‘Uncharted 4’ Dev Discusses Next-Gen Tech Enhancements

While the announcement that Naughty Dog’s eagerly anticipated “Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End” has been pushed to 2016 was met with dismay, most gamers will no doubt be pleased the studio now has ample time to work on the project. In a new interview, the acclaimed developer has detailed some of the features the added power of the PlayStation 4 has allowed them to include.

In the interview with GamesTM, the venerable studio explained that while the PS4 affords it a great deal of power, the studio isn’t solely interested in achieving photorealism. More important to the team is innovating in the realm of interactive storytelling, and figuring out how graphics, gameplay and narrative can come together.

The studio added that they’re still trying to work out exactly how to use the extra power afforded by the PS4. Alluding to the now-famous gameplay reveal at Sony’s inaugural PlayStation Experience event in late 2014, Lead Designer Ricky Cambier said that because maps are much larger, gamers have more ways of initiating and tackling combat scenarios.

“From a design perspective, it’s given us the opportunity to push the scale of the environment so you’ve got choices in the combat setups that are incredibly vast, so we can put that in when we want to. Like Josh points out, on the design side as well, we can really get the player into a mood: so yeah, there’s still times we’ll push the player into a very intimate combat space – if we want to layer on extra pressure for an escape sequence or something – it just gives us a wider variety of trees, density, variety, foliage, background environments and how vivid and detailed they are, it gives us all that to play with,” he explained.

Cambier also adds that the added power allows the team to create much more expressive and emotionally resonant characters. Giving examples of the kind of power at the team’s fingertips, he stated that animations in the previous games typically had to be sampled at 10 or 15fps to save on memory, then interpolated by in-engine code to run at 30. He said that the team is now able to capture footage at a full-fat 30fps.

On the subject of facial animation, he stated that the studio has completely revamped its facial animation tools. Cambier says that on the PS4, Joel and Ellie’s faces in “The Last of Us” were typically comprised of about 90 to 100 bones, but on the PS4, faces have between 300 to 500 bones, allowing for much greater detail, fidelity and subtlety.

Originally set for release in late 2015, Creative Director Neil Druckmann and Game Director Bruce Straley took to the PlayStation Blog in March to announce that the game has been pushed to Spring 2016. The duo cited a desire to ensure the game lived up to gamer’s expectations of the studio, noting that the title had grown to be much more ambitious than initially envisioned.