If we’d have to guess, there’s a very high chance that we’ll be hearing – and hopefully seeing – more of Uncharted for PlayStation 4 at E3 2014, most likely during PlayStation’s press conference on the night of June 9th.
Before all the craziness of E3 week starts though, Naughty Dog Co-Presidents Evan Wells and Christophe Balestra were interviewed by Game Informer, where Balestra dropped a tease that there’s “so much happening that we’ll probably be showing soon. That’s really exciting, just to see the new things that we can do now [with PS4]. [It’s what] we wanted to do in the last three or four years of the PlayStation 3, but we couldn’t because we never had the power to do it.”
Uncharted for PS4 was then brought up in the interview, with Wells revealing that this will be a stand-alone adventure:
We sure hope you’re surprised by how amazing it looks! It’s going to be an exciting story, and I think people are going to really buy into this one in a way that I think is consistent with the rest of the stories. It’s a stand-alone adventure like all of them are; we don’t expect people to have played the past games to enjoy the current one. But you’re going to get to experience Drake and his crew in a new way.
Looking at previous Uncharted games from Naughty Dog, it’s clear there’s been an evolution in storytelling, and as Wells puts it, Uncharted for PS4 will keep that going:
If you go from Uncharted 1 to 2 to 3, you can see there’s definitely an evolution in the storytelling techniques and the gravity of the situations and the relationships that Drake’s put in. The next Uncharted will continue that evolution. I don’t know if you’re digging at the theory that’s out there that it’s somehow going to be this departure or that The Last of Us is indicative of the future of Naughty Dog projects. It’s not going to be that sharp of a turn. I think it’s an evolution that people will be comfortable with if they’ve played the previous Uncharted games.
Finally, Wells addressed the fact that Naughty Dog is continuing a franchise from one console generation to another (which is against their norm), and explained why Uncharted was the first franchise to get this treatment:
We looked back at some of the struggles we had going from PS2 to PS3 – there’s a couple things in play here. One, there was still a passion to do more Uncharted. That’s the number one thing that drives of all our decisions. If there’s some gameplay or story to tell that the team is still interested in working on, then we’ll do it. If there’s excitement to try something new, then that’s when we’ll try something new. So that was the main reason. The secondary benefit is that, for the very first game we ship on new hardware, we don’t also have to go through all the growing pains of developing a new IP and all those challenges. So that was the added benefit.
How much Uncharted PS4 info do you think we’ll get at E3? Full title, release window, and gameplay video? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
