PotentHerbs on 06 January 2015
The new issue of Game Informer includes a spiffy preview of the upcoming PS4 exclusive by Naughty Dog Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, and it comes with extensive information on story and gameplay, as relayed by NeoGAF user Recks, who got his hands on a copy of the magazine.
- Porting The Last of Us to PS4 helped Uncharted 4‘s development
- Small team working on it since Uncharted 3‘s development ended, half the team moved to U4 after TLOU and the rest after Left Behind.
- Takes places three years after U3.
- At the start of U4 Drake is living an happy life with Elena, then Sam appears.
- Drake thought Sam was dead.
- Sam’s life depends on him finding an artifact from Henry Avery.
- Drake feels indebted of his brother and he can’t resist getting back on treasure hunting.
- Story takes Drake and Sam to Libertalia: “a mythic Madagascar colony purportedly founded by pirates.”
- You’re not going to spend the whole game on the island, snowy and urban environments teased.
- There are two rival hunters, Rafe and Nadine.
- Rafe is a very different treasure hunter than Drake, with different morale and approach.
- Nadine owns a private military company in South Africa.
- Villains will play a bigger role this time.
- “The lack of Sam being in Nathan life for so long is what’s driven him in the last games.”
- Sam is five years older than Drake.
- Elena and Sully might come back.
- Sam is even more reckless than Drake.
- Sam is jealous of Drake, sees him as the “better at everything little brother”
- Lots of rivalry between them.
- Naugty Dog declined to talk about Drake and Sam’s past.
- Artifacts (collectibles) may contain notes pointing to more treasures/artifacts.
- Enemies can grab your leg if you try to push them over ledges.
- More tools besides Rope and Piton (metal spike). They’re not ready to talk about them yet.
- ND Wants to to incorporate the tools into puzzles.
- GI saw an extended demo with a new scene. Drake is beaten down while Sam is rested, they start arguing the existance of the Avery secret, then something catches Drake’s eye, he moves forward, pull some foliage, revealing a gray monument with a carving.
- Focusing on navigational freedom for this entry.
- Shown multiple paths, one finding an extra cave, another bypassing a group of enemies.
- There are plenty of side stories if you’re looking for them.
- In the demo they shown Drake taking a more riskier climbing route, that almost makes him fall into the sea.
- All paths have consequences, there’s no “golden path.”
- There’s an overhauled A.I system.
- They compared Sam’s A.I to Ellie, but says Sam is a grown up treasure hunter, so he’s much stronger than Ellie.
- They’re trying to “explore what it’s like to be with somebody as capable of Nathan Drake.”
- ND did not give a straight answer if this is Drake last adventure.
- There’s still plenty of humour in the game.
- The concept of the set pieces is “What’s something impactful that we can do to switch expectations and how can we have it emotionally charged?”
There’s definitely a lot to take in right there, and I can’t help being excited to see that demo with my own eyes. Hopefully Naughty Dog will publicly release some footage soon.
They're always so pretty to look at (despite them often being relatively easy to make compared to dense jungle environments).
