Uncharted 4 delayed until April

Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End has been delayed until April 2016, Naughty Dog officials revealed today.

The highly anticipated fourth and final instalment in the action-adventure series was originally scheduled to be released on March 18th.

It will now hit stores on April 27th in order to enable developers Naughty Dog more time for the game to meet their “standards and vision”.

“This is our largest Uncharted, and the team has been working incredibly hard to meet the challenge of closing out the game’s development in a timely manner,” said project leaders Neil Druckmann and Bruce Straley in a joint statement.

“However, as we started to approach our final deadlines and started wrapping up the game’s levels, we realised that several key sequences needed extra resources to bring them to the finish line.

“After carefully considering all of our options, we decided to extend our schedule, making sure that we get a few more polish passes before submitting our gold master (the final disc for manufacturing).

“Pushing the date is not an easy choice, and we wouldn’t do it if we didn’t feel in our hearts it’s the best course of action for the game. To you, our loyal fans, we hope you’ll accept our sincere apology. We know many of you have been waiting patiently for Nathan Drake’s final chapter, and now we humbly ask you to wait a bit longer.”

Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End begins three years following the end of the events of Uncharted 3, which Drake has settled down with his new wife Elena. But his life is thrown into chaos his elder brother assumed dead, Sam, returns.

Sam tells Drake that they must find a legendary pirate artefact as his life hangs in the balance. The two then journey to Libertaria, a pirate colony in Madagascar, in search of the artefact but come across two other rivals, Rafe and Nadine, also trying to find the artefact.

First revealed in November 2013, the title was officially announced back in June 2014 during Sony’s E3 conference.

The Last of Us writer and director, Neil Druckmann and Bruce Straley, are currently leading the project following numerous staff changes at Naughty Dog.

Previously, Naughty Dog also released a 15 minute gameplay video.