Better visual effects
Will Uncharted 3 be able to top the visual prowess of its predecessor?
Amy Hennig, Uncharted 3’s director, said that the desert setting was chosen to push the team even further. If you think about how difficult it can be to render moving particles like sand and water, you can certainly see where she’s coming from. Whereas for other game series I’d anticipate a bland sheet of yellow to frame the game’s levels, Uncharted 3 will take things much further than this. A game as visually pleasing as Uncharted is easily up to the challenge of realistically rendering sand particles, and the results are bound to revolutionary.
A more open-ended experience
It's a big old desert out there
The open and barren desert locales seem set to provide a more open-ended feel to Uncharted 3. The Naughty Dog team are adamant that the game will not be an open-world sandbox game as such, but there will certainly be more spacious maps to accommodate the new settings. As much as the level design of the previous Uncharted games impressed me, a change of pace for the series might be a good thing. Non-linear design for the win.
New Multiplayer modes
Recent E3 footage for Uncharted 3 has been enlightening in many ways. One of the most significant things shown was the new hunters mode, where players must take treasure to a specific location or prevent the other team from doing so. Though this isn’t incredibly ground breaking in and of itself, it shows that the team are hard at work on new modes for the multiplayer experience. We can only assume that there will be some pleasant surprises in store for us when we boot up Uncharted 3’s multiplayer when the game launches in November.
