For years, Amy Hennig’s abandoned version of Uncharted 4 has been one of gaming’s most enduring mysteries.

We know the broad strokes. Hennig departed Naughty Dog in 2014, Neil Druckmann and Bruce Straley took over the project, and the game eventually emerged in 2016 as Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End. Since then, fans have endlessly debated what was lost, who was responsible, and whether Hennig’s vision might have been better than the game we ultimately received.

Now, thanks to years of investigation by researcher Michael Kemp, we may finally have the clearest picture yet of what that original version of Uncharted 4 actually looked like. Watch his video above for a much deeper and absurdly fascinating deep-dive into what Uncharted 4 could have been. I’m just going to provide a snippet of what Kemp discusses in his video and on the podcast.

Kemp recently published a lengthy breakdown of his findings before appearing on Sacred Symbols: A PlayStation Podcast with Colin Moriarty to discuss his work. Moriarty also knows quite a lot about what occurred behind the scenes, so the duo raise some interesting points. Unfortunately, the episode is behind a Patreon paywall, so if you want to check it out, you’ll need to consider subscribing.

Rather than relying on rumours or second-hand stories, Kemp spent years combing through leftover game files, scripting references, cut audio, leaked portfolio pieces and concept art. The result is impressive work.

“I began finding pieces of Uncharted 4 that didn’t seem to be related to anything I recognized. References to levels that didn’t exist, things in the story that didn’t happen,” Kemp explained.

The result, he argues, is “the most definitive breakdown” yet of the version of Uncharted 4 that Naughty Dog was developing between 2011 and 2014.

And if his reconstruction is accurate, the game was once a very different beast.

According to both Kemp’s investigation and comments previously made by Hennig herself, the original vision placed a much greater emphasis on mystery and detective work.

“Just like in Uncharted 1, it was meant to be a little bit of a return to form,” Hennig explained. “This idea that a lot of the story would be taking place on this undiscovered or forgotten pirate utopia island and the detective story that we could weave through that.”

Note: a lot of Amy Hennig’s quotes stem from a 2019 interview with USGamer. However, that original interview is no longer available, so I’ve linked 2nd party sites that covered the story at the time so you can read the full quotes etc.

One of the biggest differences appears to have been a series of playable flashbacks set in 1695. Kemp’s findings suggest players would have taken control of pirate Henry Avery during major historical sequences, including a battle aboard Avery’s ship during the attack on the Gunsway.

These weren’t simple cutscenes, either. According to Kemp, Naughty Dog had built Avery’s vessel as a fully explorable environment complete with rigging traversal and destructible elements.

“They built Henry Avery’s ship as a full play space so the player could maneuver around it freely,” he explained. “This would be necessary as it had also been built to be destructible, gradually having pieces of it blown away in the battle.”

Interestingly, Hennig herself previously admitted the idea may have been a victim of its own ambition.

“I was hoping to do pirate flashbacks,” she said. “I loved the idea of actually flashing back to Henry Avery, but it was kind of a crazy idea because asset-wise and everything, suddenly you have to make Black Flag as well as Uncharted 4.”

That quote may ultimately explain much of what happened next.

Kemp’s reconstruction suggests the original game featured a surprising number of mechanics and ideas that never survived into the final release. Among them were a visible three-piece health bar, stamina-based climbing, expanded sword combat, interrogation systems, enemy disarming mechanics, non-lethal takedowns and consumable traversal equipment.

Some levels appear to have pushed even further away from traditional Uncharted territory. A much larger gala mission reportedly featured Nate, Elena, Sully and Charlie Cutter infiltrating a London event using disguises, stealth and even a dancing mini-game. Elsewhere, a Madagascar chapter allegedly saw Nathan Drake stranded alone on an island where he scavenged resources, weathered storms and built a raft to escape.

The heavier emphasis on exploration and not shooting everything that moves might also have been a reaction to years of fans joking about Nathan Drake’s absurd body count. And no, I’m not talking about the bloke’s success rate with women. At the time of the game’s release, there was a lot of talk about “narrative dissonance”, which in this context amounted to people finding the contrast between Drake’s rogueish charm and the sheer number of people he had killed a bit weird.

For many fans, though, the most surprising part of Kemp’s investigation may not be what was cut, but why it was cut.

For years, discussion surrounding Hennig’s departure has often been reduced to a simple narrative that Neill Druckmann and Straley arrived, took over the project and discarded everything that came before. During Sacred Symbols, however, both Kemp and Moriarty argued that the reality appears to have been considerably more complicated.

“There are conflicting perspectives on what happened next,” Moriarty noted. According to the veteran games journalist, the project appears to have been struggling long before the leadership change.

“It was in a bad state in regards to the lines of communication, the pipeline, what people were doing, and it didn’t feel like it was making the positive forward progress it needed,” he said.

Kemp’s findings seem to support that possibility. Large portions of the game appear to have required bespoke assets, unique mechanics and extensive development resources. Historical pirate flashbacks, survival gameplay systems, expanded melee combat and larger sandbox-style levels may simply have become too expensive and difficult to bring together into a cohesive whole.

As a Scottish lad, it’s also a shame we apparently lost a larger Scotland chapter, complete with puzzles, cathedrals and a collapsing crane set-piece. Then again, as tough as Nathan Drake is, I’m not convinced he’d have survived his first proper Scottish night out. We go hard here in bonny Scotland, because if we didn’t, the depression from all the bloody rain would drive us to suicide.

Importantly, neither Kemp nor Hennig herself believes the final game completely discarded the original work. In fact, Hennig has repeatedly pushed back against that interpretation.

“I don’t want people to think that it’s like, wow, they throw away everything and start over,” she explained. “No, no, no. It’s like tons of foundational work.”

She was even more direct elsewhere over the years.

“The bulk of my work is still in that game. I worked on it for two years.”

Hennig has also confirmed that while major elements changed, much of the overall structure remained intact.

“We didn’t have the flashbacks to his childhood, we didn’t have the Nadine character,” she explained. “But everything else, the locations, the order of them kind of overall, what’s happening, is all the work that I did.”

In other words, Uncharted 4 may not be the story of one game replacing another. It may instead be the story of a single project evolving dramatically as development realities collided with creative ambition.

More than a decade later, it remains one of gaming’s most fascinating what-if stories. But thanks to Kemp’s investigation, it may no longer be quite as mysterious as it once was.