Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

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Uncharted 2 is four weeks from completion and, thanks to those of you who played the game's June beta, the development team from Naughty Dog learned a couple of things. Adding a jet-ski level was not one of them.

Sony was showing its full holiday line-up for PS3 and PSP in New York yesterday, including a hands-off demo of Uncharted 2's single-player campaign. The level, set in a town amid the Himalayas, was previously shown by Sony at E3 and even back in New York in the winter. Seeing something polished but familiar, I sought news about Naughty Dog's anticipated action-adventure sequel.

The multiplayer beta for the game wrapped up in June, and Sony producer Caley Roberts told me yesterday that the approximately 5000 players who registered to participate influenced some elements of the game's gunplay. Players used a rifle called the FAL too much at close quarters even though it was made to be an effective long-range weapon. So the single-player campaign was tweaked to better teach how best to wield that gun. The AK-47 in the beta proved not to be accurate enough, so, Roberts said, the developers "need to tune up" its accuracy.

Aside from beta lessons learned, Roberts wasn't able to reveal much else about Uncharted 2 that Kotaku hasn't already covered. Sony is keeping most of the game's levels secret for a while more, opting to reveal less of this title in advance than the company did for the first Uncharted. Roberts did say he likes the story of the new game a little better than that of the first and that there are many levels he'd love to talk about. But he can't. Those are the rules.

Roberts did confirm some omissions though that probably won't break fans' hearts. Sixaxis motion control, which was used to steady hero Nathan Drake as he walked across log-bridges, is not returning to the sequel. And Drake won't drive any vehicles in this game, though there will be some on-rails vehicle missions. None of them will take place on a jet ski, the clumsy vehicle of some of Uncharted's few criticized low points.

Development studio Naughty Dog will be working on the game for four more weeks. After that, it's off to disc manufacturing and into stores for a mid-October release, exclusive to the PlayStation 3.

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Editor's Note: Post-E3, Pre-Release

For those who care about things like buzz and hype and words like "trending," E3 was good to Uncharted 2. Naughty Dog's follow-up went into the show as an anticipated sequel, and came out winning game of the show awards and being called one of the prettiest games ever made. Which is impressive hyperbole, since it's still in development. But what we've seen of the game is worthy of ridiculous statements, so we decided to embrace that approach in our cover image to the left (one of my favorite of these we've designed), and put together a week of coverage revealing a lot more about the single-player campaign. Hope you enjoy it!

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10 Things You Don't Know

Naughty Dog used to be a more prolific studio -- remember when we got one Crash Bandicoot game a year from 1996 to 1999? Or how Jak II, Jak 3, and Jak X: Combat Racing came out between 2003 and 2005? But now with the Uncharted franchise on the PS3, the studio's taken a slower, more deliberate schedule to its development calendar. To that end, we asked Naughty Dog for some facts and trivia to show us what the heck is going on behind the scenes of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves' development. So here is Naughty Dog community manager Arne Meyer's round-up of fast facts about the studio and its work on Uncharted 2. Plus, we have seven new screens to show off what all of these statistics are helping to create. And be sure to come back each day for our weeklong coverage of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves.

# 1) Over 130,000 people participated in our Uncharted 2 Multiplayer Beta, covering players from 135 countries all over the world.

# 2) The total of all multiplayer and co-op games played during the three weeks of our Beta was over 40,300 hours.

# 3) In Uncharted: Drake's Fortune we had 104 individual environment files on the disc; in Uncharted 2 we have over 400.

* 4) We spent over 30 days on our soundstage recording motion capture performances which resulted in over 90 minutes of cinematics -- along with a ton of in-game animations.

* 5) Our daily back-up of data has been averaging over one terabyte lately... and that covers only Uncharted 2 assets and data.

# 6) We drank a s*** ton of soda -- over 30,000 cans -- and one bottle of bourbon during the two years of production on Uncharted 2.

# 7) Between the 100+ Dogs working at the studio, we have over 16 nationalities and over 10 languages represented.

# 8) We've moved twice in our history: From the Universal Studios lot next to Insomniac games to an office spot above a Santa Monica outdoor mall, and to our current space -- formerly Sony BMG's offices.

# 9) We still have several of the "Original Naughty Dogs" with us, who started the first Crash Bandicoot game almost 14 years ago!

# 10) We've always had at least one dog "mascot" at Naughty Dog since the beginning. Currently our resident dogs are Pogo, a French Bulldog, and Trumpet, a Bichon Frise.

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Op dinsdag 11 augustus 2009 07:50 schreef Mickey_Blue_Eyes het volgende:
Zijn er al zombies gespot......?

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No Single Player Uncharted 2 Demo

The single player in the first Uncharted was compelling, good old fashioned story-telling. Before we shell out to buy the upcoming sequel, wouldn't it be lovely to check out Uncharted 2's single player?

Yes, yes it would. Too bad we won't be doing that. The game is getting a multiplayer demo on September 15, but it will not be getting one for single player.

"It's always tough to do a single-player demo," says the game's creative director Amy Hennig. "You can always argue whether it benefits you or not in the long run, because so much of it depends on you understanding where you are in the narrative, and then appreciating what's going on in the single-player demo."

"Not to mention that it's a 12-15 hour experience and you have to somehow collapse that into 15 minutes," says Evan Wells, co-president of the game's developer. "I mean, we have something like hundreds of moves to train you over several hours, and if you just drop somebody into the fire..."

Instead, folks are going to be dropped in multiplayer.

Take heart single player players! The game's developer Naughty Dog confirmed that the single player is "significantly longer" than in the first game with 90 minutes of cinematics compared to the first game's 50 minutes.

"It's literally a feature-length film," says Hennig, "with fully-fleshed out multiplayer and co-op experiences."

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Check out five minutes of gameplay footage, then our own analysis of that footage.

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Op maandag 24 augustus 2009 19:35 schreef wolfrolf het volgende:

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Ik heb ook deze gevonden, tot en met middernacht ¤2 extra korting, ¤43,99

http://www.cdwow.nl/games(...)product/view/9839119

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Op vrijdag 4 september 2009 17:55 schreef wolfrolf het volgende:

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Jaja.

Dinsdag is bij BlahDVD Arkham Asylum verzonden, mooi dat ik hem vandaag nog niet binnen heb. Worden zendingen van BlahDVD regelmatig bij de douane gepakt, of valt dat wel mee?

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Op vrijdag 11 september 2009 12:14 schreef Cheiron het volgende:
Ik wil ZO graag eerst deel 1 spelen voordat ik deze aanschaf bij release. Dus: opschieten met die patch Naughty Dog. Ga daarna maar verder met het ontwikkelen van Uncharted 2