It's the biggest PlayStation brand there is - nearly 30 million copies of the games have shipped to date. Sony's faith in the franchise is underlined by the unprecedented marketing spend on Uncharted. There's supposedly a movie in development. Nathan Drake voice actor Nolan North has said he'd gladly continue as the character, if Sony decided to go forward with further instalments.
Can this really be the end in an industry where money talks, and sure things are hard to come by?
Read on for my spoiler-filled trousers (assessment).
If you've not completed Uncharted 4, you might want to stop reading now, because I'm going to talk about the ending.
Still here?
You sure?
Really? Really-really? So be it.
Everything pointed to Uncharted 4 not only being the end of the series, but the end of Nathan Drake. Going in, I - like many others - assumed it'd climax with no less an event than the death of Drake himself. Maybe he'd sacrifice himself for his brother, or his friends, or maybe his brother or Sully would die, and he'd become too grief-stricken to continue with his dangerously addictive lifestyle. Perhaps he'd choke to death on an egg, or a handful of pen lids. Frankly, it was all up for grabs.
Naughty Dog did nothing so obvious, however. In keeping with the tone of the series, the ending was upbeat, full of character, and - most surprisingly - open-ended. None of the main characters kicks the bucket. In fact, we have a proper happy ending for all of them. Even Sully, who surely should be coughing up his lungs by now.
For the epilogue, we jump forward more than a decade, where we find an older Drake and Elena handing their adventuring crown to their teenage daughter. Even before that happens, we see young Cassie Drake looking at newspaper and magazine cuttings that reveal all the adventures her parents have had since the end of Uncharted 4.
And even before we get to that, we find Drake's brother Sam heading off on an adventure with Sully - the two of them puffing away into the sunset.
Suffice to say, if Sony did want to continue the series - and given the sales of Uncharted 4 thus far, they must at least be having those conversations - Naughty Dog was generous with the options they've given them. Untold tales of Nathan and Elena. The adventures of Sam and Sully, or Cassie Drake. Even older Nathan could be lured back into the field.
It becomes not a question of whether Uncharted could continue... but whether it should continue without Naughty Dog.
As I've stated time and again, nobody does story like Naughty Dog.
The closest we get to it is - ironically, given Uncharted's original inspiration - the new Tomb Raider games. However, even those don't manage what Uncharted achieves.
They pay lip service to the genre... but they seem so self-conscious, so po-faced and self-important. By keeping the characters in Uncharted likeable, distinctive, full of character and humour, you somehow forgive them for their video game actions. The ludicrous gymnastics, the mass-slaughter, the ability to shrug off an exploding grenade.
When the same happens to Lara Croft, the story's attempts to have weight, to make Lara feel real and grounded, pull against it. There's a queasy disconnect with the things Lara has to do - because, y'know, it's a video game - and the story it wants to tell. It's all so achingly self-important.
But at least Tomb Raider tries. Most other games either don't bother, or don't understand. They're all exposition. Uncharted does exposition too, but does it mostly through action and character. Or hides it by being funny or self-depreciating. Or tells its story through the lush locations. Or with narrative tricks that no other video game series has ever attempted before. A late-in-the-game flashback to young Nathan and Sam is a first, as far as I know, in how it picks up on strands from earlier in the story.
We also learn that an earlier playable flashback was, in fact, a lie by Sam to recruit his brother on their latest adventure. It's so Rudyard Kipling (ruddy clever).
And that's the Naughty Dog technique. If the company really has finished with Nathan Drake, I honestly don't think there's anybody else out there who could take it on, who has the chops to do what they have done so brilliantly.
What worries me is that I don't think Uncharted has finished. It's too powerful a brand.
Maybe we won't get another sequel right away, but we'll get some continuation, eventually. Clearly, Naughty Dog wanted to leave the door - or doors - open for its return.
Whether that came from Sony's insistance, or its own fear of letting go, is anyone's guess.
Yet, by the time Uncharted 4 was finished, I was satisfied. The series has done such a good job of investing the player in Nathan Drake - and throughout Uncharted 4, it doesn't exactly shy away from knowingly pointing to the ludicrous scale of his adventures - that I thought to take him further would weaken him, undermine him as a character.
Yet in the time since, it has niggled away at me. I don't want it to end. I want to keep adventuring with Nathan, Elena, Sam, and Sully... I want another Uncharted. And that worries me too, because if I feel that way then other people will as well... and if other people feel it, then sooner or later Sony is going to bow to that pressure.
And when they do that, they're potentially going to hand the keys to one of the best game franchises of all time, to some company that doesn't get what makes it so beloved, or is less invested in telling a good story. It risks being a Jurassic Park III, or a Terminator: Genisys.
And when I think of it like that, however much I might want more Uncharted, I think it's best if this is the end. Let these characters grow old in happiness. They've earned it.