"This is the last mark we get to make with Nathan Drake," said Naughty Dog's Neil Druckmann as he introduced gameplay for the latest and seemingly final Uncharted title, A Thief's End.
Gathered at a hip Los Angeles hotel to present the first look at single-player mode in Uncharted 4, the creative director was both giddy and somewhat defensive. After several delays, the new Nathan Drake adventure was finally finished. Press were sitting down to experience new elements of the gameplay hands-on. A Thief's End's May 10 release date is looming ever closer. It's a big finish for a franchise that first debuted almost nine years ago, and one that's become increasingly special to its developers.
"As a team, this game felt really personal and special to us because it's the last story we get to tell with Nathan Drake," Druckmann told me later. "We wanted to make sure we get it right. Everyone's trying to cram everything into this game. Before we knew it, it got so ambitious that we're like, 'We're not going to hit our 2015 date, clearly,' but we didn't want to cut anything because it all felt important for this story. It all felt important for Nathan Drake leaving his mark. It was 'go big or go home' kind of mentality."
When I picked up the controller and started my first playthrough of the new Uncharted 4 gameplay, I expected it to feel familiar to the three titles that came before it. Almost immediately, it was clear I was in for an experience new to the Uncharted world.
At this point Nathan, Sully and Nate's older brother Sam – a new character, thought dead, who draws the younger Drake back into the treasure-hunting business – are in Madagascar. They're on the road to a volcano on the hunt for real-life pirate Henry Avery's Ganj-i-sawai treasure and avoiding the South African mercenary group Shoreline along the way. Turns out cell service isn't too great in Madagascar, as we learn in the opening cut scene, and Nathan Drake decides to stick to a good ol' map for guidance instead. So we set off on our adventure – by hopping into a 4x4.
Driving from one point to another can be inherently boring if there aren't enemies to evade or fight along the way, so Naughty Dog decided to make the terrain you traverse part of the engagement. While there might be some situations where persistence and messing with video game physics allows you to cross seemingly insurmountable areas, the section of Uncharted 4 that I played in a vehicle felt as authentic to the experience of driving an actual 4x4 as one could imagine. The surfaces you drive over react to your vehicle; mud, in this area, proved to be especially tricky.
When A Thief's End's developers first decided to add a vehicle, they initially only thought about how it could be incorporated into actions scenes, but then realized the value it could have to Uncharted games' exploration component.
"We don't want you to see a volcano and then drive in a straight line to it or even if you make the path winding, at some point it loses interest," said Druckmann, noting, "This was going back to the original vision of Uncharted. We wanted you to go back to these uncharted locations, be lost in them, and then have to make your way through. Obviously [for past games] we were limited by hardware, time and resources. This game, we felt like we could finally realize those ideas."
The level we were shown had several areas that were difficult to navigate, as you would slide backwards if you didn't have enough momentum to push through it, or the ground didn't have enough traction for your wheels. At one point, you're stuck at an impasse and need to use a winch Sam, Sully and Nate have been bantering about adding to the front of the 4x4 to get yourself to the next area. (Using the winch also makes use of Nate's new rope mechanics and physics.)
There were also surfaces you might not expect to be able to drive over, like visual cues such as tire tracks on sleep rock inclines that help direct you through the correct path. With the trailers promising a diverse array of environments, Druckmann played coy about what other surface reactions might be in store deeper into A Thief's End. "As far as stuff you haven't seen yet... I don't know. I'm not going to say anything else," Druckmann hedged with a smile. "There are more action sequences and more exploration sequences that build off the stuff you've seen."
The level was ultimately about getting from point A to point B, but instead of a clear linear path, the open-world inspired journey offered – and encouraged – detours. Every time you followed a path that ultimately took you off course, there was something to be found that benefited the exploration.
The lesson is clear: take the time to stop and look around.
At first, A Thief's End forces you to this realization. While driving down a dirt road, prompts appear urging you to stop and exit your vehicle in front of a small set of ruins. The exploration proves largely fruitless in terms of the general story – there's just a treasure to be picked up – but the lesson is clear: take the time to stop and look around.
Later, when the path you're supposed to follow leads you to a rickety bridge you're supposed to cross, the circuitous road also takes you to a river that leads to a waterfall. It's easy to drive right past, but getting out of the 4x4 and exploring benefits you with finding one of the pirates' hideouts – complete with a note that you can add to your collection and, yes, another treasure.
There are several of these hidden areas and treasures scattered throughout the level we played, all of which are easy to miss if your goal is rushing as quickly from start to finish as possible. "We have this really rich history with these pirates who we really want to build up as characters, so we could do a lot of the environmental storytelling we've done in past games, let you find letters. Nate's journal now takes a bigger role in this game, so there's a lot of opportunities to sketch and write notes in," Druckmann explained. "For players who care – and we find most players do care – you can go a layer deeper, and you can go explore."
Simply put, Uncharted 4's landscape is beautiful.
But looking around for treasure isn't the only indulgence you'll find yourself making that distracts forward progress. Simply put, Uncharted 4's landscape is beautiful. Druckmann admitted he still finds himself in awe of it. There was a concern there were so many high-res textures that it wouldn't be able to fit on the disc and the developers would have to downgrade certain elements. (Fortunately, they figured it out so no corners needed to be cut.) When you look out towards the volcano that's your end goal, it looks like a picture-perfect backdrop, but the more you progress on your journey the more you realize you'll actually be able to explore a significant portion of the video game environment.
Even better, the longer you spend in the 4x4, the more time you have to listen. Uncharted games have always had sharp writing, but getting to eavesdrop on Sully and Sam bantering? Listening to them catch up on Nathan Drake's past three adventures in ways Druckmann promises will have a greater pay off? Having Sully heckle you for taking too long getting to the volcano because you're too busy doing both previous points? That's worth the extra time spent, and makes the journeying more enjoyable.
"If you blast through, you're going to miss out on some of these sometimes humorous, sometimes insightful directions that when you do get to a pinch point of a narrative beat that everybody experiences, you could have a deeper appreciation if you did experience those other things," Druckmann said, noting A Thief's End has more in-game dialogue than any other Naughty Dog title.
That tall grass became my best friend.
In Druckmann's opening presentation, he described two of players' most likely play styles: going in guns blazing, or trying to get through a level as stealth as possible. I probably fall more into the first category, but Druckmann's statement felt like a gauntlet being thrown, so when it came time to engage with the villainous Shoreline mercenary group, led by Nadine Ross, that tall grass became my best friend.
This section of A Thief's End definitely leaned into both play styles. Coming upon the mercenaries guarding an abandoned tower in the middle of a relatively open area, you can either try to shoot your way through each area of enemies, or use the cover – like the tall grass in the field, rocks around the area and various damaged buildings – to help you progress without being seen.
What would have helped in this situation but what I didn't use to its utmost advantage was A Thief's End's new marking system. By clicking L3 (part of Uncharted 4's redone move set) you can add a marker above the head of each of your enemies in order to keep track of them as you progress through the tower. My patience with subtlety proved to be shorter than I expected, and I found it far more effective to stealth kill one section of the guards, then make a rush for the sniper at the top of the tower once I was detected. At least the new stealth indicator let me know when the enemies realized I was just going to make a run for it.
Similarly, another new mechanic I didn't find myself using as much as I'd expected was Nathan Drake's new rope. This might end up being a trick – and way to kill enemies – that becomes more fun in multiplayer, but with the exception of using the rope to drag down a box that helped me find that pirate's letter, there was never a moment in this demo that I felt using the rope would have benefited me more than my familiar set of skills. Even the wooden frame begging me to swing from it to advance my progress up the tower felt like the least helpful way to progress through the level.
Maybe if the clock wasn't ticking during my time with Uncharted 4, I would have persisted to try to stealth my whole way through. If I had, the Shoreline agents at the tower wouldn't have called the reinforcements that show up from across the bridge that leads to the next area and might have saved me a few more bullets. The benefits to going full-stealth might have something to do with Druckmann himself; he told me that after spending years and years developing (and thus playing) the Uncharted games, that's the play style he prefers.
"There's a few set-ups in the game that you can stealth through without engaging with enemies at all – you don't have to kill anybody. It's really, really hard, and a few of them even have trophies for doing that. I put it on Crushing [difficulty] and I try to do that, and every once in a while I throw the controller because it gets really hard," he said with a laugh.
Uncharted 4 looks bigger, better and more beautiful than its predecessors, offers up more diverse gameplay and creates a unique, more detailed feel to the world, but any Uncharted fan knows these games are made by their story. Getting 30 minutes to explore A Thief's End convinced me that mechanically this game is worth the wait through development and delays, but will the story be similarly impressive? For now, we'll just have to take Druckmann's word that Uncharted 4 is going to be a satisfying – or at least emotional – end to Nathan Drake's story.
"Coming off of Uncharted 3, we came on this project as really studying the three games that came before. We felt like, if this is the last one, then these three are the set up, this is the payoff. Every loose end, everything that's been introduced and not quite paid off, we have to do it here. We have to do it justice," he said. Though Elena wasn't present during the section I played, it's key based on Druckmann's comments that she plays a key role in that.
Druckmann, who has been with the Uncharted franchise since the beginning, sees Nathan Drake's journey as paralleling Naughty Dog's. Both came into the industry as "kind of young, kind of dumb, trying to prove ourselves, not quite sure what we're doing," but have since matured, settled down and started families. For him, the return of Sam back into Nate's life and the draw back into the world he left behind parallels the struggle with work-life balance that game developers – stuck on deadlines like the one Uncharted 4 faced before its completion – battle with every game cycle. It's a bittersweet concept, and hints that Uncharted could be heading toward a bittersweet conclusion.
"He has to make these difficult choices, and I'll leave it at that. It has an interesting climax through how it all pays off," Druckmann said. "I think life is complex. Life has its happy moments and its bittersweet and sad moments. I think this game has to capture all of that."
Terri Schwartz is Entertainment Editor at IGN. Talk to her on Twitter at @Terri_Schwartz.
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