The game you bought a PS4 for took the world by storm at The PlayStation Experience. Now, Dave Meikleham prepares for one last treasure hunt, taking you deep inside that astonishing real-time demo. Get ready to discover the sibling secrets and tech at the heart of Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End…
Holy hell in a handbasket. How does Naughty Dog keep doing this? Just when we think we’ve clocked what PS4 is capable of, the Santa Monica outfit delivers a glimpse of Indyinspired action that effortlessly blows away our expectations. You came for a slice of the best damn graphics and shooting in town? Here, have an insanely detailed, dreamboat hero who could have been plucked from a Pixar film. While you’re at it, tuck into some thrillingly freeform, stealth-informed combat. Oh, and don’t forget to take Nathan Drake’s big brother with you in a doggy bag. Houston, we have a bromance.
Oh happiness, thy new name truly is Uncharted 4. We totally mentioned the fact that Nolan North’s in-game bro is voiced by Troy ‘Joel from The Last Of Us’ Baker, right? If the prospect of the two most talented, high-profile voice actors in the history of the medium squaring off for some serious shared screen time isn’t enough to make you all toasty under the collar, best get your pulse checked, post-haste.
TREASURED ISLAND
We’ll get to the most exciting casting pairing in recent gaming memory later. In the meantime, just try to catch your breath. Even a month removed from Uncharted 4’s whirlwind, real-time PlayStation Experience demo, it’s hard not to be left still gasping at a showing that’s surely got to be considered the new benchmark for current-gen console graphics. The jutting crevices of that astonishing 1080p island. The distinctive ‘Tomb Raider reboot’ vibe coming from Drake’s new pick-based climbing sections – funny how things come full circle, huh? Those PS4 cheekbones! Someone pass us a moist towelette… we need a wiping down.
Strangely, many of the conversations currently going on at Naughty Dog revolve around bringing decidedly less sexy parts of Drake to life. “We’re very concerned with folds,” admits character concept artist Ashley Swidowski, speaking at a Naughty Dog panel at PSX. “A lot of our time is spent talking about folds.” Hey, when you’re the poster boy for PS4, it’s important your jeans crease in just the right fashion.
Make no mistake: the weathered Nathan Drake you meet in A Thief’s End – all dashing flecks of salt-andpepper chin bristle – is the most advanced character model to ever grace PlayStation. From a head of luxuriant adventurer hair that ruffles realistically in the breeze to hands that boast coursing veins when Nate balls up a fist, you’ve simply never seen character fidelity of this calibre before.
Bucking the current trend for facial and body-scanning, Naughty Dog prefers to stick to the hand-animated character sculpting that reached such gorgeously emotive heights on PS3. “A lot of big studios are doing scans for their characters,” says lead character artist Frank Tzeng, also speaking at the Sin City-hosted panel. “But it’s not as if we can do scans for Drake; he’s not a real person. We can’t just go out and find a person and say, ‘oh, you look like Nathan Drake, we’ll scan you and make your our main character.’ We want to keep our artistic feeling on how to sculpt models.”
Said model even includes chest hair which blows in the wind. That’s right: the beloved man mascot now has animated pec whiskers. Lord, do we ever need a cold shower. “We all know chest hair needs to blow in the wind,” quips character artist Colin Thomas. “That’s current-gen stuff there.” It’s this level of ludicrously committed detail that helps keep the Drakemeister from becoming another unwilling resident of a certain infamous canyon, according to Thomas…
VALLEY OF DRAKES
“It’s always been a challenge to stay away from the Uncanny Valley. That’s especially noticeable on faces; it’s harder to not make that look creepy.” Anyone else getting flashbacks to LA Noire’s rubber-faced meat puppets? “I think being able to sculpt [Drake] stylistically to make him look natural is important.”
‘Natural’ really is the optimal word when it comes to the PSX demo. Although we’re pretty sure Big Bird and co would also grant us ‘holy’, ‘sh*t’, ‘real’ and ‘puuuurrrrdy’ to sum up Uncharted 4’s sumptuous real-time action. Waterfalls that spray Natedog’s hair, causing his mane to shift and sway in relation to the direction of the wet stuff… Dirt that clings to his jeans should you decide to rub against one of the island’s muddy slopes… A newly busy belt adorned with realistically animated torch, water canteen and gently swaying rope… Enemies who coordinate their efforts to hunt you down should Drake break line-of-sight during sneaky firefights.
That last point is key: combat appears to be much more organic than that of Drake’s Deception. With The Last Of Us directors Bruce Straley and Neil Druckmann steering HMS Nate this time out, the fortune hunter has naturally absorbed the reactive scrapping DNA of Joel and Ellie.
Enemies are no longer telepathically alerted to your location should Drake be spotted. Successfully dart out of your pursuers’ view – say, by crouching in copious amounts of dense Assassin’s Creed IV-style foliage – and the bad guys work together to seek out your ruggedly handsome star’s hidey-hole of choice.
IN RUDE HEALTH
Where before stealth and shooting in Uncharted were separated by a quasi-‘church/state’ divide, now the two elements blend together seamlessly. Just witness the demo’s final few moments when Naughty Dog’s main man manages to bypass several enemy mercenaries completely by charting (hiyoooo!) alternate routes through an environment that’s much more open than any of the adventurer’s previous PS3 playgrounds.
Not that the results of the carefullyconstructed stealth plans hitting the fan aren’t still all kinds of glorious should you put a foot wrong. As you can see down below, Drake has never had more avenues to explore when it comes to dishing out takedowns. Shoulder barging dudes off cliffs; capping dastards while sliding down hills; shoulder-crumpling aerial assaults; impromptu choke attacks delivered with the stock of a rifle – this current-gen globetrotter is a Jason Bourne-esque asskicker extraordinaire.
But just where exactly has this globe-skipping taken the great nicker of antiquities? Though its topography shares similarities with the original Uncharted’s dripping South American jungle, the island from the PSX demo is likely located somewhere along the southern African coastline, with Madagascar a decent-looking candidate. How have we Sherlocked up this potential location? Well, aside from all the menacing South African tones of Drake’s enemies, there’s also a moment where the explorer holds up a crumpled 19th century parchment. Peer closely at this desecrated diary entry and you’re treated to a brief banquet of clues.
Among the scribbles, you can see mention to a figure known as the ‘Rhode Island Pirate’ – real name Thomas Tew. Like Sir Francis Drake, Tew is a genuine historical figure; though where Franky boy was more concerned with seafaring exploration, Thomas was partial to a spot of 17th century pirating. Crucially, Tew was said to have been one of the founding figures of Libertatia (stay with us); a mythical colony for outlaws that was said to lie off the Madagascan coast. This would not only track with the locations seen in a panning shot of the map from Uncharted 4’s original teaser trailer, but the notion of Nate chasing a mystical location is very much in line with his previous pursuits of El Dorado, Shambhala and the Iram Of The Pillars.
FREQUENT FLYER
Of course, ever since Uncharted 2, Drake hasn’t exactly been one to limit his itchy feet to any singular location. Since hanging out with him in that Lost World-aping suspended train setpiece in the Himalayas, our boy has had his well-worn passport stamped in England, France, Nepal, Turkey, Columbia and Yemen. With the power of PS4 now fuelling his jet-setting, expect to rack up those air miles in what’s increasingly looking to be your beloved console’s killer app.
Best reserve a seat on that flight for one Sam Drake, too. As if 15 minutes of desperate scuffles with mercenaries and flinging himself off more high ledges than Spider-Man wasn’t enough for Nate, our hero ends his demo staring squarely at his past. Yes, Nathan Drake has an older sibling. One who appears to be equally infatuated with seeking out shiny trinkets, even if he’s only 74% as dashing as his baby bro. The brotherly bombshell resonates even more when you factor in Troy Baker’s involvement in bringing the older treasure hunter to life. Are you ready for the summer of Sam? Hell, we’d gladly take winter: just as long as Uncharted 4 hits its promised 2015 release date.
Replacing actor Todd Stashwick (who’s now involved with Amy Hennig’s mysterious Star Wars project over at Visceral), Baker certainly kept his involvement in A Thief’s End close to his chest. When we interviewed gaming’s most in-demand thesp last summer, the conversation was focused on The Last Of Us Remastered, but even then it was clear how much the voice of Bioshock Infinite’s Booker DeWitt would relish being a part of the Uncharted family.
Back then, Troy would have even been chuffed with a decidedly less headline-stealing role than the one he’s ended up nabbing for A Thief’s End. “I just wanted to die,” he beamed last August. “I wanted to be a red shirt and get shot by Nathan Drake in Uncharted 2, it’s all I want.” Well, Troy: consider that wish granted... hopefully minus the fratricide.
Though we harbour fears Sam may yet put a devious dent in this sibling reunion with Drake (see How I Met Your Brother), we have precisely zero worries about Uncharted 4 being a dead cert for Game Of The Year 2015. Naughty Dog may have lost a few key staff since The Last Of Us but, as a whole, the studio is coming off its biggest creative and critical success thanks to that apocalyptic opus.
Nate has reset the graphical bar on PS4 to heights perhaps only Rockstar North or Ready At Dawn could hope to match. Couple those custom heartstealing looks with a raft of hugely exciting combat refinements and we couldn’t be more excited (and a tad teary eyed) to rush to this pilferer’s particular End. When Drake finally resurfaces, prepare to have those expectations blown wide apart once more. Just how the hell does Naughty Dog keep doing this?