Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception

quote:

From a technical standpoint, the animations will receive the most noticeable improvements in the third game. "We're doing some crazy stuff where we're actually going to stream some animations in," Richmond said excitedly, "so Drake will actually change animation state based on what's happening." Drake might brush his hand against a wall as he passes by, for example; or he could more realistically react to dangers, like smoke and gunfire, as he encounters them. "We don't want to let you walk through fire without reacting," Richmond added, "but most of these animation changes are just like he's doing the right thing based on what's around him, rather than taking away player control. It's about making him seem more realistic."

quote:

Richmond also revealed that brawling -- fist-fighting with multiple enemies -- will be added to the combat. "The fact that you can fight multiple guys at the same time, hand-to-hand, makes a big difference," he suggested. "You couldn't do that last game. So things like a bar fight in the game -- you can put five or ten guys around him and actually have Drake punching them out." Drake will also be able to seamlessly use objects in the environment to aid in a tussle, like grabbing a bottle to smash over an enemy's head or even an enemy's gun to end the fight quickly.

quote:

"We feel like if you're going to build a Move game, you should build a Move game. You shouldn't take a game that already exists with all of these control mechanics, and then build over the top of it."

"We haven't really found a cool way to use it," he added. "If we did, we would." The team did experiment with Move, getting "simple movement" to work in a prototype build, but the technology eats up a significant chunk of memory in calculating player movements (and Uncharted 3 won't have much to spare), so Naughty Dog decided against making any sacrifices, especially in considering the likely majority of players who wouldn't be using Move to play the game.

quote:

Multiplayer, however, will be a major feature of Uncharted 3, including post-release updates, though Naughty Dog has learned quite "a lot" from its implementation in the last game. "The biggest thing we learned was don't significantly change the bullet damage of the game after you launch," Richmond recalled. The team got caught up in tweaking the multiplayer after Uncharted 2 launched, and Richmond said Naughty Dog was drowned in feedback after the changes were made -- much of which has aided in the development of the new multiplayer.

"Next game we're going to blow it out," he promised of Uncharted 3's multiplayer. "We're going to really take it to the next level, listen to what the fans said, do all of the things we wanted to do last game but didn't have time to, because we really did the whole thing in just a year."