Not to be out done, many of the Naughty Dog staff was on hand to give gamers their first hand impressions of working on this highly anticipated game, and to answer fan questions.
Among those in attendance was Amy Hennig, Creative Director for Uncharted 3, who was kind enough to sit down and answer a few of our own questions.
While Hennig clearly wanted to avoid spoiling the game’s key moments, she did share her thoughts on the creative process, living up to fan expectations, the game’s villain Katherine Marlowe, and what ideas an Uncharted 4 would explore.
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Game Rant: How did you approach this sequel to a property that is so important to so many fans and that has knocked it out of the park with its first two iterations?
GR: You have this world and all these beloved characters, but it also has this overrunning theme of deception. Do you ever feel like you’re bound by the confines of keeping your characters likeable or noble, and them not ever being able to step outside themselves?
But at the same time, you’ve still gotta come up with something new. So everything we judge is judged against that metric. A lot of times what happens is that the technology you’re building is only just ready for go time at the end of the project and you’re like “Oh my god we pulled that off,” and then you’re anxious to say, “Well now that we’ve got that in the can, now we can actually build something else.” That was the thought with the whole collapsing high rise in the second game or the train level; the idea that we could do gameplay moving objects with full physic simulation, we thought well how can we do that even bigger and better?
So the two things we started with, before even worrying about story yet, were the cruise ship and the cargo plane, just because they exemplify that kind of spectacle that you might see in an action movie, but doing it in a way that we couldn’t have in Uncharted 1 or 2 because we didn’t have the tech to really do it. So you’re approaching it from that sort of philosophical angle and a very pragmatic angle at the same time.
GR: How closely do you work with the actors before you create their story beats? How much collaboration is there before you put anything to paper, or do you think you know the characters the best?
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GR: For each game, you have created villains that are pretty unique. The villains in this game are a completely different take; could you talk more about them?
GR: How do you see the series evolving past the 3rd iteration? What types of ideas would you like to explore with the Uncharted universe?
As you can see, there is no outright confirmation from Hennig that an Uncharted 4 is even in its earliest stages — although we expect that to change once first-week sales numbers come in.
Now with a little bit of context, and a better understanding of what, at least for Hennig, makes an Uncharted game so fascinating, we hope that gamers who pick up the game tomorrow will hold a greater appreciation for the product they are exploring.
What facets of Nathan Drake’s personality would you like to see a future Uncharted title explore? How do you think the character of Katherine Marlowe stacks up when compared to the franchise’s other villains?
Uncharted 3 releases tomorrow, November 1st, exclusively for the PS3.
