If you’re going to set yourself up for failure, then starting off with Uncharted is the perfect way of going about it. One of the most amazing looking games with genuinely engaging gameplay, there were obviously a few things that could be done to it better, but they were tiny when you look at the big picture. So what are we to expect form a sequel? A half hearted cash in, or something truly spectacular?
I took some time from the hustle and bustle of E3 to stop and talk to Richard Lemarchand one of the guys developing Uncharted 2 and enjoy a little walk through of what to expect when it drops later in the year. I had other places to be but Uncharted was on my list of must see games.
The stunning visuals are only the first thing that you’ll notice, they are fantastic and unbelievably have gone a step further than the original. The draw distance is obviously something that adds a feeling of scale despite the game actually being more or less linear in terms of story line and the path that Nathan will traverse. Things like the way signs are hung and the detail that goes into every little piece of the environment is truly amazing. Another thing that Naughty Dog has done with the visuals is to create a focusing system that highlights detail where you are looking but at depths of vision different to this focus point things get blurred. I’ve noticed other games have attempted things similar to this but nothing to this extent, this is a feature that I expect to become standard in most games in the future, it adds realism but also changes the way you play the game.
Over and above the way the game looks is the way the game world reacts to the player and the way the player can change the game world. Simple but realistic, according to every action movie I’ve ever watched, changes like being able to push over a table to use as cover, said table being destroyed by an exploding grenade. The potential climbing paths being less linear and less obvious while at the same time being more natural. It’s stuff like this that makes me think Uncharted 2 will be a title that will capture my heart and refuse to let it go.
Something completely new to Uncharted is the addition of a multiplayer component. The story is still single player, but there now running a beta for adversarial multiplayer (accessible via the inFamous special). The beta is surprisingly functional in terms of finding games and getting you into the action quickly. There is the ability to have a party, something developers seemed to have forgotten about lately. I played a few games, some team deathmatch, and capture the flag loot, both of which featured maps that allow players to climb and jump in certain places to gain a better killing perspective. The controls are simple, lag seemed minimal, and most importantly I didn’t have to wait more than a minute to actually play a game.
I asked a few questions in an interview about some of the things that “troubled” me in the first game, you can listen to the full interview in the last podcast. My primary concern was in regards to the twist, you have to have played the game to understand what I am talking about. It changed the game play very radically, and after talking to him about the twist I was surprised to discover that the Uncharted world was not one where Naughty Dog envisioned the supernatural occurring, but rather that there was a more scientific explanation of what happened. Now that being said he did state that the Uncharted world holds many mysteries. I also asked about the now iconic half tuck and and concrete set hair, his response was that an Uncharted game without a half-tuck would be like an Uncharted game without adventure. His concrete hair however is now more supple after upgrading to a hair product that allows movement to be rendered by the PS3.
There were other things that we talked about during the interview and there are many things int he preview that I would like to share but simply thing it’s best to wait for the final product to fully elaborate, for myself and others that found the first game to be genuinely entertaining this is a title that can’t release soon enough. In short, I can’t wait.
Tags: Games, Interviews, Sony