The year is nearly out and while there are still some major releases left, it won’t be long before we prepare for 2016’s blockbusters. Key among those is Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, releasing in March 2016, which brings Nathan Drake back for one final adventure. The game is also interesting because it will be the first Uncharted title to have single-player DLC after launch.
How is Naughty Dog going about creating this? As it turns out, according to director of communications Arne Meyer in conversation with GameSpot, they’re not sure.
“I was talking with Neil (game director) about a month ago when that was just revealed and reading all the stories and fan reactions about it. It was interesting because people are thinking maybe we’ll hold back some of the story or stuff like that. But he’s like, ‘I have no idea what we’re going to do with that.’ We’re so busy on the actual game and I was talking to him and saying that we’re taking a big risk here because we have no idea what we’re going to do yet. We’ve committed to putting something together and it has to be a high level of quality and have a really engaging story, and we’ve said that this is the final chapter. We have all these things we need to resolve at some point but we have no idea what that is.
“Neil hasn’t even begun to think about what the storyline for the single-player DLC is. Then obviously we don’t have the resources to work on it because everyone’s working on the game. We just know that we’re going to do it.”
As for finishing up Drake’s storyline with the fourth game, Meyer talked about the reasoning for the same and explained how this doesn’t mean the franchise is over.
“It may be scary from the outside to say this, but we don’t have a franchise plan or anything, or even a big idea of where anything is going. We treat each individual game as with the equal level of importance and approach it fresh every time. We’ve always said to ourselves internally that when we’re in the pre-production stage, we’re trying to figure out what type of game we’re trying to make. Do we continue the series or not? If things don’t feel fresh or it doesn’t feel like we have an actual story to tell, it doesn’t feel like we’re able to try new things or innovate with gameplay, then we’ll start thinking about stepping away from it. Every time it’s worked out in that we’re like, oh yeah we have a story to tell,” Meyers explained.
“Now with moving to the PS4 and being able to take everything we learned from the previous three games and apply it here and looking at where the story arcs went for the first three games, it feels like a natural time to step away. It was something we were coming to realise in the early phases of development that it was feeling like the right time.”
Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End is out on March 18th 2016 for PS4.
