Naughty Dog threw away 8 months' worth of work on Uncharted 4: A Thief's End after creative director Amy Hennig left the company, Nolan North has revealed.
North, who plays lead character Nathan Drake, discussed the changes made to the game during a panel at Metrocon, where he explained that Hennig's work was scrapped after Neil Druckmann and Bruce Straley were brought in to take over development.
"I can't really say too much about that, but I will," he said. "We had shot 8 months of her story and it was all thrown away. The Last of Us guys came in and you have to understand, new producers, new people, they want to do it. I don't know what happened exactly. Amy is still a very, very dear friend of mine and she's brilliant, but The Last of Us guys were the next team there, so they took over and just wanted their own flavor.
"They got rid of some of the other people that were involved and just redid their thing. Great move they made with Troy Baker playing my brother. And they knew that was going to work because Troy and I are friends, and he had done Joel and they knew he and I had a good rapport."
The game's tone, however, "is going to be slightly different" to those of previous Uncharted titles, North says.
"It had to be. You can't have... A Robert Ludlum novel is not going to be the same as Stephen King. They're different styles. But it's true to the story."
"It's going to be along the lines of the same story," he continued. "I don't know how it'll affect the whole thing and to be honest with you I'm just as curious as everyone to see what the final product will look like. I do know there's trust with the Naughty Dog designers and programmers and that place is still top notch, and from the things I've seen and the sound and all the stuff that they've done, it's amazing."
Amy Hennig left Naughty Dog in early 2014, although reasons for her departure have yet to be made clear. She later joined EA to work on a new Star Wars project in production at Dead Space developer Visceral Games.