Some sad news for fans of the Uncharted series and Naughty Dog, today, as Sony have confirmed that Amy Hennig has left the company.
Over the course of her 10 year career at the company, she was most famous for her work on Uncharted games, acting as Director and Writer on all three titles and helping to shape one of Sony’s key franchises of the last generation. She would also have held a similarly key role on the team for the next entry on the PS4.
Reporting the news a few hours ago, IGN received the following confirmation from Sony:
We can confirm that Amy Hennig has left Naughty Dog. Amy has made significant contributions to the game industry and we appreciate all she has done for Naughty Dog. The development timeline of Uncharted will not be impacted.
However, their sources for the original story also claimed she had been “forced out” (their quotes, not ours) by Neil Druckmann and Bruce Straley, who might now come to take control of the Uncharted project on PS4. If that’s the case, it puts the matter in a more unseemly light, and makes you wonder about the events that led up to it and the future of the project.
Regardless, we’d like to wish Amy well and thank her for bringing us some of the best games of the last decade.
Source: IGN, via HarmRehal
Scythegpd
That’s not good.
Then again Uncharted 3 wasn’t inspiring so it may turn out for the best.
Who knows, this could go either way. But for now I’ll file it under “disconcerting”
Nate
Shame to see her go, she has been one of my favourite writers since the excellent Soul Reaver. Hopefully she will return to that now!
Totally unrelated question, is there a forum game going on at the moment to draw little monsters for people’s gravitars? I’ve noticed a lot of people have very similar ones like Scythegpd above.
boeboe
You saved our lives we are eternally grateful!
Everyone without an avatar got randomly selected one.
KeRaSh
That is very unexpected…
Harm Rehal
I’ll try and keep this short and sweet. Being a hardcore Uncharted fan I’m absolutely gutted to read this.
It’s all fine and dandy for Sony to say “we appreciate all she has done for Naughty Dog” but do they realise the Uncharted franchise is their jewel in the crown. Yeah, sure, it’s all about teamwork but without a great script and leadership you have nothing, zero!
Insider sources’ say Hennig was forced out by Neil Druckmann and Bruce Straley, and that Uncharted 4 might now be under their control. If this is the case it’s sad she had to leave in this way but from an Uncharted perspective who better than Druckmann and Straley to take the reigns.
I wish Amy the best of luck.
SamBeThyName
Its really sad to see one of the few women in within the games industry with such a high ranking position being “pushed out”. Having said that, I’ve just replayed all the Uncharted games and TLoU and I think that a slightly darker tone to the next Uncharted would be a good thing. Drake kills an awful lot of people, it would be interesting if it felt like you HAD to kill enemies (like TLoU) rather than just mindlessness plowing through them (like Uncharted).
Kennykazey
I agree.
I wanr them to rethink enemy encounters, so we deal with fewer enemies, but with more ways to deal with them, rather than the usual ND formula:
“Hide behind wall, shoot wave after wave of baddies, move to different wall due to incoming grenade, repeat”.
The games usually have more interesting and well thought out encounters in the first half, but then they just rely on more enemies to increase difficulty later. This holds true for most action shooters to be fair.
RudeAwakening
To be fair, its an action/adventure game not a social commentary on killing people!
double-o-dave
Yeah, but Commando was an action/adventure film and you didn’t see him killing hundreds of… oh, hang on a minute.
SamBeThyName
TLoU was an action/adventure game too, it was just a bit more grown up.
Taylor Made
She should go work with kill zone & God of war, they need a good well written story especially killzone .
UC3 sucked
rama26285
You do realise she was responsible for UC3 right?
Taylor Made
Yeh I know. The story wasn’t bad in UC3 just the gameplay was just not up to scratch. She is a good script writer.
If I was Sony I would have moved her to another studio, you wouldn’t want her go go to the competition
Yorozuya
It would be a great loss if she went to Microsoft
gazzagb
I would be extremely surprised if she was forced out, even so, I think another studio is going to snap her up in a heartbeat.
Harm Rehal
Gazza, Uncharted was her baby so for someone else to interfere in her creation can be hard to deal with.
double-o-dave
Hang on a sec, so let’s get this straight… She gave birth to an Uncharted video game disc?
RudeAwakening
10 pounds of pure awesome!
double-o-dave
Maybe it’s for the best as Uncharted 3 began to get a bit boring and same ole, same ole etc. It would be nice for the fourth instalment to have a different tone and feel about it.
Kennykazey
I’m OK with this. The series could do with some change, TLoU proved others can do an excellent job as well, and she’s talented so she’ll find new work quickly.
boeboe
Sweet, winging my CV over now..
Harm Rehal
Good luck! :)
boeboe
Thanks Fonzie!