Uncharted 2 Among Theives

[Slidell]

Fancy yourself an Uncharted fan? Well you're not going to want to miss our next cover (sequel!). We've got Uncharted 2: Among Thieves featuring 10 pages of world-exclusive details. Nathan Drake returns with a whole new adventure which revolves around the 13th century explorer Marco Polo and his voyages. The new PlayStation 3 title will add a free climbing mechanic and action/adventure gameplay. Players can also expect all-new locations, characters and a focus on the game's story.

 

-Game Informer.com

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The Trailer

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Glad I gots mah PS3 fixed =D

 

The world premiere of our first trailer for Uncharted 2: Among Thieves!

 

This trailer will be shown during the 2008 Video Game Awards show, airing on December 14, 2008, at 9:00 PM on Spike. Don't forget!

 

 

 

 

On top of that, Game Informer has revealed the cover of their January 2009 issue today, which features none other than � you guessed it � Uncharted 2. The January 2009 issue will hit subscribers and newsstands in mid-December and will give you the first in-depth look at what lies in store for Nathan Drake.

 

 

-Playstation Blog

 

 

According to Game Informer, which is as you know is featuring Uncharted 2: Among Thieves on its January 2009 cover,the game will feature Nathan Drake going on an adventure that covers the voyages of 13th-century explorer Marco Polo.The gameplay will include a new free climbing mechanic as well as stealth gameplay as players work their way through new locations.

 

-Daily Game.com

 

 

The Uncharted 2 teaser trailer sent waves through the forums. One question that kept arising; is the trailer rendered in real-time, or is it fancy CGI? Naughty Dog has exclusively given Gamezine the answer.

 

Richard Diamant, Naughty Dog's Lead Character Artist, told Gamezine; "Yes, the trailer was all rendered real-time in our engine."

 

So there you have it. Naughty Dog are one of the few developers to dislike creating false expectations with CGI trailers, and just like Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, their very first teaser is rendered in real-time.

 

-GameGrep.com

 

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Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, is one of the most hotly anticipated games of 2009. Although no release date has been set for the title, gamers are expected to be able to play a pre-release version of Among Thieves at next year's Game Developers' Conference in San Francisco.Among Thieves is also reported to feature all-new locations and characters, and a strong narrative thread and story arc.

 

Some Screenys

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Some "Gunplay" from Uncharted Drake's Fortune

 

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Uncharted Gameplay Mechanics Interview

 

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Update Release sometime in Fall 09

 

Newest video

 

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The original Uncharted used 30% of the PS3's power this time around Naughty Dog says they will use 80%-90% for

Uncharted 2 Among Thieves

 

The biggest thing in the article IMO is that there's a new girl named Chloe Frazer. GI asked about Elena and Sully's return but they had no comment.

The story is about looking for the ships that Marco Polo "lost" while returning home to Italy.

Melee combat is more dynamic now.

A demo was shown to GI with Drake going through a city (I believe in Nepal), and he's stealthily taking out guards and escaping the city.

Nolan North returns to be Drake and Chloe Frazer is played by Claudia Black (Stargate SG-1, Fargate).

The Sixaxis mechanics were ditched for such things as throwing grenades.

One of the weapons revealed is a rocket launcher that Chloe uses (might only be for the cinematic).

There are no load screens.

The score is being composed by Greg Edmonson (same guy from the first one).

Weapons can be used in any stance (running, behind cover, hanging, climbing a wall, etc.).

You can now move while aiming behind cover

Contextual movesets help to ground Drake in his environment,basically if hes hurt he will look hurt if hes in water he will look like he is in water and wet of course

Uncharted 2's plot is like an onion layer by layer.The initial such for Marco Polo's fleet takes Drake into a lush green swamp,and from there launches a quest to uncover the legendary wish-fulfilling Cintamani Stone.Cryptic clues lead him to a Nepalese city under attack by paramilitary forces after the same priceless treasure.Later locations include a massive ice cave,a moutain-side village,and finally,the high Himalayen peaks,the fabled lost city of Shambhala(never herd of it).A train takes Nathan Drake part of the way but as you see in the video he does'nt make it....

Any and all illusions that Uncharted is simply a "jungle" game should be washed away when the seaqual comes out

 

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When you are on a ledge you can reach up and grab an unsuspecting gaurd and fling him off the side.

The movment from a protected spot is much more relistic.

 

I'll add more later I'm going to read it now.

February 3, 2009 - Naughty Dog is a filthy tease. Yesterday, the folks behind the company met with a plethora of videogame journalists, went over the story and details of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, and even played through a level set in a bombed out section of Nepal. Yeah, the gameplay looked awesome and the graphics were somehow better than the crisp stuff we saw in Drake's Fortune, but when all that was said and done, Naughty Dog kept talking -- about the possibility of a helicopter shooting out the foundation of a building and Nathan having to navigate his way out of the crumbling structure while the enemies around him try and do the same thing; about fighting on top of a train as it curves and careens through the environment and Nathan having to adjust his balance and shots accordingly; about picking to either run through the train cars or shimmy along the roof. The developers talked about these OMG moments, but they didn't show them.

 

Naughty Dog gives you a taste and leaves you hurting for more. It's criminal.

 

Uncharted 2 is going to drop Nathan into a quest to find Marco Polo's fortune. See, after spending about 20 years in the court of Kublai Khan, Marco Polo headed home with 14 ships, more than 600 people, and more treasure than you could shake a stick at. When Polo docked 18 months later, he had one ship and 18 passengers. The explorer, who many accused of telling ridiculous stories, would never speak of what happened during his journey. When Marco Polo was on his deathbed, his relatives begged him to recant his tales so he'd get into heaven, but Polo replied "I didn't tell half of what I saw."

 

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Where's Sully?

Where's Sully?

Eerie story, mountains of loot, and a historical mystery? Sounds like a quest for one Nathan Drake. Set about two years after Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, Among Thieves finds our hero down on his luck and running with the looters and pirates on the seedier side of life. Naughty Dog has been tightlipped about what exactly is happening in Drake's world, but we do know that Chloe Frazer is a major part of it. Described as a reckless and brash Australian explorer, Chloe and Drake have had a previous "relationship" and quickly find common ground with the Marco Polo case. Somehow, the duo finds out that Marco Polo had set out on a secret expedition to Shambhala -- also known as Shangri-La -- to find the Cintamani Stone, a massive sapphire that's the Buddhist Holy Grail and would be worth billions today. Of course, a paramilitary leader who just so happens to be a war criminal is out to find the stone as well, and his private army is going to stop Drake and Chloe however it can.

 

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With that, the adventure is on and said to take Chloe and Nate from snowy mountain tops to cities packed with temples to murky swamps and beyond. My demo picked up with our girl and boy split up. They had known that the next clue in their journey to Shangri-La was in a temple in a Nepal, but that village was in the midst of a war. See, the bad guys knew the next clue was here as well, but rather than use their noggins to figure out which temple held the prize, they just rolled in and began ransacking the place. This got the locals in a tizzy, and the militia is now on the scene fighting the machinegun-packing masses at every turn. Chloe and Drake tried to sneak in via a Jeep and by dressing Nate as a reporter, but the bad guys saw through that pretty quickly, chased the vehicle through the city in their own armored vehicle, and fired a nasty turret whenever they got the chance. Navigating down a tight alley, Nate lost the foes but also ditched his ride. On foot and huddled behind a half wall of what used to be the interior of a building, the actual gameplay began.

 

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Pressed up against that wall, Nate tried to eye a group of paramilitary personnel that was slowly walking a destroyed street -- there was rubble everywhere, household objects littered the street, the buildings were smashed and smoldering. Suddenly, a bus careened onto the scene in an attempt to take out some of the bad guys, but it only succeeded in crashing and blocking the road. With the bad guys distracted by the bus, Drake ran into the street, picked up some ammo with Triangle, and baseball slid into cover behind an oven that was packed in with some other junk in the street. From there, Drake popped out, grabbed a straggler, and broke his neck.

 

Two is the magic number.

Giving players a choice in Uncharted 2 is something Naughty Dog drove home during its presentation, and the choice between stealth and straight-up combat is at the forefront of that philosophy. Whereas you could sneak in a few sleeper hold attacks in the original game, that line of offense usually meant you were spotted by the nearly omniscient cast of pirates. In Among Thieves, Naughty Dog is giving you the tools to get your Solid Snake on and silently take down the bad guys if you wish. If enemies haven't spotted Drake, he's going to move differently than if they had seen him. He's going to slink along walls, carefully peek over cover, and move silently. At one point, Nate leapt from one floor of a building to the ledge of the next. There was an enemy standing guard on the rooftop Drake was hanging from, but the foe had his back turned when Nate made the leap of faith, so the jerkwad didn't know our hero was there until the bad guy walked towards the ledge, Nate grabbed the guy 'round his belt, and threw the guard to the pavement below for the instant knockout and/or death.

 

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Like I said though, being quiet is just one half of the equation. After running from the oven to silently killing the straggler, Nate whipped out his gun and started a traditional Uncharted firefight complete with cover, crosshairs, and headshots. With the bullets flying, I did notice one small but welcome change. While the HUD is pretty much the same as the first game -- a tan rectangle featuring a picture of your gun and how many bullets you have left -- there is now a column of grenade slots on the left of the image so that you can easily see how many handheld explosives you're packing.

 

With the small squad out of the way, Drake advanced on the beached bus, but as he got close to it, the vehicle exploded and knocked the lead on his ***. Now, although the explosion was something of a movie (i.e. you couldn't run from the blast) it there was no loading or noticeable dip when the action stopped and the scripted event took over. It was seamless.

 

 

With that point of entry to the city cut off, Nate said "When in doubt, climb." Drake moved to a telephone pole, shimmied up the wood, leapt to some bricks on a building, grabbed onto a sign, and basically took all of his jungle antics into a cityscape. Naughty Dog's emphasis on player choice is parlaying into this climb/run mechanic as well. Nate's going to have more to climb in Uncharted 2, so it's up to you how or if you want to use it. Of course, some of these grab-able spots are old and crappy, so expect air conditioners to begin to fall off walls when you hang on them and signs to collapse under your weight if you hang out too long. Another interesting angle to this newfound ability to climb just about anywhere is that you can now fight from any position you find yourself in. If Nathan's clutching onto a thing of bricks, he can shoot from it, and if he's dangling from a sign, he can shoot from it -- Naughty Dog's calling it "traversal gunplay," and it seems pretty cool.

 

But, as a full-blown Uncharted nerd, the things I dug the most about the Naughty Dog demo were the little touches. When Drake made a big old leap from rooftop to rooftop, he flung his arms backwards and kicked out his legs as he flew. When this is happening, it's easy to see the new animation for his kicking feet and moving hands. When he was looking down a street, it was easy to see the detail of the marketplace at the end of the road. When Nate gets into a hand-to-hand scuffle, it's easy to see that he's now a badass.

 

Release Date: December 31, 2009

 

IGN: Enough is enough: where are Elena Fisher and Sully?!

 

UPDATE

 

Richard Lemarchand: Someone said they saw them arguing over by the water cooler earlier today - but we're really not ready to give away the details about what's happened to the characters you got near and dear with in Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. You'll find out soon enough!

 

IGN: Drake climbed and stuff in the first game; how is this new traversal system any different?

 

Richard Lemarchand: In short, the climbing part of the traversal system in Uncharted 2 is much more realistic now. Reinforcing the sense of realism that the world of Uncharted has, by making sure that the characters and their actions behave just like you would expect in the real world, has been a key area of focus for us throughout development.

 

To that end, we've added animations and technology that allow Drake to climb and explore the environment in a much more free-form and organic manner. Drake's movement has expanded by leaps and bounds (Pun intended!) beyond just jumping from handhold to handhold. Drake now freely clambers hand over hand on all sorts of objects like walls, ladders, signposts, monkey bars, ledges, ropes and so on. We added the ability for him to swing on free-hanging ropes across chasms, too.

 

We've also made sure not to separate out the times when you use these new abilities from the combat sequences. We wanted to create a seamless experience of "traversal combat," flowing freely in and out of combat as you travel through the world. That means that you'll definitely find yourself in the middle of a firefight while running, jumping and climbing around the environment. Again, to keep things realistic, we've made sure that Drake can fire his gun during all of these actions. So if you're trying to get to higher ground and an enemy is already up there shooting down at you, you can fire at him and take him out as you're climbing your way up. This has opened up the design possibilities available to us in a massive way, since we can now throw combat into the game anywhere it looks like it will be interesting.

 

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IGN: How do you make it feel fresh from the player's perspective? I mean, how do you keep it from being a stale mechanic of "Walk to this, press X?"

 

Richard Lemarchand: Our goal with both of the Uncharted games has been to create an experience that is seamless and completely engaging - something that holds your attention from beginning to end, just like a terrific action-adventure movie would. Basically, we don't want you to put down the controller until you're done playing through the game at least once! Based on anecdotes we've heard, that actually happened to some people with Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, and we were always happy to hear it.

 

One of the ways that we approach our game design to make it feel wholly engaging is to make sure that you always have a strong idea about what you have to do to proceed, without relying on methods which pull you out of the experience. So, if we've done our job right, at any given point you'll always know where you're headed next. . If we've done that, we can then set things in any way that we want in order to keep the game fresh and interesting - whether it's exploring, solving puzzles or surviving through combat as you progress in the story and move from one amazing place to another.

 

IGN: Drake will be climbing over more than just rock ledges this time around; how do you go about opening up his world and not having your team beat their heads in with keyboards?

 

Richard Lemarchand: It all starts with level layout, really! Good planning and solid design is usually the key to stopping yourself going crazy when you're setting out on an endeavor as complicated as developing a story-driven character-action game.

 

At the beginning of the development of Uncharted 2 we had a huge leg up in that we already had the engine that we used to create Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. This meant that, unlike with the first game, we could start building simple prototype levels from plain-looking geometry at the very start of the design process. We call these simple, rough levels "blockmesh", and they're the foundation of our level design process. We can very quickly rough out a space in 3D, build it in our tools, and then immediately run and climb around it to get a sense of the space: the feeling of scale that the environment has, how easy it is to perceive paths through the level, the lines of sight that you have from the various spots that you can climb or run to, and so on.

 

At the same time we can start to throw in enemies, and get a sense of how well the space works for combat, as well as chucking in interactive objects to prototype out the puzzles that we're considering. At this point, the Naughty Dog Game Engine 2.0 is like a giant sandbox, where we can incredibly quickly create an interactive demo of pretty much any idea we can think of. We can easily add in or take out hand-holds and ledges to climb up to and run along, and because the geometry is still so simple, it's incredibly easy to improve based on the discoveries we make as we traverse around it.

 

After that, it becomes an intense process of play-testing the level and iteratively improving its design, making small changes until the blockmesh plays really well, and we can pass it on the artists who will make it look amazing. It was really great to be able to hit the ground running as fast as we did with this game, and I think that when players see how freely they can clamber over and around the environment as they lock horns with the enemies, they'll get a sense of the fun we had laying out the game's levelsIGN: What about the snow we've heard so little about since that first trailer? How have you folks tackled weather this time around?

 

Richard Lemarchand: One of the things that Uncharted: Drake's Fortune received a lot of praise for was the quality of our water effects. We'd set ourselves a goal to make the water in Uncharted look as good as anything that had ever been seen in a video game, and we collectively spent a lot of time working to make sure that our water looked as realistic as possible, and that it acted very realistically, too.

 

For Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, we've taken that dedication and attention to detail, and applied it to snow and ice - which is really just water with the temperature lowered by fifty degrees! Unfortunately, we hadn't implemented a "freeze all the water in this level" button in our engine, so we had to do it the good old fashioned way - with lots of hard work and the skilful creation of new shaders and visual effects.

 

We've spent a lot of time focused on the distinctive look that snow has as it falls and is blown by the wind, and of course on the way in which Drake leaves footprints as he trudges through the snowdrifts in the Himalayan mountains that he ventures to. When he's out in the snow he'll accumulate a layer of snowflakes on his clothes and in his hair, which will slowly thaw when he gets back inside under cover. Ice reflects light in a way that cleverly mimics the sub-surface scattering that goes on inside a chunk of frozen water, and gives it a look of incredible volume and density. We have a few more tricks up our sleeves, too - all in all, we're really happy with the way the weather's shaping up in Uncharted 2.

 

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IGN: Will Drake have different animations depending on his surroundings --shivering in the cold, slipping on wet pavement, etc.?

 

Richard Lemarchand: We're big believers that great animation grounds a character in the reality of a world better than almost anything else, and so we're paying lots of attention to giving Drake a very wide range of context-dependent animation that helps sell what's happening around him in the world.

 

One new animation feature for Uncharted 2 is that, if he hasn't been spotted by the enemies in an area that he enters, Drake will hunker down and look as if he's trying to keep a low profile as he walks along, in order to get the drop on his foes. Drake still stumbles over uneven terrain or if he only just makes a jump, and he will look stressed while he's in combat, as we layer additional animations into both his posture and his facial features.

 

Another huge new feature for us in that we've added technology that lets any character in the game perform all of their traversal and combat behaviors on any kind of moving object. This has expanded what's possible for our game design in an incredible way, and has given us the ability to easily create those big summer blockbuster moments from the movies that the Uncharted universe is so inspired by. Whether it's fighting on a moving vehicle as it races through the countryside, or running around inside a tower block as it starts to collapse - all of those tense, over-the-top moments can now be experienced by players in gameplay, while they're actually playing.

 

IGN: How does the ice/snow function as a gameplay mechanic?

 

Richard Lemarchand: We don't want to give away all our secrets - you'll have to use your imagination to figure out all the ways in which we might use sub-zero temperatures in the service of gameplay! One thing I will say is that if you've ever tried to fight an intense cover-based gun battle against a vicious enemy in the middle of a Force Ten snowstorm, then you'll appreciate how complicated the reduced visibility can make things for combatants on both sides�

 

IGN: How long will this title be?

 

Richard Lemarchand: We're not quite ready to say how long the experience will be, since we still have plenty of development time in front of us before we ship.

However, we're making sure that the end result is not only a satisfying length to play through, but that it stays true to the needs of our story.

 

On top of that, we're planning on adding several features to the game that will increase replayability and extend the gameplay experience for everyone. We'll be revealing those features at a later date, so hold tight for more info!

 

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IGN: What's your goal with Uncharted 2? Are you trying to make the most realistic traversal game featuring snow ever created?

 

Richard Lemarchand: You left out amazing cover-based shooting, intriguing problem-solving, our gripping story, our awesome character performances, and�

 

But seriously, if you distill all of the incredible variety of stuff that we're putting into this game into one simple concept: we really just want to create the most amazing and playable version of a summer blockbuster action movie that has ever been seen on the PLAYSTATION 3, or on any game console, for that matter. We want the quality of our performances and writing, and the careful way that the story interweaves with the very best action-gameplay we've ever created, to really transport the player into a world of adventure that they'll never forget.

 

We really think that we're outdoing ourselves with Uncharted 2, and we can't wait to see what people think of what we're making!

 

IGN: When can the fans expect to hear more about this game -- i.e. when will you stop torturing me and let me play it?

 

Richard Lemarchand: But it's so much fun to torture you! Of course, that means not quite yet - but you'll get your hands on it when we think you've suffered enough!

 

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Well,I'm turned on.

Exploring the Art of Uncharted 2

 

Naughty Dog guides us through its concept work for Nate's next adventure.

by Matt Wales, IGN UK UK, April 9, 2009 - They say a picture's worth a thousand words, but sometimes even that's not enough. As Naughty Dog beavers diligently away behind the scenes on its upcoming PlayStation 3 sequel Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, IGN has rifled through the developer's pre-production concept work in a desperate bid to unearth some of the game's still plentiful secrets.

 

Cast your eyes over the next few pages and you'll see for yourself that each select piece is packed with tantilising allusions to the final game's more elusive details. Stunning they might be, but there's only so much you can extrapolate without slipping into the realms of fanciful speculation. That being the case, we sat down with Naughty Dog to find out exactly how each piece of concept art encapsulates the team's ambitions for the finished game.

 

 

 

 

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Richard Lemarchand, Co-Lead Designer

 

This should look familiar to anyone who has seen our first full-length trailer! I think this piece of concept art communicates, in a really limited space, so much about what we aim to do and the emotions we want to express in Uncharted 2: Among Thieves.

 

One of the major themes of Uncharted 2, which this piece captures incredibly well, is that things are very, very different for Nathan Drake this time around. Not only does he find himself in a series of new, more hostile environments, but he's also going to find himself in stickier situations than we've seen him in before.

 

We wanted to set the expectation that Uncharted 2 would deliver exactly what you want from an action-filled summer blockbuster, and creating these incredibly huge, almost over-the-top scenarios seemed to be a great way of doing that. The situations are not impossible or unbelievable, but they're just far enough towards the edge to make you wonder if Drake can really overcome the challenges and survive. You'll have to stay vigilant though � things can always get much, much worse without notice!

 

 

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Evan Wells, Co-President

 

In Uncharted 2 we really wanted to emphasis the fact that we are providing a gameplay experience that no other game out there offers. Our hero, Nathan Drake, has a fully featured move set that lets him traverse his environment freely whether it be by running, jumping, climbing, swinging or swimming.

 

In the first game we already had a leg up on other shooters by having a character that could climb and jump around his environment, but we were limited by the states from which he could actually fire his weapon. Now those limits have been lifted with what we're calling "traversal gunplay". This really frees us up to put Drake in some over-the-top, blockbuster film-like situations with combat setups anytime and anywhere - even when Drake is negotiating some tricky traversal sections that might require some problem-solving to overcome. To top it all off, we've added the ability for him to perform all of this climbing, jumping, and shooting while on moving objects, both large and small. The result is the ability to pull off some really memorable moments like the one inspired by this piece of concept art.

 

 

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Robh Ruppel, Art Director

 

What we're pushing in Uncharted 2 is making the world Drake explores more mythical while still based on real world locations. We're pushing the sense of scale and domain to make each location more interesting, more real and more intriguing than their true life counterparts. The Gompa concept exaggerates real structures but in a way that is only available in the Uncharted universe! More IS betterNeil Druckmann, Co-Lead Designer

 

The environments in Uncharted 2 are much more varied than in Drake's previous adventure, which made it extremely important for us to provide a sense of continuity as you play through the game. We don't want to our locations to feel like disconnected levels, which may break the immersive experience we've worked so hard to create. We do this by making sure that you can easily understand how areas connect to one another. In this case, the mountain that houses this mysterious ice-cave can be seen from the village at its base, which is another area in the game that you will visit. What also helps us build a sense of space is that we have zero load screens during Drake's adventure, so that moving between areas and environments in the game is virtually seamless and feels more natural.

 

 

 

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Evan Wells, Co-President

 

We've already revealed that Drake will find himself in the snowy mountains of the Himalayas and in a war-torn Nepalese city. However, you'll definitely see a broad variety of new places in Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. By the time you've completed the game, you will have visited a diverse set of environments throughout Asia � from lush tropical locations and urban locales, to the snow and ice of the far Himalayas. Sadly, we're not quite ready to give away the details on what you see here yet so you'll have to speculate on the significance of these images a little while longer. We'll be revealing more soon enough!

 

 

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And here's one final bonus image for you. Don't know what's going on here? Then you might want to check out IGN's extensive first look at Uncharted 2 and join us for more on the game soon.

 

 

March 27, 2009 - If you ever get concerned that the Game Developers Conference is getting too much like a consumer-focused show, you should come hear Jason Gregory talk. The generalist programmer at Naughty Dog, Gregory spoke all about programming languages, syntax, data definition, and everything else that goes into "state-based scripting" at the show today.

 

What's that mean to you? Probably not much -- state-based scripting involves managing objects in the game -- except that Gregory showed some footage from Uncharted 2: Among Thieves.

 

To demonstrate how Naughty Dog's coding process worked, Gregory showed a clip that I saw a few weeks ago when I previewed Uncharted 2. Already off the ground, Drake hops to a sign attached to a building in that same colorful, war-torn area. The blue and yellow sign groans, Drake hops over the top of the structure to hang from the other side, the sign starts to give way, and Nathan shimmies to a windowsill just before the sign tears away from the wall and falls to the street below. Gregory went on to show more from my previous demo including a quick clip of that bus barreling down the street through some soldiers as well as Drake working his way up to that blue and yellow sign.

 

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So, it was the exact same stuff you've already read about. The one new thing I noticed as Nate scaled the side of a building on his way to that sign was how his hands went to specific bricks. It wasn't like this part was just a climbing object and his hands could go anywhere -- he was moving his fingers to specific handholds. It's a little thing, but it looked good.

 

^NA Fall 09

^EU TBC^[1]

^AUS 2009

 

NewApril 27, 2009 - I'm a pretty big fan of the Uncharted franchise. I've got my Platinum Trophy for the first game, and I'm eagerly awaiting Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. Still, when I've gone to events for the sequel, my biggest concern has been where Elena and Sully are and why they haven't been announced for this game. Sure, with titles such as Resident Evil 5 as ammunition, I've asked about the possibility of multiplayer, but I had always assumed that if multiplayer came to Nathan Drake's world, it would be your standard, side-by-side co-op affair.

 

Turns out, I know nothing, and Naughty Dog was nice enough to completely level my perception of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves at a recent event unveiling both cooperative and competitive multiplayer modes. Both are online-only affairs.

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Come see the action for yourself.Now, the Dogs said that there are going to be a bunch of different game types and options for you to check out, but for my hands-on time, they kept it limited to co-op, team deathmatch, and a few rounds of Plunder (capture the flag in the Uncharted universe). Cooperative matches were for three people at a time (folks played as Nate, Chloe, and Sully) while the competitive matches were for teams of five -- a villain team of SWAT-looking guys and a hero team featuring Nathan, Chloe, Sullivan, some dude in a hat, and Elena. Don't freak out fans; Naughty Dog said that the inclusion of Elena and Sullivan in multiplayer didn't technically confirm them for the single-player campaign because the two characters were using their skins from the original Uncharted (there'll be a few options like this), but it's close enough for me.

 

Co-op was probably the experience of the night for me. Remember how much fun Uncharted was as you took cover behind crates, snapped the necks of bad guys, and earned medals? All that is here, but now you get to do it with two friends. However, this is not the same story as the single-player campaign. These co-op missions will be instances and experiences that are all their own.

 

The level I got to tackle was a modified version of the one I got to see last time with the crashed bus, sun-splashed streets, and lush colors. The mission started with a cutscene of our heroes scoping a worn treasure map and Drake pointing in one direction and saying this is where we needed to go. When gameplay picked up, I was at one end of a long corridor that curved around a building and had plenty of cover objects in it. My two companions and myself stormed down the space, were greeted by the bad guys, and soon let our natural Uncharted skills take over as we leapt behind boxes and only popped up to rake in the occasional headshot.

 

Of course, when someone on my team got cocky, he or she would get dropped. Like most co-op titles these days, you have the chance to revive fallen teammates. When hurt, the player will drop to one knee and clutch the ground while an icon mimicking the position pops up above the hurtin' hero. Around the icon is a red meter that's slowly bleeding out. The team has that long to get over to the downed comrade and hold Triangle to refill the meter and get the soldier back on his or her feet. If no one comes to the player's aid, they wait 20 seconds, restart at the last checkpoint, and run back to the battleground. If everyone dies, the mission restarts from the last checkpoint.

 

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She's got your back.Sticking together is going to be key to besting the challenges in co-op Uncharted (duh), even though you will be competing to see who got the most points in a round -- something made more interesting by the point multiplier that's building in the upper right corner of the screen while you're shooting and brawling. Although most PlayStation 3 owners feel right at home when they're hiding behind cover and watching dozens of enemies setup camp in front, Naughty Dog has dropped a number of mission points and enemies that you just can't get past by yourself.

 

After my squad had cleared the alleyway of foes, we popped out in that area where the bus had crashed in the single-player demo. Back then, Drake got around the obstruction by climbing a refrigerator, shimmying up a light pole, and leaping across the sides of buildings. In the co-op campaign, the fridge is gone so Drake can't just scale the pole by himself. Instead, a red icon featuring two silhouettes pops up by the pole to let you know some teamwork is needed to advance. As Sully, I walked to the red circle on the ground, Nate walked to his, and with the press of a button, I gave him a boost. Drake went about shimmying around up there, while Chloe and I fought off the waves of bad guys that decided to swoop in on us. With us engaging the enemy, Nathan climbed to a room, found a bookcase, and knocked out a window to the street below. He rejoined us, we beat the baddies, and then we all moved to the bookcase -- now marked with a set of three silhouettes -- and repositioned it as a ramp to the top of the bus. This let us get to the next section.

 

In terms of the big bad enemies you'll need to gang up on, Naughty Dog says that there will be a few, but I only got to see a "grappler" and a massive dude who was armored like a tank and packing a gigantic chaingun. The grappler is pretty much a sneaky jerk who is using the choke moves Nathan showcased in the first game. He'll get up behind you, put you in a sleeper hold, and you'll be powerless to stop him; it's up to your team to pop the guy in the head and save your skin. For the chaingunner, my squad had to stick together, stay in cover, and shoot as fast as we could to take the opponent out without getting vaporized. At one point, our plan broke down and Chloe was taken out near the treasure we were after. I was pressed up against a doorjamb and doing a bit of blind fire in hopes that I could take out the chaingunner. Of course, I had been playing cowboy and not picking up the ammo enemies dropped, so soon I found myself without a bullet to my name. I tossed a grenade, made a mad dash for Chloe's body, and soon found the screen black and white while my body lay on the ground. It's unclear whether the gunner's bullets or my own grenade killed me, but I got the "Purple Heart" medal postmortem� whatever that means.

 

 

.When you are successful and wipe out the big man, you can pick up his gatling gun and tear apart anything that moves just like your opponent did, but it's important to keep in mind that Friendly Fire is definitely alive and well in Uncharted 2. When I first jumped into another play session, I quickly reacquainted myself with the buttons and tossed a grenade right at Chloe's feet. It went off, she got blown into the sky, and I waited while she respawned. I was thrilled to find the rocket launcher on another outing, but I doubt my friend playing as Sully was as excited when I buried a round right between his shoulder blades as he jogged into combat. Some of the coolest new items in Uncharted are the graspable propane tanks that are littered around the levels. They'll slow you down, but you can grab them, walk with them, and toss them into the air before shooting them and taking out a mass of people� some of whom may be your own people.

 

However, if you don't literally kill each other before making it to the treasure, you'll find the treasure chest and have to defend it for a set period of time. Wave after wave of enemies is going to be coming at you during this standoff, so you'll need to be gathering ammo and switching up your position every now and again, but some good communication should lead to the cutscene of Drake opening the chest and pulling out a big ol' golden idol.

 

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Villain!That same idol will be the star of one of the competitive multiplayer modes. Plunder challenges your team of five to get across the map, grab the golden statue, and get it back to base for a point. Whereas team deathmatch rewards you for kills with points, the only way to get on the official scoreboard in Plunder is by banking the idol. Now, if co-op feels like your traditional (see: awesome) Uncharted experience mixed with friends, competitive play looks like your traditional Uncharted game but feels nothing like it.

 

I mean, yeah, you're Nathan or one of his cohorts, but you're running, gunning, and trying not to get killed. You won't have the luxury of enemies who stay in one place, you won't be able to just chill out behind cover and catch your breath, and you won't be able to feel like the baddest mother on the planet with ease. I feel like I'm a seasoned Uncharted player, and I was getting thoroughly pwned in my first few games of head-to-head TDM competition. True, I turned it around in the end and kicked the butt of Naughty Dog Co-President Christophe Balestra (check out Podcast Beyond on Thursday, April 30, 2009 for the full report), but the beginning was rough because I was still trying to play the mode like I was playing the average game of Uncharted. Don't do that. Run, shoot, and run some more.

 

These TDM brawls were taking place in a blown out plaza at night. The map was filled with torches, destroyed buildings, and things to take cover behind. On the other side, the Plunder missions were going down in a tiny village map that had huts everywhere. Some of these structures had ladders that you could use to crawl to the roofs and cherry pick from there, which I was all too happy to do. Both of these environments looked as good as you'd expect an Uncharted game to look and didn't seem to have any sections of slowdown or framerate dips. Even though nine more people were playing, it still looked like you'd expect Uncharted to look -- even when I fired an RPG into a dude hiding behind some cover and watched as his body spiraled into the air and the cover he was using exploded.

 

What's crazy cool on top of all that competitive goodness -- well, besides the slew of weapons from the game such as sniper rifles, the Desert-5, the SAS-12 shotgun, and the Colt Defender? You're going to be able to save entire multiplayer matches to your hard drive and then edit them and view them in Cinema Mode. Rotating the camera at will and zooming in on specific fights will be just some of the commands you have for the ten cinema save slots at your fingertips. Naughty Dog didn't show the mode, but it definitely sounds interesting.

 

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That was close.Believe it or not, that's just the tip of the Uncharted 2: Among Thieves multiplayer madness. Naughty Dog was sure to stress that there are going to be other modes and a number of co-op missions, but the examples you just read about were all the team was prepared to show. Honestly, I had always been a bit mixed on the idea of multiplayer in Uncharted; I liked the idea of the franchise being a solid single-player experience and nothing else. Still, co-op is a blast and I'm thankful it is its own entity so that the single-player portion can thrive and not be tied to having to have a friend playing to get the full story. Meanwhile, competitive multiplayer is fun, too, but I'm going to need to play more before I get crazy excited about it. Everything looked great visually, but the mode never really had the Uncharted feel to it for me.

 

Anxious to get your hands on Uncharted 2's multiplayer? Well, you can keep checking IGN for news and previews, but if you buy one of the first copies of Infamous, Sucker Punch's new superhero game, you'll get a voucher code for Uncharted 2's multiplayer beta packed right in with it. Electricity-based abilities and Nathan Drake craziness? Sweet.

 

.April 27, 2009 - Chances are you were going to buy Infamous already, but Sony just sweetened the pot. A lot. Turns out the Infamous copies that will be hitting stores on May 26 will have a voucher code inside them that grants exclusive access to the Uncharted 2: Among Thieves multiplayer beta.

 

Wow.

 

Yes, the multiplayer mayhem IGN told you about today can be yours if you just plunk down your cold, hard cash for Sucker Punch's superhero epic. The news came via a trailer at the Infamous preview party in Seattle, and during that video some small text ran underneath the Uncharted part that said "Beta available 6/23 to 6/29." Does that mean that's when you'll be able to play? Does that mean that's when you'll be able to download? We don't know, but we're looking into it.

 

Until we get more on the subject, have fun filing those Infamous preorders!

 

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There will be a film system much like in Halo 3 you can take screenshot's save films,and move the camera around the world.

 

You can upgrade your character,although all characters play the same the difference is simply aesthetic,you can upgrade them as I said before.

 

There will be a strait up Deathmatch mode,anf there will be Team modes,Objective based game's and team deathmatch.

 

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-June 2, 2009 - Ever since info on Uncharted 2: Among Thieves began trickling out of the Naughty Dog and Sony camps, I've had one question -- "Where the hell is Elena?" At the end of Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, Nathan and Elena rode off into the sunset with love and dollar signs in their eyes. However, when I first got to see Uncharted 2, Nate was on his own and an Australian woman was wrapping her legs around his waist. Where was the happy ending? Where was the world I knew?

 

Today, I began getting the answers I needed on the E3 show floor. Elena is back.

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An E3 Trailer? Yay!

With Naughty Dog Co-President Evan Wells driving a hands-off demo, I got the inside look at two levels from one of this year's most anticipated sequels. Now, it's E3, so I'm not going to hold your hand on what Uncharted 2 is all about because I've actually already written a fair bit about the subject in an attempt to make you an expert. Nathan Drake is back, that Australian woman is Chloe, they're after the Cintamani Stone, and there's an evil dude named Lazarevic who's willing to kill anyone that gets between him and said stone. What I can add to that summary today is that Elena's back with a cameraman and is chasing Lazarevic's story -- he's a war criminal who the world believes dead.

 

We'll get back to Elena in a second, but the first part of my demo picked up shortly after the six minutes of single-player footage IGN posted left off. Nate and Chloe were about 15 stories or so above the streets of a Nepalese city chilling around the rooftop pool of Hotel Shangri-La. See, Marco Polo went through this town when it was all temples and such about 700 years before Nathan showed up to tear the place apart. In that downtime, a city grew up around the temples and changed the landscape. Now, our dynamic duo has to find a specific temple so that they can find the fabled stone.

 

http://ps3media.ign.com/ps3/image/article/990/990200/uncharted-2-among-thieves-20090602075217053.jpgDrake one, trees zero.OK, so maybe the pair wasn't chilling as much as they were on the run from Lazarevic's murderous men, but they were definitely high up there. From the top of this hotel, Wells spun the camera 360 degrees to take in the whole city -- the mountains in the way back, the smattering of buildings in below, and the bright blue pool in the center of the roof. Soon, Nate and Chloe were on their way and demonstrating the impressive-looking traversal stuff that allows the characters to grab individual handholds with breathtaking accuracy.

 

If this sounds familiar, it's probably because this first section was actually demoed during Sony's E3 press conference today. If you didn't see it, I totally back you taking a break to watch that video so we can talk about it.

 

I'll wait.

 

You saw it? Cool, right? I about lost it when Drake hopped to that green awning, it dropped, and he scrambled to get his grip back. What was super-cool about my demo compared to the Sony demo -- well, beside the fact that I got to see a whole extra level no one had seen yet -- were all of the little differences. In the press conference demo, the helicopter pins Drake down on one part of the roof and takes out some flowerpots, but in my demo, Nate beat the 'copter to the punch and knocked them out himself. When the building Drake, Chloe and all those bad guys were in began to topple during the show, it was awesome and destructive, but in my demo, one of the desks got pushed in a certain direction and tumbled into a bad guy to take him out of the gaping hole in the side of the building. All the crazy cool stuff you see in Uncharted is dynamic and happening in that specific instance -- with stuff like this, there's no way to guarantee you and I will see the same stuff.

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We've got some new gameplay for you, fanboy.

This deep dive on Uncharted 2 also gave Naughty Dog a chance to point out how it is using the game's setting to drive home themes and emotions. Most of what we have seen in Uncharted 2 has been set in the sun-splashed streets of that war torn village -- things are bright, Nathan's making quips, and everyone's happy -- but from that hotel rooftop, I could see thunderclouds gathering in the distance. When the second part of my demo began, the rain had rolled in and the mood was definitely different.

 

Jumping ahead a bit in the game's narrative, this point opens with Chloe and Drake exiting the temple with their next clue on the hunt for Shangri-La. Problem is the duo had left Elena and her cameraman Jeff at the entrance of the temple and now the whole area was crawling with Lazarevic's men. As Drake made his way out of the building -- killing bad guys and having his chest-anchored flashlight cast real shadows as he moved -- he eventually found the original blonde beauty pinned down by enemy fire.

 

Both Chloe and Nathan took out a number of bad guys on their way to Elena and Jeff, but this gave Wells a chance to show off some more cool stuff that'll make shooting people in the face more fun than ever. For starters, depth of field rocks in Uncharted 2. Apparently, post-processing is happening on the SPUs so the PS3 can render like no other, but that's all Greek to me. What you need to know is that when you have enemies on the screen on different planes, the one you aim your gun at is clearer than the other folks on the screen - it's just like focusing your eyes in real life, and it looks great.

 

After switching between enemies and making their way from the top of the temple entrance to the rainy ground floor where Elena was pinned, I got to see some of that Uncharted storytelling we're always lauding here on IGN. In the brawl, Jeff was shot, Drake moved the man's hand and found a bloody bullet hole above his right hip. If the quartet was to keep moving, Drake would need to sling Jeff's arm over his shoulder and carry him the best he could -- that's not exactly an ideal situation in the leaping/running/lunging world of Uncharted 2.

 

Pissed, Chloe demands that they just leave Jeff behind, but Drake and Elena won't hear it. Drake picks up Jeff and the trek turns into an escort mission. Now, Drake can only use his pistol, he can't put Jeff down, and he's moving a lot slower. Normally, escort missions suck, but this one actually seemed pretty enjoyable. For starters, it's eye-sex to watch Jeff shift his weight onto Drake and swing his left arm lazily as he stumbles through the streets. Beyond the visual element of it, this played into Naughty Dog's "expectations and results" mantra. The developers want you and Drake to feel in control of a situation and think you know what is about to happen before getting knocked on your ass. Here, the group of people would turn a corner and find what looked to be a straight shot down an alley, but when they'd get going, a turret truck would pop up at the other end and make them duck into a doorway and work their way through a bombed out building. Some guy would pop up with a machinegun, Drake would quickly pop the guy with his handgun, and then a few more baddies would jump out to make the group change course again. Chloe passed a stairwell, and one of Lazarevic's goons jumped out picked her up by the neck, and began choking her against the wall. Basically, you were always on your toes.

 

http://ps3media.ign.com/ps3/image/article/990/990200/uncharted-2-among-thieves-20090602075215068.jpgGet'em, Drake!These surprises continued until the kids worked their way up a staircase and came to a section where the only way to advance was to jump across a giant gap. Seeing it as the final straw, Chloe told Drake he had done a good job but it was time to leave Jeff to die. Drake resisted, troops started advancing on the quartet's position, and Chloe pulled her gun and turned it on Nathan while saying "I was trying to save your skin, you idiot."

 

With that, the demo ended.

 

I don't know what's going to happen next, but I want you to remember that I've always been against this kangaroo-lovin' hussy and that true love like Drake and Elena's never dies. I could write volumes about everything I saw today -- when a bad guy catches your punch during a melee attack, you'll need to tap Triangle to counter; the new FAL rifle fires in bursts and packs a scope; and the super-armored enemies have skulls painted on their masks -- but I have a ton of other E3 write-ups to do this evening. What you need to know is that Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is fun and set to come out this fall. Sadly, Wells wouldn't narrow "fall" down for me, but he wasn't totally mute on the subject.

 

"I can tell you that we don't have a lot of time left," he said with a grin.

 

Game Trailers P1

 

Game Trailers P2

 

 

NEW July 21, 2009 - Hold on to your Naughty Dog hats -- Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is coming out Oct. 13, 2009. Yes, the sequel to IGN's 2007 PS3 Game of the Year finally has a release date and is set to drop Nathan Drake into another life and death quest for riches. Elena Fisher is back, but things don't seem lovey-dovey with her and Drake, and the game even introduces a new love interest in Chloe Frazer.

 

Fans have a lot to look forward to as October gets closer, but until then, the brand new box art below will have to do.

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June 30, 2009 - Over at the official PlayStation blog today, a couple folks from Naughty Dog stepped into a live chat to answer fans' questions about Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. Evan Wells, co-president, and Amy Hennig, creative director, were on hand to field the Q&A and gave us a handful of new details on what we'll be playing this fall.

 

In terms of the game's length, Evan chimed in to say that "the single player campaign is definitely going to be longer than Uncharted: Drake's Fortune." He pointed out that the online co-op and competitive multiplayer modes will add to the value, and the more than 90 minutes of cutscenes will offer up a more robust story than the first time around.

 

The beta was apparently a big success. The team has already implemented a ton of features based on feedback from people in the beta. For example, there's now a skill rating that's used to match appropriately-skilled players against one another.

 

As far as multiplayer Trophies go, Evan mentioned that while they're still finalizing the list, they may include a couple of online-centric Trophies, but they don't want to force players to grind just to gain them.

 

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In terms of the release date, the official word is still sometime in the the fall, but Evan continued by saying "I assure you that an official date will be announced very soon", so we'll know soon enough.

 

Split-screen support is a no-go. Naughty Dog only wanted to support online multiplayer as the studio would have had to compromise the visuals in order to get split-screen working.

 

With regards to the movie, Amy said, "We're really excited about the development of Uncharted: Drake's Fortune as a movie -- we've been working with Arad Productions for the last year-and-a-half or so, and couldn't be happier about their enthusiasm for the project. We're looking forward to sharing more info with you all as soon as we can."

 

Another multiplayer "demo" is planned to hit the airwaves before the game is released. While Evan didn't so much as say that it's going to be an entirely open demo, he said that "it should be available to an even wider group this time, so if you missed the last one I don't think you'll have any problem getting in this one."

 

As far as newcomers go, Evan says that the team was very conscious about making Uncharted 2 a standalone experience. He said that folks who have played through the first game will of course recognize plenty of characters and those sorts of things, but new players should be able to easily figure out what's going on, who the characters are, how they relate to each other and so forth.

 

With regards to the number of puzzles, Amy says that there will be roughly the same amount that we saw in the first game, but that you will have to figure out how to navigate the environment and make better use of it in combat. There's also a journal in the game, except that instead of Francis Drake's diary (like in the original title), it's Nate's own journal this time, and when players use it for reference to figure out puzzles, they'll have to thumb through it and find clues themselves rather than having it always show the correct page like in the previous game.

 

When asked about the variety of the locales in the game, we were told that Nate's journey takes him around the globe, including stops in Turkey, Borneo, Nepal and into Tibet and the Himalayas.

 

A fan asked about how the team implemented snow in the game, as it looks to play a big part in certain segments of the adventure. Evan hit on the technology behind it and said, "Drake and the enemies will leave footprints in the snow with 3D clumps that build up around their feet, and it even has gameplay implications when the weather really whips up and visibility becomes an issue."

 

One thing's for sure - this live chat didn't make our wait for the game any easier.

 

 

nJuly 23, 2009 - Sometimes, the San Diego Comic-Con can be a cruel mistress. The good news is that I finally got to play two levels of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves single-player. The bad news is that they were levels I've covered pretty extensively before.

 

Yup, today I picked up a DualShock 3 and took Nathan into "Urban Warfare" and "Desperate Times." If you're too lazy to click on those links, Urban Warfare was the market battle with the exploding truck that's set in the same area as the co-op mission in the current Uncharted 2 multiplayer beta. Meanwhile, Desperate Times is the mission that starts Nathan and Chloe on the roof of a hotel and follows them through a helicopter battle and the eventual collapse of a building with them inside it.

 

Awesome stuff, but somewhat old all the same.

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Yeah, this game looks good.

In terms of gameplay, it controlled and felt just like you'd expect -- it's Uncharted. Taking cover was still a breeze, aiming and shooting is still set to the shoulder buttons, and Mr. Drake can scale a wall like nobody's business. Personally, I'm still impressed with the level of detail as Nathan's hands seek out individual handholds, the draw distance from the hotel rooftop in Nepal, and so on. Good stuff, and I can't wait to play the whole game. Now, show me more new stuff.

 

When I wasn't playing Uncharted 2 single-player missions today, I was actually moderating a panel all about Uncharted 2. That's right: it was IGN's Greg Miller alongside the likes of Naughty Dog Creative Director Amy Henning, the voice of Nathan Drake Nolan North, and Emily Rose the voice of Elena Fisher.

 

Crazy, right?

 

Anyway, in front of about 1,000 audience members, the cast and Naughty Dog dished on what it's like to rehearse for the game, work as a group, and be part of the Uncharted phenomenon. One of the hottest topics of conversation during the panel was that of the upcoming Uncharted movie -- mainly if the cast would be interested in reprising their roles.

 

"As long as I get to be Nathan Drake in this game world and keep working with these people hereââ¬Â¦ it's ok if it doesn't happen," North said. "I get to play him for all you guys."

 

Rose was a bit more blunt, "I would love to be her," she said, although she did echo North's comment later.

 

http://ps3media.ign.com/ps3/image/article/100/1007049/uncharted-2-among-thieves-20090723102254298.jpgDon't trust her, Nate!"I think a cameo would be in order at least," North said.

 

Meanwhile, during the question and answer session, a fan asked Claudia Black, the voice of Chloe Frazer, about her time on The Dresden Files and if it was possible that she might make an appearance on Torchwood. Her answer was simple.

 

"Write to them and ask," Black said.

 

Comic Con Dev Interview P1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueKhMOFeIVc

 

Comic Con Dev Interview P2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkWffCtdJqM&NR=1

 

n

Uncharted 2 "Gold Rush" Mode Preview

Even though what I really want to play is the epic-looking single-player portion of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Sony isn't letting anyone near that yet. Sony and Naughty Dog did premiere a new co-operative mode at Comic-Con, though, called "Gold Rush". It's essentially Naughy Dog's take on the capture the flag mode, with some interesting variations that ensure you'll only enjoy it with teamwork.

 

THE SETUP

 

On one side of the map, there's a treasure chest. On the other, there's treasure. Can you guess what the objective of Gold Rush is? Teams must fight their way over to the treasure, capture it and drag it back to the other location. The treasure isn't an idol that fits in your pocket, though; it's massive, heavy and disables the person who chooses to pick it up from firing a two-handed weapon. Pistols only here.

 

By changing the way one player is able to contribute to the match, it quickly requires everyone else to begin paying attention to enemy combat patterns. While the player holding the idol is able to take out a few enemies with the pistol, it's not nearly as effective as the other weapons and you're not going to have a chance to run for cover when the situation heats up. You can choose to drop the treasure, but since it takes a moment to pick it up or drop it, it's not a light decision.

 

MAKE SURE TO BRING FRIENDS

 

If you're not playing as a team, Gold Rush is worthless. The sheer enemy numbers and respawn time means a team needs to be cooperating. That's not exactly an easy feat at Comic-Con, where the level of player skill varies wildly because the kind of person playing varies just as much. Then again, maybe that's a fantastic way to find out what playing Uncharted 2 multiplayer online will be like -- Comic-Con isn't much different from the Internet, you know? I lucked out, thankfully.

 

My team eventually figured out a good rhythm for defending the player with the treasure, allowing us to score two times before it became clear the person behind me was going to beat me over the head unless the controller was handed over. It wasn't common for the treasure to ever make it to the other side, so I took some pride in being a successful treasure-holder during one of our matches.

 

SOON ENOUGH

 

Naughty Dog has already said another Uncharted 2 multiplayer beta is planned. If its showing "Gold Rush" publicly at Comic-Con, seems likely it'll show up there, too. Just make sure you're playing with some friends when it arrives.

That's not soon enough.

 

You never know who you're going to run into at Comic-Con. Take, for example, this interview with Naughty Dog Community Manager Arne Meyer, who G4tv.com's Dana Vinson ran into at the Planet Illogica party in San Diego. Arne graciously gave us some information on the game, as well as the cinematic devices that make it look like a seamless experience from start to finish.

 

http://i410.photobucket.com/albums/pp190/GMOF_Tucker/0810092340.jpghttp://i410.photobucket.com/albums/pp190/GMOF_Tucker/0810092341.jpg

Preorder case and the inside

 

 

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves PlayStation 3 Gameplay - Active Cinematic

 

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves PlayStation 3 Gameplay - SDCC 09: Stealth

 

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves PlayStation 3 Gameplay - SDCC 09: Run and Gun

 

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves PlayStation 3 Gameplay - SDCC 09: Night Kill

 

 

 

 

 

Go to the bottom of the post and click the links if you want pics.There not showing up here for some reason

 

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.

 

Click the image above to check out all Uncharted 2: Among Thieves screens.

 

* 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.

 

* 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.

 

 

When you see a glass case chockfull of Crash Bandicoot schwag, then you're either at the headquarters of Crash Mania, or you're at Naughty Dog. Matt and I swung by to talk with co-president Evan Wells and creative director Amy Hennig, play some Gold Rush, and take some pictures. Here's a bunch of pictures from the studio, starting with the aforementioned Crash schwag. A lot of studios have a schwag collection case for their various games, but Naughty Dog has a pretty extensive collection. Offhand, the other studio that has a larger array of toys/magazines/awards would be Blizzard.

 

This thing guards the entrance to the art area. Yikes. There's a similar Uncharted "oooh, scary!" item right at the front door, but we were way too frightened to take a picture.

 

Two ways you know it's crunch time at Naughty Dog: the QA room looks crazy-messy and sometimes people in the office forget to dispose of empty water bottle boxes. Evan Wells was very apologetic about the state of this room, but considering the state of my own office, he has nothing to be sorry about.

 

And the other way you know it's crunch time, the corner of the men's room has an array of hygiene products to help ease the fact that you're working seven days a week without going home much.

 

EXCLUSIVE SCREENSHOT. Well, not really. Unless you consider, "an animator's desktop while he works on moving Nathan Drake's mouth open-and-close" a screenshot.

 

SECOND EXCLUSIVE SCREENSHOT. Or, rather, a peek at the concept art wall, with some clear paintings of a warmly-dressed Nathan Drake.

 

Finally, right outside Wells' office, is this neat frame of Jak's original moveset. Study this, budding designers! Study hard!

 

We then had some hands-on time with the recently revealed Gold Rush mode. If you didn't catch what Gold Rush is all about during San Diego Comic-Con, here's Naughty Dog community manager Arne Meyer explaining it:

 

Now, Naughty Dog likes to call Gold Rush "Plunder [an objective-based team mode] versus A.I." I'll be the mean journalist and call it "Gears of War 2's Horde mode, with an objective." Though, I can see this being really really fun -- when you're with a cooperative team. Matt and I played along with multiplayer designer Justin Richmond, and it was easy to figure out who was the Naughty Dog employee and who was 1UP. Naughty Dog guy: grabs the treasure, makes sure to protect his buddies, and throws the treasure like a grenade to gain distance faster. 1UP editors: constantly running into walls and finding themselves in the "down, but not quite out" state and waiting for the Naughty Dog guy to run up and revive them.

 

As the team successfully places the treasure into the treasure box, the A.I. enemies become more aggressive, powerful, and smarter. Wave one usually has a buncha mooks that go down in a few hits (no matter where you hit them). By wave three or four, you get some medium-level guys who actually know how to use, and avoid grenades. By wave seven (as high as we got; at the moment, the game stops at wave ten), we felt like we were in some sort of ultra-heavy-guys-with-miniguns convention. Once Matt and I got a better handle, we actually followed a pretty solid strategy of "two guys protect the treasure holder" -- which worked until wave seven. Then we just got constantly cut down by the minigun guys. Even though I did a decent job of avoiding fire (heh) and then rescued either Matt or Justin when they went down down, when the screen was full of those fellows, they tore us apart. At the moment, Wells noted that four maps will support the Gold Rush mode; while I haven't played the regular co-op mode, I can tell that I already like Gold Rush more than regular Plunder or team deathmatch.

 

Finally, here're some nuggets about the single-player story-mode that I hadn't really seen elsewhere. So if you haven't concluded that this is TL;DR territory, here're the gameplay highlights from talking with Wells and Hennig (a.k.a. the part I assume will be cut-and-pasted across forums):

 

-While Uncharted had a 70/30 combat/exploration-and-puzzles ratio, many people assumed that Uncharted 2 will maintain that. Wells himself thinks that 60/40 is the accurate way to describe Uncharted 2, and sometimes depending on how you play, it might be an even 50/50 split. He credits that because Uncharted 2 breaks away from the "traversal, combat arena, repeat" formula,

 

-Here's a "70-plus percent" stat for you: Wells stated, "75% of the game, Nathan is accompanied by an ally." Hennig jokes that having someone else with Nathan for most of the game makes him look less crazy than in Uncharted, where he'd drop one-liners that no one else were around to hear. We'll actually reveal the exact number of allies in our interview tomorrow.

 

-Naughty Dog has learned from the lackluster boss battle at the end of Uncharted. Don't expect a lame QTE for boss battles (well, Naughty Dog prefers to call them "peak moments of excitation"); expect encounters to use your combat and traversal skills, rather than your ability to hit Square or Circle when prompted. "Peak moments of excitation" that Wells has mentioned include an encounter with a helicopter and another one with a freakin' tank.

 

-If you notice in the initial Warzone gameplay footage, Nathan has to deal with two different factions at war with each other. Wells confirmed that multi-faction fighting isn't just in that level; there will be other areas where Nathan has to juggle multiple forces at work. Then again, at least that means that occasionally, people won't automatically focus on just you.

 

-"There are no vehicles that Drake drives," is how Wells answers the, "are there still vehicles in Uncharted 2" question. "Every vehicle that he's involved in, someone else is driving or piloting," Wells continues. So if you were somewhat of a fan of those "Nathan drives a jetski while Elena shoots" sequences, sorry. "Driving just didn't fit with what we're doing for Uncharted 2." I asked some other resident Uncharted fans in the 1UP office, for their reaction. Sam Kennedy says, "I'm actually kind of disappointed, because while they could be better, those driving sequences did break up the action a bit." Alice Liang, on the other hand, quips, "Cool, I like being chauffeured around."

 

And on a final note, here's a wall that declares the creed of Uncharted. Everytime someone on staff wonders, "what the heck are we working on," this serves as a reminder -- it still applies to Uncharted 2 despite being made for Uncharted. I made it clickable so that you can zoom in and absorb the creed. That's it! Come back tomorrow for my interview with Amy Hennig and Evan Wells.

 

P.S. Alas, I saw neither Pogo nor Trumpet during my visit; so no new pics to establish which dog is cuter. Also, there is a designated "yoga area" of the office, but no one was partaking, so no yoga videos either.

 

 

 

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Single-Player Developer Interview

Details on Uncharted 2's story, character building, friendships, and trivia.

 

By Thierry Nguyen

 

Naughty Dog is in full-on crunch mode for Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. "Last Sunday was my first day off, and we've been working seven-day weeks since Christmas," notes creative director Amy Hennig. When I sit down in co-president Evan Wells' office to play some Gold Rush, I notice something I don't usually see on an executive's desk: a pile of empty Mountain Dew cans. Yet despite the long days of testing and polishing and tuning, both of them took the time to sit down and talk about the themes, inspirations, and goals for Uncharted 2 for our cover story.

 

1UP: OK, first off: Should we consider Nathan Drake to be a sociopath? I ask this because I realized that while I was playing Uncharted, it felt odd that he would be this charming everyman kind of guy, but he also killed about 400 guys by the time the game was done, and it's just something that's been in the back of my mind that I can finally ask...

 

Amy Hennig: Yeah, it's funny -- it's actually a dilemma that we're going to face more in this medium now that characters are getting more well-rendered -- I mean in all forms, not just visual rendering -- in characterization, in acting, the performances, and all that stuff. I've heard some people refer to this as a sort of "uncanny valley of characterization." I'm not sure how we deal with it in the industry. Because you don't want to constrain yourself to saying, "well, we can only tell certain kinds of stories and games, and it's all got to be soldiers; they've all got to be hard-bitten, and it's all going to be post-apocalyptic and grim; there can't be any humor or any romance or anything like that because it's still a game, and you want to be shooting things and having combat."

 

Now, if you made a game that matched a movie... Let's use a literal example -- let's say you made a game out of Raiders of the Lost Ark. It wouldn't be any fun. Because [gaming's] an active experience; you have to have that interaction of shooting and having combat. On one hand, I almost take it as a compliment, that we've done our characterization so well that people have that potential cognitive dissonance of, "I'm this character, yet I'm doing these things." On the other hand, [sigh] you almost have to take the gameplay as a metaphor. Maybe that's going to sound like a cop-out, but, we want the game to be fun at the end of the day. It's not to be taken seriously. Yes, it's maybe a little bit over-the-top in the sense that when you compare it to a film -- or in our case five or six films because of the length -- you wouldn't have that body count. But it's a different medium, and you almost have to take all of that and say, "we want to keep the tone of that genre that we're trying to match." But if we only had you fight three guys over the course of two hours, you'd say, "this sucks." So I think we need a little bit of slack in regards to that cognitive dissonance. Otherwise, the only kinds of games anybody's going to get are...

 

Evan Wells: Military.

 

AH: It's a tricky question, and I'm not sure what the best answer is, because you don't want fewer types of games out there -- you want the variety. And you want the gameplay to be fun between all the story elements.

 

EW: Without giving away too much, I can safely say that we do call it out -- we do make reference to it.

 

AH: [Laughs] Sometimes you just have to hang a lantern on these things too, when you're like, "OK, we know this is an issue, so let's let everybody know that we know this is an issue."

 

1UP: OK, here's an easier question: can you talk about the sources and inspiration for this "modern take on treasure hunting?" A lot of other games tend to cite the same movies -- Aliens, Goodfellas, Scarface and so forth, and I'm curious what atypical influences Uncharted 2 has.

 

AH: Obviously, we looked at a lot of stuff. When we started Uncharted, we did a ton of research and de-constructed a lot of movies, books, and comics in our genre. You're talking about everything from old adventure serials like Doc Savage to comics like Tintin, or old '30s adventure movies like Gunga Din and serials from the '50s, to adventure movies from the '80s and modern stuff like National Treasure and The Da Vinci Code. There's a lot of stuff -- we watched and read as much as we could, and plucked out the themes that we saw over and over again. Some of them were things that weren't really being taken advantage of in the medium, and a lot of it had to do with the humanization of the character and all that kind of stuff.

 

One of the main differences, I think, is that some of the movies and things we use for inspiration came out of the fallible hero idea. Which isn't at all new in movies, but is pretty new in games. It's the idea of the sort of "sloppy" combat -- the "sloppy" gunplay, and the "sloppy" hand-to-hand combat. It's not martial arts or tactical SWAT guys or Navy SEAL stuff. It's this guy who probably learned how to fight on the street, and can handle his guns but doesn't really know how to shoot them "right." He's not trained; when he throws a punch he'll throw himself off-balance and he can easily get clocked on the head. There's much more of that scrappy style. Everything has been sort of precise and tactical up to that point. And actually, that created a lot of technical challenges; the only way you have organic sloppiness is by not playing the same animation over and over again. For example, all of Drake's cover animations -- he probably had literally about 150 to 200 cover-taking animations -- whether he was low or high, or how he had his foot angled, and that was all done via a proprietary layered-animation system that we developed.

 

EW: Think of the effort we put into his run cycle, where he can be running for 60 seconds straight and you won't see the same loop twice. There will always be differences to his gait.

 

AH: It's one of those things that when done right, nobody notices, but when done wrong, everybody will really notice.

 

EW: I don't know if this is going to be completely obvious to people as they play though the game, but something that is different this time for Drake is that we beat him up like crazy. You probably can't count on your fingers and toes the number of times he gets completely knocked on his ass or on his head. You play through other video games, and you basically only fall down when you die. Drake is always getting knocked around.

 

1UP: Can you talk about where the story takes Nathan, location-wise?

 

EW: You start in Turkey, and then go through Borneo, Nepalese cities, and then mountains in Tibet and the Himalayas, and more.

 

AH: Actually, Nepal and onward are pretty much "in realtime." While early on, and in the last game, there were transition cut-scenes to mark the passage of time between locations. Once you reach Nepal, when it comes time to go to Tibet, you actually play through the journey to Tibet. So we have levels that model the transition between locations.

 

EW: Let me touch on one of those transition levels: we have you go on a train. In fact, the train fight is the first thing we started with after completing Uncharted. In most games, a train level is simply a stationary area with the background moving all around you. We didn't want that, and we started early on and created enough real estate to have an actual moving train. Once we had the moving train, then we could do the things we wanted in a train level; it could go up hills or twist around bends. A lot of Uncharted 2's systems, like collapsing buildings, came from the train level.

 

1UP: Away from the nuts-and-bolts stuff: in some of the story elements we've seen so far, there are moments of clearly conflicting ideologies. Does Nathan go through a defined character arc, or will there be some sort of "player choice moment" on occasion?

 

AH: In the overarching narrative, there's a defined arc. This isn't the kind of game where the narrative would take a different direction based on player choice; that's just a different kind of game. This is the kind of game that definitely has a clear and linear narrative. But within that space, the player chooses how they behave. Now, once we hit the points where we're trying to tell a certain aspect of the story, yes, things are going to play out the same way for everyone, but how they get to that moment might be slightly different.

 

So their interpretation of that moment may be different based on how they played, if that makes any sense. But, I don't know, we'll see how people respond. I'm always in favor of leaving a lot to inference. I don't like to bang players on the head with a lot of exposition -- especially emotional exposition. I think you just let things play out a bit, and then let people then imply what they like to imply. Obviously, there's a lot of interesting characters in the story that you react to in different ways, and they're all meant to reflect or challenge different aspects of his personality. Part of the story is about making choices: self-sacrificing or altruistic choices versus ones that are purely self-preservational. Obviously, this isn't coming out of a choice-based game system.

 

1UP: So there's no "Hit Square to go with Elena; hit circle to go with Chloe" moment?

 

AH: I wouldn't even want to try to make that game. "Here's the end: which girl?" No, it's a little deeper than that. I've said before, this isn't just "angel on one shoulder and devil on the other" -- everyone's written a little bit deeper than that. They all have their own conflicts and character flaws as well, and they're all coming from different places, so it's interesting to see when Drake is pulled in different directions by his allies. I think it'll be more interesting to the player as well, because as Evan showed you [when he demoed the single-player campaign], it's not a question of watching a movie and thinking, "OK, I saw how that played out." Now you're going to play something that then makes you feel, I hope, the emotion that's being carried out in the scene. Like, "OK, I have a dilemma: there's this wounded guy, and how do I deal with this?" And no, the player doesn't have the option to drop him, because we want him to play through this event, but they may be wondering, "Maybe Drake shouldn't have done this; I wonder what the right choice is."

 

1UP: I really like Eddie Raja from the previous game; hearing him yell at you in Indonesian was a great little surprise. Will there be another foreign language foil for Nathan in Uncharted 2?

 

AH: Everyone's going to be really surprised by the languages in this game. We have Turks, we have Tibetans, we have Nepalese -- we have hundreds and hundreds of lines all in other languages. One of the main characters in the game is Tenzen -- this guy you meet in Tibet who becomes your partner for a while. The interesting interplay there is that Tenzen doesn't speak English, while Drake doesn't speak Tibetan, and their dialogue plays out that way. We don't subtitle the Tibetan either, so the player is in the same boat as Drake is -- in the "Uh, I have no idea what you're saying." I don't want to say too much about all the characters and the roles they play, but there's a lot of interesting foils in the game.

 

1UP: Actually, with Tenzen being an ally, along with Chloe and Elena, can you say how many different allies Nathan will have over the course of the game?

 

EW: Hmm, at least four...

 

AH: [Mumbling incomprehensible names while counting off with her fingers] At least six.

 

EW: Six? Who am I forgetting?

 

AH: I don't want to say; how about "five and a half?"

 

EW: Oooh, OK. I got it.

 

AH: Five and a half, because there's a dwarf. [Laughs] But seriously, there're also things like situations where you have multiple allies like Chloe and Elena together, or when you're in a defensive position and there're lots of people around, and the fight is more than just you against an army -- you got a bunch of allies with you. But yeah, six.

 

And here's the thing: when we set off to make this game, we knew our number one thing was to capture that feeling of being in a great action-adventure genre movie that we all love when they come along, contemporize it, make you feel the same feelings you get when you watch them, and then put the controller in the player's hands. The number one thing is humanizing the hero. Not making a cardboard cutout that serves as your avatar in the video game space, but instead making him a living, breathing character with flaws and fears -- someone who can get hurt and all that kind of stuff. Not something you expect to see in a video game.

 

There's a deliberate reason he was in a t-shirt and jeans in Uncharted. In video games, that was unusual; that was weird. And he had hair. Even though people say, "That's such a generic characterization," I'd say, "Not in this medium. Generic would be space armor and a shaved head." The other thing is: watching a movie, you don't put the protagonist out there with no one to bounce off of. You have to tell a character-driven story to bring your audience in. Video games haven't traditionally done that; it's usually just the sole protagonist charging along. For one, it's hard to have allies on-screen be A.I. controlled and just have that work.

 

And also, it's a writing challenge; I think we've been a little bit immature in the creative writing of this industry to be honest. How you're supposed to tell a story that's not character-driven, that doesn't reflect off of other characters? I don't know. That's also where I think our wide demographic appeal comes from. Over and over again, we hear that it isn't just popular among the expected demographic -- girlfriends and wives and parents want to see the game. They want to play; they want play it in one sitting just to see what happens next. That's hugely gratifying for us to hear, because that tells us that we've done the character-driven story right. You're not just being propelled along by the visceral need to see what's next, but by the emotional need to see what happens next.

 

1UP: So have there been features or scenarios that were cut due to not "feeling in character?"

 

AH: There might be some weaponry that didn't feel "right."

 

EW: We definitely shied away from doing anything too gadgety or James Bond-like. Stuff that you'd expect to see in a spy thriller; we tried to make sure it stays in the action-adventure genre. Usually, everybody kind of "gets it" here -- not much gets brought up that needs to be shot down.

 

1UP: Except for that one guy quietly sobbing in the corner.

 

EW: Sure, like the guy who suggested anti-gravity boots.

 

AH: Every once in a while, something would come up and we'd go like, "that would be out-of-character or not appropriate for the franchise." Even with the possible cognitive dissonance of saying, "here's a guy who shoots at everything in front of him," there're still certain [lines]. We don't want him to be bloodthirsty -- we could easily go a lot further in terms of making everything gory. We try to keep everything to that "stunt" level of violence; a bit of a cartoony romantic veneer -- and when I say "romantic", I don't mean Cupid-and-hearts, I mean a little bit larger-than-life like when you're watching a stunt show and everyone goes flying in the air like in old Westerns. We try to keep that veneer on it. We don't want it to be like, "wow, that was graphic." It's a fine line that constantly moves and keeps us on our toes.

 

1UP: So, speaking of him being in t-shirt and jeans, who can claim credit for the whole "half-tuck" phenomenon?

 

AH: Tim Schafer coined that phrase, right? Because we all love it, and now everybody says "the half-tuck." Of course, credit goes to the character modeler, but I remember a conversation about how you never want your character to be symmetrical. So when you see that he's a guy in t-shirt and jeans, you go, "hmm, we'll have to have something on him to throw the symmetry off." So we have things like the fact that his sleeves aren't pulled up the same way on each arm, his holster was on one side, and his shirt half-tucked-in, to give him some asymmetry. We didn't know how awesome it would look. For this game, now Elena is rocking the half-tuck.

 

1UP: Is there a conscious effort to tuck his shirt in more often now?

 

AH: I don't know how conscious of it we were; we definitely knew that even though he does a lot of climbing and jumping, and a shirt wouldn't be tucked-in at all, that we at least want some sort of semi-tuck this time. At least it's more tucked-in for the front than last time, since we have to attach his pouch. It's still half-out in the back.

 

1UP: So it's official: Nathan Drake's shirt is more tucked-in.

 

EW: It's a little more than last time. You can notice if you put [the two games] side-by-side.

 

AH: It's the three-quarter-tuck this time.

 

1UP: Moving on, we recently saw Gears of War 2 put out a deleted scene as DLC. Would you be interested in doing something similar?

 

AH: We don't really have deleted scenes; we have altered versions of some scenes that we'll probably include on the disc... [looking at Wells] if you allow us to.

 

EW: Are you thinking of Lazarevic [the main villain in Uncharted 2] in the...?

 

AH: Yes. But I mean we have lots of bonus material to include, as long as we can fit them onto the disc.

 

EW: We're bursting at the seams already.

 

AH: I didn't think we'd fill a Blu-ray disc, but we do and we did, and we're constantly fighting it now. But DLC is always a possibility.

 

EW: Yea, but with multiplayer now. We'll probably make DLC multiplayer-focused, but we haven't made a final decision yet.

 

AH: But we do have lots of outtakes and fun bloopers to include, if we have the room.

 

1UP: Wait, how long do you have to decide on those outtakes and extras? Shouldn't that be decided soon?

 

EW: We're actually pretty good at deciding things at the last minute. The bonuses and stuff you unlock is always something you put in the tail end, since the artists get freed up and can start to wrangle the assets. We have already planned more than we had in the last game. It really does just come down to disc space. And of course, you have to wait until the end to make that call, as game content comes first, and if space is tight, the extras are the first to go.

 

1UP: And you guys are doing a demo, correct?

 

EW: We have the multiplayer demo starting on September 15 as a two-week exclusive with GameStop initially. So that takes us to the end of September, and then the next two weeks leading up to our launch date -- October 13 -- it will be open to everybody.

 

1UP: So multiplayer demo, but no single-player one?

 

EW: Yeah, it's probably not looking like we're going to do one.

 

AH: It's always tough to do a single-player demo. 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.

 

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

 

AH: It's hard to take a slice. But what's nice is that multiplayer actually gives you that, "if you're enjoying this gameplay, you're going to enjoy single-player gameplay," which is certainly a benefit that we didn't have last time.

 

EW: You certainly get to see the quality of the graphics and animation. So yea, the multiplayer demo is the only one we've got.

 

1UP: Hmm, it seems like it might be more intimidating to just drop a player into multiplayer though.

 

EW: Well, I think it's about different levels of expectation. Because in single-player, you want the story and the adventure, and you want to experience the narrative. If you're only taking a slice of that, you haven't developed the attachment to the characters; you haven't developed the motivations these characters have; all the stuff Amy was talking about. These are all critical parts of the experience; people just sit down [and finish the game] in one or two sittings because they get engrossed in the environment. If you just plunk any 15 minutes out of the game, it's not going to be the same.

 

AH: We sort of got that anecdotally from the first demo. Some people loved it; some people thought, "eh." I read over and over people saying, "Oh yeah, I played the demo and I didn't think much about it, but I bought the game and it's the best game ever and I love it to pieces." And, well, how do you solve that? A 15 minute slice just doesn't give you all that. I'd rather have people play the multiplayer, get the feel for the mechanics, and then look at the game, and think, "Yeah, I want to see the single-player experience." Yeah, I think we're giving people a lot of value for their money.

 

EW: The game is enormous; the first one just looks like child's play.

 

AH: It's a longer single-player experience.

 

EW: Significantly longer single-player. We've got competitive and cooperative multiplayer. We've got 90 minutes of cinematics compared to 50.

 

AH: It's literally a feature-length film, with fully-fleshed out multiplayer and co-op experiences. That's why we all look so tired.

 

Source

 

10 Things You Don't Know About Naughty Dog and Uncharted

 

Uncharted 2 Cover Day 2: Our visit to Naughty Dog

 

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Single-Player Developer Interview

 

New

 

A new video in the first post of page four.I can't put anymore in this post.

 

This will probably be my last update on this topic.

Edited August 15, 2009 by Slidell

[SmokiestGrunl]

I've never played number 1 nor have I heard of it, but I'm getting my PS3 for my birthday so I can wait.

[Slidell]

You should get the first it's really good IMO.

 

Indian Jones meets Rainbow 6 Vegas.

 

Imagine Indian Jones a Tactical shooter but allot better than it sounds.

[Korupt Data]

The first didnt look good at all.... it looked buggy as hell. But i cant judge it cuz i have only played it once b4 i sold my ps3 and the game.

[Slidell]

Wasn't buggy at all for me maybe you just had a bad copy.

 

 

 

UPDATED

Edited December 5, 2008 by GMOF Slidell♥

[Korupt Data]

Wasn't buggy at all for me maybe you just had a bad copy.

 

 

 

UPDATED

Idk.. i didnt like it maybe the next one will be better.. to bad im not gonna buy a ps3 to play it.

[Slidell]

Idk.. i didnt like it maybe the next one will be better.. to bad im not gonna buy a ps3 to play it.

 

Well that's to bad.

 

Anywho I don't care if no one looks at this I want to keep updating it when I get bored.

 

It's like TombRaider with a guy and a Tactical Shooter and zombies.

Edited December 5, 2008 by GMOF Slidell♥

[Slidell]

Update:I'll add more when the new GameInformer comes out.

[SmokiestGrunl]

Update:I'll add more when the new GameInformer comes out.

 

I would like to see some game play videos, so if any is leaked posted them here.

[Slidell]

Yeah hopefully when E3 come's round there will,and I'll show you some gamplay from the first.

[SmokiestGrunl]

The camera and movement looked pretty horrid, is it really bad or does the video make it look bad?

[Slidell]

The video makes it bad,because the guy that was controlling it was bad at it,I'm guessing.

 

 

EDIT:this is a demo so the camera is going to be different then the real game.

Edited December 6, 2008 by GMOF Slidell♥

[SmokiestGrunl]

kk, sweet. When I get my Ps3 I'll rent it, although I've never seen it in any shop.

[Slidell]

The game has a ton of replay value.

 

All of those Medals and Points unlock extra in-game content, like extra costumes and skins, weapon select, time controls, and one-shot kills and infinite ammo

Edited December 7, 2008 by GMOF Slidell♥

[Slidell]

Here's a reveiw on uncharted 1

 

For you guys that missed it.

 

Wednesday 23 Jul 2008

 

If the premise of this game intrigues you then you should buy it and play it. There's not much that needs to be said – I can't recommend it enough if you're in the least bit interested in action/adventure movies. In fact, this is an Indiana Jones or National Treasure experience in game form, and arguably does just about everything better than those movies do. As such, it's an advertisement for where gaming could take us, and shows the potential for it to be a more engaging form of storytelling.

 

Nathan Drake is an everyman, a sort of reluctant hero. He's a bounty hunter out to make a quick buck by helping a documentary film-maker called Elena Fisher find Sir Francis Drake's coffin and an interesting story. Being an opportunist, when he finds a notebook left by Drake he ditches Elena and flies off with his friend and business partner Sully to find the treasure Sir Francis mapped. Of course, it's not so simple; Drake's notebook is really just a set of clues that send Nathan all around the Caribbean in search of El Dorado (what else would a bounty hunter be searching for?)

 

http://i410.photobucket.com/albums/pp190/GMOF_Tucker/uncharted_1126214c.jpg

 

 

The Shooter's New Clothes

 

The mechanics of Uncharted are closely related to those in Tomb Raider and Prince of Persia, with everything happening in the third person (meaning we see Nathan on screen as we control him). As in those games you find yourself climbing ropes, shimmying along ledges and generally doing what we call "platforming." There is, however, also quite a bit of shooting as the trail heats up – fellow bounty hunters (called pirates since they're the bad guys) also want to find this golden city. The shooting is reminiscent of Gears of War with its cover system – press X and Nathan will hide behind the nearest post or pillar, press L2 to lean out from your hiding place and press R2 to shoot. This makes it easy enough to get the hang of and it turns out to be a really fun aspect of the game play with its variety of tactics and weapons. You can also use melee combat if you get close enough to your enemies; it's not a deep subsystem but it is enjoyable.

 

It is certainly a little surprising to find so much shooting and fighting in a bounty hunting game (as opposed to the expected platforming and exploring), but it's not an unwelcome mechanic by any means. There are no real stealth sections in the game but it does benefit you to have a look around and plan your course of attack a little so that you have enough cover. The settings for these gunfights are often spectacular and cleverly designed to take advantage of the cover system. Nathan also has the metabolism of Wolverine himself, so a quick duck behind an old pillar is enough to restore him to full health after a barrage of gun fire.

 

 

http://i410.photobucket.com/albums/pp190/GMOF_Tucker/2866.jpg

 

Fortunately Elena is impervious to bullets so you never have to worry about her dying on you. Design decisions like these decrease any frustration that might creep in playing games of this type (frustration that is all too common in Prince of Persia or Tomb Raider games), as you're always pushing forward. This doesn't mean there is no challenge – there are sections that are still difficult to pass, but a forgiving health system combined with a well-placed checkpoint system and a hint system make Uncharted a relative breeze of a game. In case it isn't clear: this is a good thing. If you want more challenge there's always Crushing mode, and the hints can be ignored. It would be an absolute waste of a great story to make it too hard for the adventure-movie audience to enjoy to the end. That's no slight on that audience – I include myself in it – for a game like this you really don't want to have to repeat that sequence of wall jumps until your timing reaches 3 decimal points of precision

 

 

The Big Surprise: An Actual Enjoyable Plot

 

The plot follows a typical adventure movie plot with twists and turns, betrayals and hostages, but also manages to develop the characters into believable people. Believable, that is, other than their tireless muscles, Drake's incredible regeneration rate and Elena's invincibility! Nathan Drake is not your typical action hero; he is rather an everyman who seems to mistakenly invite disaster wherever he goes. Elena Fisher is a competent, likeable and respectable accomplice. She happens to a female character that is not at all exploitative, something so rare in gaming it's worth commenting on. There are numerous times when the game segues into cut scenes, but they are uniformly entertaining, not overly long and essential in fleshing out the plot.

 

 

 

 

 

http://i410.photobucket.com/albums/pp190/GMOF_Tucker/2868.jpg

 

Uncharted is the closest video gaming has come to the proverbial "interactive movie," and is the first evidence that the concept might actually be an interesting one. Don't expect high art or blow-your-mind ideas or oh-so-unique game play. Instead expect to be entertained much like your good summer popcorn movies entertain – with great production values, some decent acting, great action sequences, top notch graphics, special effects and an enjoyable story. On top of all that the game play is great fun and varied enough to lift Drake's Fortune above the source material to be one of the best games on the PlayStation 3. It is certainly, to my mind, the best of its ilk.

 

http://i410.photobucket.com/albums/pp190/GMOF_Tucker/2869.jpg

 

 

Rating:http://i410.photobucket.com/albums/pp190/GMOF_Tucker/star.gifhttp://i410.photobucket.com/albums/pp190/GMOF_Tucker/star.gifhttp://i410.photobucket.com/albums/pp190/GMOF_Tucker/star.gifhttp://i410.photobucket.com/albums/pp190/GMOF_Tucker/star.gifhttp://i410.photobucket.com/albums/pp190/GMOF_Tucker/star.gif

 

Oh,almost forgot from EL33TONLINE.com

 

some of the info on the controlls are slightly off but it's close enough.

Edited December 8, 2008 by GMOF Slidell♥

[Lockon]

This game looks good.My friend might be getting it do I might have a chance to play it

[Slidell]

Hope you do get to play it's really good.

 

It'll make you want to get a PS3.

[Lockon]

Hope you do get to play it's really good.

 

It'll make you want to get a PS3.

 

Im getting one next christmas so ill probly rent the game first.

[Slidell]

Next?

 

Will you even remember this conversation at all....

[Lockon]

Ya I got the dates kinda mixed up.

[Slidell]

Ehhh what do you mean,you getting one this year?

 

 

LOL family guy....soz

[Slidell]

UpDate

[SmokiestGrunl]

WoW 80-90% of the PS3s power. I hope that make the game good otherwise its just going to look bad for the Ps3.

[Slidell]

Well the original was one of the best looking games for the PS3 and it used 30% so this should be amazing.

[Slidell]

Epic update.