More details on Naughty Dog’s magnum opus, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End have been revealed in the latest issue of Edge magazine. These new details were uncovered by a couple of NeoGaf users. Some of the information is already known via Game Informer’s coverage so we have decided to include only those that are unknow.
The latest issue of Edge has covered a lot of details regarding the technological improvements that Naughty Dog have made to the graphics and gameplay. First of all, the Naughty Dog are using a custom physical based shader that was in development for two years. This has helped them make materials that look close to their real world counterparts. The texture resolution in Uncharted 4 has been quadrupled compared to Uncharted 3. Naughty Dog are also extremely happy with the amount of memory i.e. 8GB GDDR5 found in the PS4 and they have plans to make most of it.
They have also found ways to develop highly detailed surface without using adaptive tessellation by using aggressive background LOD algorithms. This system was developed by Naughty Dog and Sony’s Advanced Technology Group. The animation system is being made right from the scratch using real body physics allow full 360 degrees of freedom. The game looks damn good, Edge thinks it’s the prettiest game of this generation.
Dynamic events such as Drake jumping to grab on handhelds are no longer mapped to a scenery but they depend on the angle and the distance of the jump. It now feels more like a sandbox style game, so you won’t be following a pre-determined path to reach your goal. It will be more like solving a puzzle so that you can reach to your destination.
Naughty Dog were also inspired from a level in Jak 2, where they spent too much time on it. Daxter rides a rocket in that level and it only happens once in the game. So Naughty Dog will make sure that they will built systems that will flow throughout the game.
And finally, the developers are looking for systematic approaches, wider layouts and the integration of gameplay, story and music in one package.
Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End releases exclusively on the PlayStation 4 later this year.
Source: Edge