Former Naughty Dog artist confirmed that Sam was the villain in Amy Hennig's version of Uncharted 4 – the game's first demo ran on PC at 1 FPS

It has been more than 10 years since the release of Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, but fans of the series are still trying to piece together what the game might have looked like under original game director Amy Hennig. New details about the canceled version come from former Naughty Dog visual effects artist Matt Radford, who joined the studio right around the time of the troubled and reportedly difficult development under Hennig.

In an interview with Kiwi Talkz, Radford said the version of the game he saw under Hennig differed dramatically from the final product shipped in 2016 under Neil Druckmann.

Amy's vision for the game that I saw didn't have the same characters.

According to him, Nathan Drake's older brother, Sam, wasn't meant to be an ally in the original concept – he was supposed to be the villain.

This isn't the first time this has come up. Hennig herself confirmed back in 2019 that Sam had an antagonistic element, noting it was far more pronounced in her version of the script. According to her, the character was meant to be a "ghost from Drake's past," with the story arc built around the brothers slowly reconciling.

The DNA and the core story were all there. The major differences had to do with like, I was introducing the idea of Sam as the brother. But my take on it was sort of different, that it was a little bit more – I mean I wouldn't call him the antagonist in the classic sense, but it was an antagonistic force in Drake's life that he then had to reconcile.

Radford also shared memories from the earliest stages of Uncharted 4 development, which kicked off around the time Uncharted 3 launched in 2011. He said the team put together a greenlight demo to pitch the concept, and it ran at around one frame per second on PC – that's how rough the technical prototype was at the time.

I remember we built this green light demo for Uncharted 4 and it ran at like one FPS on like a PC. It was just like crazy scrappy back then. And Amy's vision seemed cool. Like, to be honest, it seemed cool.

Despite his fondness for the canceled version, Radford still considers the final release under Druckmann a strong game, one that wrapped up Drake's adventures in solid fashion. Still, he thinks Amy Hennig version of Uncharted 4 may never get the recognition within the community that it – and she – deserve.