Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

Uncharted 2 Live Chat Summary

This evening, Naughty Dog Creative Director Amy Hennig and Co-President Evan Wells kindly participated in a Live Chat on the US PlayStation Blog, and like the kind folk that we are, we’ve cherry picked and summarised it for you. Many questions were asked and great responses were provided by the two Naughty Dogs, but we’re just going to cover the main ones - feel free to check out the entire Live Chat via the source link.

Lets not beat around the bush any more and get straight to it; the length of the game will definitely be longer than the first Uncharted, including over 90 minutes of cinematics alone - sounds like Metal Gear has some competition. Whilst the release date is still currently pinned for “Fall”, an official date will be announced very soon - which is great news as I can then book my holiday around it. When questioned about the inclusion of split-screen Evan replied, “We are only supporting online multiplayer. We didn’t want to compromise the visuals going from single player to multiplayer and to include a split screen option at this time would have meant making that sacrifice.”

For all of those of you that missed out on the multiplayer beta are in luck as there will be another multiplayer demo before the game hits the shelves, yet a date for such hasn’t been finalised. Several unannounced multiplayer modes will be present in the competitive mode and at least two more cooperative modes when the game ships; with a Cinema mode allowing you to play back any of your matches and view it from any angle. You’ll also be able to upload those recordings so others can download them and view them on their PS3’s, as well as upload screenshots from that mode as well.

We all know that if Carlsberg made snow, it would probably be the best snow in the world. However, Naughty Dog told us that the snow in Uncharted 2 would be the best snow we’d ever seen, but how on earth will they do it? Evan begins by saying, “Screen Space Ambient Occlusion, deferred rendering, cloud computing, parallax mapping, high dynamic range tonemapping, per object motion blur, cascade shadows, sub surface scattering simulation…” before continuing to explain more effectively, “We’re using a variety of rendering techniques to give our snow and ice a realistic look. 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.”

When queried on the incredible quality of the games graphics, one user asked whether Naughty Dog share their tech with other PS3 developers, to which Evan responded, “We’re very fortunate to have a great group of first party developers within Sony that we’re able to collaborate with. We’re frequently exchanging technical ideas and even share some code from time to time. We’ve even posted the entire source code of Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune to Sony’s internal servers so that any first party developer can look through it, or borrow from it… and we plan on doing the same thing when Uncharted 2 ships. We also have a group of programmers here at Naughty Dog called the ICE team. They’ve been busy writing highly optimized code for the PS3 for the last 5+ years, and that code has been shared externally with the PS3 dev community in the form of the EDGE libraries. So, in short, yes we share our tech.”

Uncharted: Among Thieves sem data de lançamento para a Europa

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves é um dos jogos mais aguardados para a PlayStation 3, mas enquanto os Norte-Americanos já têm uma data de lançamento para o jogo, nós, Europeus, vamos ter de esperar um pouco mais, segundo declarações de Christophe Balestra, co-presidente da Naughty Dog, no seu Twitter.

Segundo Christophe, "a data europeia de lançamento de Uncharted 2 não é 23 de Outubro". No entanto, também avança que esta será revelada em breve.

Certamente o jogo não irá chegar às lojas antes da data avançada para a América, por isso só nos resta esperar e ver se não há uma grande disparidade em relação aos dois lançamentos.

Uncharted 2's Creative Director Amy Hennig has revealed that Naughty Dog will be expanding the game's multiplayer and co-op modes with downloadable content.

"One of the great things about the multiplayer and the co-op is that it gives us great opportunities to expand the experience for players with downloadable content, unlockables, things like that," said Hennig speaking to GameTrailers at last week's Comic-Con.

"Which of course you don't really do with the single-player game that much. We tried to pack a lot of value into the first game in terms of unlockables, but with that online component the game can kind of keep growing, especially based on players' feedback too."

More maps, weapons and characters, then? Sounds good to us.

DLC for Uncharted 2 was previously announced by lead designer Neil Druckmann, who revealed that the developer would be supporting the game with post-release DLC, but refused to mention any specifics.

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves ships in the US on October 13th exclusively for PlayStation 3. A European date has yet to be confirmed.