantly measuring yourself against. The foundation is flexible as hell.

More importantly, the tone is a feature, not a bug. After that said many years of Intergalactic’s philosophical sci-fi drama and whatever TLOU stuff HBO is doing by then (Season 3 is already circling early 2027), Sony is going to need a reminder that their studios can make games that feel like taking the handbrake off, not putting on a weighted blanket. Uncharted 5 would be the perfect “welcome back, remember fun?” counterweight to the heavy, prestige side of their catalogue.

And No, Jak & Daxter Isn’t Coming Back (And That’s Okay)

I see the nostalgia posts for Jak & Daxter. I get it. I played those games on PS2, I have a soft spot for them, and in a perfect world where Naughty Dog had endless time and money, I’d absolutely take some wild, modern take on that universe. But we don’t live in that world. We live in the one where every Naughty Dog project costs a fortune, takes most of a decade, and requires Sony to justify the budget to death.

Jak & Daxter is the definition of long-shot revival. It doesn’t have the mainstream recognition of Uncharted, it doesn’t carry the awards aura of The Last of Us, and tonally it sits in a kind of weird no man’s land for what Naughty Dog is now. This is a studio that has built its PS3-PS5-era identity on “playable HBO,” not mascot platformers. I’d love someone else at Sony—maybe a smaller, hungrier team—to take a crack at a Jak spiritual successor. But if we’re talking about Naughty Dog’s very limited bandwidth, spending it on Jak would honestly be malpractice.

That’s why, when people bring up the “old IPs they could revive,” I don’t waste breath on Jak & Daxter. The realistic fight isn’t Jak vs Uncharted vs The Last of Us. It’s Uncharted vs TLOU for the seat next to Intergalactic. And on that front, I’m unapologetically team “let the thief back in the building.”