A somber Nate looks at a coin, trapped in the underbelly of a pirate ship filled with gold as it sinks under the weight of its own destruction. He flips it into the air as it lands on its side amongst a pile of other coins, the orange glow of the smoldering fire illuminating the shine of the gold that surrounds Nate in the burning ship. He reflects solemnly on what his life could have been, and on the more quiet moments that he could have had.
That’s the theme of the new trailer for Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End. We get a few brief glimpses of a domiciled Nate, working a 9-to-5 and living it up good with Elena. The charismatic adventurer ponders these thoughts amidst his current, life-threatening predicament. It’s not unlike his situation at the beginning of Uncharted 2, or the quandary he found himself in trapped in the middle of the desert in Uncharted 3.
There’s nothing particular new in the trailer that we haven’t already seen before. But it compliments the latest developer diary that covers the game’s technical achievements and how they’re pushing the boundaries of the hardware with the new technology.
The one thing they pointed out in the recent developer diary is that for one thing the play space is a heck of a lot bigger than what it was in Uncharted 1 through 3. They mention in the developer diary below that as far as exploration is concerned, Uncharted 4 has 10 times the explorable space of previous Uncharted games. Very impressive stuff.
I love it that they mention that they wanted to keep the game’s story linear but give players more options in how they get from point ‘A’ to point ‘B’. The “10 times larger” line isn’t just there to make a pseudo-open world game, it’s about keeping the story linear but offering players various options in how they get to each destination.
It’s a great philosophy for the concept of replayability without diminishing the integrity of the game’s story or pacing. They exemplified this in a great way with the jeep scene where there are different routes to take but it never slows down or starts meandering elsewhere.
They also talk about the seamless transitions between the game’s cut-scenes and the actual gameplay. Everything now is rendered in-engine in the PS4… even the cinematics.
There are a lot of technical nuances that they’ve added to the game, especially with the new vehicle mechanics and segments, and the new cinematic-looking grappling features. I still can’t get over how good the rope segments look in the game.
The second part of the developer diary talks more about the actual gameplay and not just the graphics and visuals. They talk about the improvements to the AI, the improvements to flanking and stealth mechanics, as well as how players can now approach levels in an entirely stealth-oriented way if they want.
You can check out the second part of the developer diary below.
That enziguri by Nate at the 6:34 mark?! That looked nice… very nice.
Sometimes the dev diaries from Naughty Dog can come across as fairly pretentious, especially following all the high-praise they received for The Last of Us, but that last video – part two of the technical improvements they’ve made to Uncharted 4 – really seems grounded in the team wanting to make a fun, entertaining experience.
I’m looking forward to Uncharted 4, assuming that it actually releases in May as they’ve said.
The game was delayed a few times to meet the manufacturing demands that Sony and Naughty Dog are expecting when the PS4’s first real killer app goes live, but you can start counting down the days to May 10th as Uncharted 4 preps for release.
