When Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End was shown off at the PlayStation Experience keynote, a lot of people were obviously pretty excited, but there was also some dissatisfaction about what was perceived to be a difference between what the E3 debut trailer of Uncharted 4 last July, and what we finally got this week (in common parlance, a downgrade).
Now, Uncharted 4’s 3D Environment Artist Anthony Vaccaro has come out to discuss the differences between the E3 build of the game and the PlayStation Experience one. “Here are just a couple of things about those comparison shots.
1.Time of day is different in both. – Our first trailer is at night, moonlight. Our gameplay demo is early morning. So the moonlight is slightly over exaggerated to give more contrast to give it that night feeling but enough light so you can see whats going on. Dawn is not a time of day where you have a lot of contrast.
2. His face is so spec-y [editor’s note: specular] in the first image! – Have you seen the trailer? He literally just gets up out of water so his face/chest/shirt are wet and have a high sheen. Bottom one he is not wet so of course he looks dry.
3. Trailers are Art Directed for every frame – A trailer is not gameplay so we have the ability to do a lot of art direction in that shot, that could otherwise hamper gameplay. It allows us to give a lot more emotion to a trailer.”
I mean, that sounds reasonable. Plus, come on guys, this is Naughty Dog. If anyone has earned the benefit of the doubt, it’s these guys!