Benson Russell, designer for two of the original Uncharted games and a current developer at Naughty Dog, explained why he’s hesitant to welcome a potential remake of Drake’s Fortune.
Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune released in 2007 on the PlayStation 3. It’s the first game in the original Uncharted trilogy and a title that studios still take inspiration from to this day, even two decades later.
Over the last two years, rumors have surfaced claiming that Naughty Dog is considering a remake of the iconic game. While this was mere speculation, players finally got to hear straight from the horse’s mouth in August 2026 when Benson Russell, designer for Drake’s Fortune and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, spoke out about the subject in a conversation with FRVR.
For Russell, remakes don’t make sense if the original games are still part of the cultural zeitgeist, making the idea of a Drake’s Fortune remake something of an uncessary task in his view.
“Uncharted as a thing is still in the zeitgeist,” he told the outlet. “System Shock… a remake of that now makes a lot of sense, because not just can you play it, but it had horrible key bindings, it kept a lot of people out of it from wanting to play it. There’s already a version [of Drake’s Fortune] you can play on modern consoles [to] get the experience. What’s the point of remastering [or remaking] it?”
“I just don’t see the point of remaking [it],” he continued. “You’d have to rewrite the whole story to make it better, which means you’re going to change the spirit and you’re going to change the scenes and what the first one was about, right? You’re going to have to add all these scenes or take things away and a lot of the key set pieces — are you going to keep those? Are you going to have to redo them because they don’t fit your story? It doesn’t make any sense [to remake it]. I honestly thought the same thing about The Last of Us Part 1… these are old games for a reason.”
Russell finished his spiel by saying a remake of Drake’s Fortune would feel “more like a cash grab than it would feel like anything necessary at this point,” saying, “Just don’t recreate the first game. It’s just, eh.”
While it’s currently unclear if Naughty Dog truly has any plans to work on a remake of Drake’s Fortune, it seems like all hands are on deck for the studio’s next title, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, which saw boss Neil Druckmann step away from his involvement in HBO’s The Last of Us series to better focus on. However, rumors of a Last of Us 3 game are also swirling around in the ether after Druckmann made a few comments online that hinted at another potential entry in the critically-acclaimed series.
Virginia (she/her) is IGN’s News Editor. With ten years of experience reporting on games and entertainment, she’s got a storied background in the fighting game community, influencer news, and viral online trends. Find her on Twitter at @TheeMissGlaze.
