Naughty Dog explains why Uncharted: The Lost Legacy is a standalone expansion

When Naughty Dog revealed Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, they told us that it would be Nathan Drake's last adventure. A lot of people doubted that as it's PlayStation's biggest character, but it truly looks like they're leaving him behind.

Naughty Dog promised a piece of DLC but of course, they didn't want it to follow Nathan Drake. After shuffling through dozens of ideas, Naughty Dog settled on returning to the character of Chloe. The studio wanted to go and make something within the Uncharted universe but have it feel like its own thing.

"We had the unique opportunity to do something that was truly stand-alone, unlike Left Behind which was like the missing chunk of the story in The Last of Us," writer Josh Scherr says. "This is something we can do completely independently while still in the same universe with the same characters, and exploring new relationships with them."

The popular studio then realized that the DLC was big enough to be sold on its own, so anyone can enjoy The Lost Legacy even if they don't own Uncharted 4!

"We tried to keep it small," game director Kurt Margenau says. "As we started coming up with story ideas, it just became clear that with new characters and in this genre of Uncharted, it has to be big. With the gameplay stuff we wanted to explore, it felt like it needed more room to breathe."

[Game Informer]