Uncharted 1’s Control System Was Overhauled Six Months Before Release, Recalls Former Dev

If you’ve played Papers, Please or have heard about Return of the Obra Dinn, then you probably know who Lucas Pope is. However, what you may not know is that Pope once served as a tools programmer at Naughty Dog, and worked on Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves.

In an interesting new interview with Ars Technica, Pope reflected upon his successful career in video game development, and reminisced about the time he joined Naughty Dog.

Pope revealed that when he first saw what Uncharted looked like, he thought that it was “f****** awesome.” “That’s like Indiana Jones, exactly what I want to work on,” he recalled thinking.

Luck was on Pope’s side. Naughty Dog was looking for a tools programmer, and he stepped in to “save the day,” according to former studio president, Christophe Balestra.

“It’s crazy to think: when I got the job there, there was no full-time GUI tools guy at all,” said Pope. “Just command-line, back-end tools people.”

Pope revealed that Uncharted went through a significant overhaul just six months prior to the game’s release – all while staying true to its original vision.

“One of the cool things about Uncharted 1 is, we had no f****** idea what we were doing,” Pope said while adding that the game’s design team was very talented. Naughty Dog ended up taking some notes from Gears of War and improved the game’s controls, camera perspective, and movements.

Uncharted‘s camera and control system originally resembled Tomb Raider‘s. “Suddenly, Gears came out and showed them how to do it,” Pope continued.

When quizzed about cut content, Pope didn’t go into any details but did say that not all content created during a game’s development makes it into the final version.

[Source: Ars Technica]