(Via IGN.com) Despite releasing Nathan Drake’s last game, Naughty Dog seems keen to keep the world of Uncharted alive.

Speaking to Eurogamer, Uncharted: The Lost Legacy creative director and writer Shaun Escayg said that “to say the Uncharted world is done… I doubt that highly.”

The upcoming Lost Legacy is a standalone game featuring returning side characters from the series (and, pointedly, definitely not featuring Nathan Drake in any capacity). Escayg seems to see that approach as a useful one for the future of the series:

“I wouldn’t say it’s the end. This thieving world is huge. There’s so many characters. Even before we settled on [Lost Legacy’s] story we were exploring Sullivan, we were exploring Cutter, and pairing each other up, thinking what would be right, what would have conflict, growth, something new, something fresh. And Chloe was the one that kept jumping out.”

Another possible direction for the series is hinted at by Uncharted 4’s epilogue chapter – although we won’t spoil that for you here, just in case.

We’ll see how a standalone approach works when The Lost Legacy arrives on August 22. It impressed us at E3, but there’s a lot more to see, given it could be 10 hours long.