"Uncharted 4: A Thief's End" spells the end of an era for the franchise. The fourth installment of the PlayStation platform is the last adventure for Nathan Drake.

In a report with Den of Geek, despite the game's huge popularity and fan following, Naughty Dog has remained firm in its stand that this will be the last installment in the gaming franchise. Robert Cogburn, the game's lead designer, explained why Naughty Dog is moving on from the popular gaming franchise. Cogburn explained that it had something to do with keeping Drake's exploits "grounded" and keeping the action as alive and fresh as possible.

"This is gonna be the fourth time we start answering stuff like, 'How do we make hand-grabs visible? What do we do to scale the combat experience? What are the interesting puzzles we can be introducing in the moment-to-moment as the player's experiencing this narrative?'" Cogburn said.

"That's not to say the questions will be the same in games we make going forward, but as a studio we grow tired of answering those same types of questions in the same fiction. It's gonna be fun for us to really embark on new ideas and start fleshing those out." he added.

"Uncharted 4" marks not only the final game that the studio plans to develop, but it also spells the end of the adventures of lead star, Nathan Drake. Gamespot reports that Cogburn said that gaming studio has "definitely had brainstorms" about another Uncharted game that would be set in space. However, he added that the concept of "Uncharted" happening in space would be unlikely to happen. 

"Uncharted" is a exclusive Sony franchise. Sales for the game have been massive, selling more than 21 million copies worldwide. There is even a movie in development. 

"The first three games were the set-up, and if we were to do one more, how would we top it all off? How would we bring Nathan Drake's journey to a close? Everything we're doing [with Uncharted 4] is constructed towards that: bringing closure to a very long journey," said co-director Neil Druckmann on the subject of bringing Drake's story to a close.

There was an "Uncharted 5" story in development, minus Drake, that was said to be in the works. However, without a possible replacement for Naughty Dog or without Drake in the lead role, this would seem highly unlikely, at least for now.  

"Uncharted 4" is set for release on PlayStation 4, this March 2016.