As long as they’ve got an ”interesting story to tell,” Naughty Dog will be keeping Nathan Drake. They warn there’s ”going to come a point” they’ll get bored.
”It just happened to work out that way,” said game director Justin Richmond. ”We’ve only ever done one franchise per generation just because we’re a one-team studio, and that’s something we’ve always stuck with.” Crash Bandicoot on PS one, Jak and Daxter on PS2 and now Uncharted on the PlayStation 3, and Vita.
”The games changed because the technology changed,” added Arne Meyer.
”We were trying to create games around the technology. Jak was doing a lot of interesting things in terms of design; we had a game design and a game world that fit with what the new technology had.” The PS3 offered a chance for realism.
”With the PS3, technology had advanced to the point where we could do stylised realism. There’s a tonne of reasons, but that was one of the reasons why things started to progress that way. We were looking for something different, because Jak wasn’t really fitting into that. It felt more interesting to do that,” continued community strategist Meyer.
”When we switched over from Jak to Uncharted, people wanted something new,” said Richmond. ”People get bored of working on the same stuff over and over. You don’t want to just slavishly remake games to what the demand is.”
”You want to be interested in what you’re working on, and the second that we get bored that’s when the games will be something that no-one wants to play, right? We’ve never said that Uncharted is two games, or three games or whatever.”
”Our fans are huge on this game, and they’re already asking, ‘When is Uncharted 4 coming out?!’ ‘You haven’t even played 3 yet, calm down!’” joked the director.
It’s all a matter of if fans and Naughty Dog are still hungry for Uncharted.
”In terms of hardware generations and all that junk, we’re just making games. At this point hardware is so powerful to begin with, it’s almost a secondary concern. The leap into the next generation is going to be amazing, right? But I don’t think it’s going to be something that demands us to make a totally new franchise. If we want to, the option’s there.”
Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception releases on PS3 November 1st in the US, 2nd in EU.
