Following a panel at EGX 2015, Naughty Dog Community Strategist Arne Meyer was asked by Power Up Gaming why Uncharted: Golden Abyss was left out of the upcoming Nathan Drake Collection, which includes Drake’s Fortune, Among Thieves and Drake’s Deception. Meyer revealed that the PlayStation Vita title was “definitely” under consideration for the collection, but it didn’t seem to fit into the narrative arc.

It was definitely under consideration, because we were trying to see how we could collect all of the Uncharted games. But when we went back and looked at what we were trying to do with the Nathan Drake Collection, we realised that those three games – the trilogy – actually provided a particular narrative arc that led into Uncharted 4. We wanted to keep that as a holistic collection for that reason, and Golden Abyss kind of lives a little bit outside of that.

Talking a bit about the removal of multiplayer from The Nathan Drake Collection, Meyer said that it was a “difficult decision” and that people are still playing Uncharted 2 & 3‘s multiplayer, which would have made its inclusion in the upcoming title challenging.

It was a really difficult decision for us, but it was one that we actually took early on, because we were thinking about both our player population – we still have players playing Uncharted 2 and Uncharted 3 multiplayer, and we still haven’t shut those servers down; we don’t have a plan to do that right now – and so, we were like, did we want to affect that player population, and splinter it even more so.

Meyer also said that Naughty Dog wants to focus on the series’ future and the inclusion of Uncharted 4‘s beta into the collection is thanks in part to the exclusion of Uncharted 2 and 3‘s multiplayer.

Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection is out on October 7. Our review will be published soon so stay tuned!

[Source: Power Up Gaming (1)(2)]