At E3 last week, Naughty Dog shocked the world with some very impressive gameplay footage of upcoming PlayStation 4 exclusive Uncharted 4: A Thief's End. I mean, it looked damn good.
If you've seen the trailer, you've probably noticed that everything about the world Naughty Dog has created is bigger. The market is more crowded with NPCs, making it feel alive. The set pieces are bigger. The action sequences more intense. Everything about the game just has a blockbuster feel to it. It finally feels like Naughty Dog is free to create the Uncharted game they've always wanted to make. And much of that is due to the power of the PlayStation 4.
"We’ve been able to able to pack a lot more into each level, have more happening on-screen at once, and make the whole environment more dynamic," creative director Neil Druckmann said on PlayStation Blog. "We’re at a point where technology isn’t driving our decisions, it’s our creativity and what we can come up with for Nate to go through."
Let's be honest, though, it's not like The Last of Us suffered by being on the PS3, but Naughty Dog told us back in 2013 that they had squeezed "every last drop of power" from the system.
"We made great games with what we had, but you can’t have everything so you pick your mechanics to fit the pacing," added game director Bruce Staley. "With each game we’re evolving with what the technology can afford us, and right now we’re able to make the world seem a lot more real.
"Like in the car chase, you’re ploughing through fences, smashing other cars, pineapples are flying everywhere, and every time the jeep slams into a building and it reacts, the more invested in the moment the player feels and believes the building is there."
The seven minute gameplay trailer shown off during Sony's E3 press conference can be watched above, but there's even more to this gameplay clip that was shown behind closed doors. Sony hasn't yet released the extended E3 gameplay video, but apparently it's even more mind blowingly-awesome than this.
