As part of an interview video posted by PlayStation, Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckmann and Bruce Straley discussed the developer’s big upcoming projects: The Last of Us Remastered and Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End.
After talking about how they constrained themselves when it came to design aspects of The Last of Us, Bruce joked that coming back to Uncharted was “cool” because “I can like, jump!” Druckmann then added how going from Uncharted 2’s big set pieces to The Last of Us’ more intimate design was a concern, but with Uncharted 4, “We can go epic again. We can go big. But we’re really challenging ourselves, like again, how do we mirror the character arc?”
Straley then continued Druckmann’s thought by saying, “So we’re taking what we’ve learned from Uncharted 2, evolved it to The Last of Us, and bringing it back. But we’re still keeping that pace and that roller coaster. But at the same time, it has to be driven by what’s happening with the characters at that moment.”
Their next topic was how they were constrained by the PS3 on The Last of Us, but with the PlayStation 4, “it’s allowing us to push so much more density,” allowing them to easily put things they wanted in Uncharted 1 into Uncharted 4.
Druckmann gave an example of how the PS4 will improve the subtleties in Uncharted 4, highlighting the fact that, in the trailer, “when he raises his eyebrows, the color of his skin changes as the blood flows away from the compression. And all those things just let a realistic character become much more grounded, much more believable.”
Bruce touched upon gameplay:
Gameplay-wise we’re just going deeper and richer with all the mechanics. It’s still going to be a roller-coaster ride, it’s still going to have that pacing, we still want you on the edge of your seat. But at the same time, we want to make sure that you as players – I as a player – want to play this thing and feel invested. We want to make sure we have that with the epic, with the pacing, with the characters that we’re known for.
After Druckmann mentioned that they’re looking at how to expand Nate’s core move-set in Uncharted 4 – giving us more ways to approach traversal, exploration, and combat – he said:
Ultimately I think it will come down to how good is the gameplay, how good is the story, because without that, you can have all the graphical bells and whistles and it doesn’t matter. But, if you have that really strong foundation, those things can really help to take you over the top and really get immersed in this journey
If you happened to miss it in the Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End trailer, Nathan Drake was wearing a wedding band. On the PS Blog, Naughty Dog’s Eric Monacelli confirmed that Nate and Elena are married, which is something that was “implied in [Uncharted 3].”
Also, have no fear as Nolan North will be the voice of Nathan Drake once again.
