Several members of the Naughty Dog team that developed Uncharted 2 meet to remember the process of creating such a beloved sequel.
Last October, the 10th anniversary of the launch of one of the best games of the last generation was completed and surely the most beloved delivery by fans of a franchise that is already an icon of the PlayStation brand. We talked about Uncharted 2: The Kingdom of Thieves, a title that came to consecrate Nathan Drake as a hero of PlayStation 3, and that came to revitalize a console whose journey did not start with the best possible foot due to an attitude of arrogance after a generation, the 128-bit, absolute domain. At the controls, Naughty Dog, a study that had been characterized by launching good platform games, such as those starring Crash Bandicoot first and Jak & Daxter later, and that would end up consolidating with the total adventure, and whose members have met a decade later to remember how was the development of that great sequel.
Ten years of a PlayStation 3 legend
One of the keys that Bruce Straley remembers, then co-director of the game – also of The Last of Us – and today outside of Naughty Dog, is that in the studio they treat each game as something unique and independent. "We never consider a project as part of a franchise, and it's basically because we can't look in the long term," says Straley. "That is why we tried to make Uncharted 2 a sequel that you could enjoy without having played Drake's Fortune -the original-, giving easy access to the characters, the universe and the story without knowing absolutely nothing about Drake's story."
According to Straley, the key to the story of Uncharted 2 was a seminar on narrative in Los Angeles that was attended in the company of also screenwriter Amy Hennig, and also attended by those who would also be key pieces in the plot of the game Neil Druckmann and Josh Scherr. "I remember having a clear moment of 'Eureka!', And all of us involved in these covnersations during the seminar breaks on the structure of the hero, and that idea of the space between expectations and results," recalls Straley. "You set an expectation for the protagonist, and something gets in his way, which leads him to overcome that obstacle. That is called narrative 101, but we also realized that it is video game design. So join the rhythm of the story. with the gameplay in a significant way was the foundation that this team had to look at Uncharted 2 as a complete experience. "
Meanwhile, Robh Ruppel was Art Director of Uncharted 2, who immersed himself in the history and architecture of ancient Mesopotamia for the creation of Shambala, the stage where much of the game takes place. "Trying to bring a unique location, which has never been seen before, but which at the same time fits into our world and has a credible history … It is difficult to design something that has all these elements," Ruppel acknowledges. "We combine several elements, such as the pyramid and the ziggurat, to form the basis of our environmental narrative, to make sure that Shambala felt like something that could be in the Pantheon of the great monuments of the ancient world."
Another of those who met to talk about Uncharted 2 is Jonathan Stein -designer-, formerly at Nintendo and Monolith Productions, creators of the recent Middle-earth, in separate deliveries, and who before Drake's second adventure had worked on the development of the horror games Condemned and Condemned 2. "I remember being in the studio for the first time and being overwhelmed by the excitement of the whole team," Stein recalls. "They were very passionate and motivated people, everyone saw the game as something complete, not as a sum of parts in which everyone was, which is a rare thing to see. I, for example, was intrigued about the idea of working with the third-person perspective -Condemned is developed in the first person- and the camera work that entails, because I had done many first-person games before that, which also has its limitations from the cinematographic point of view. "
Stein faced the challenge of combining the three playable pillars of Uncharted – action, platforms and puzzles, while maintaining a cinematic, epic and spectacular development, but being faithful to Straley's philosophy of "keeping the player in control. maximum possible. " Remember also as an enriching experience to work with personalities such as those of Straley, Druckmann and Hennig, "extremely motivated and intense people, but also fun."
"One of the great successes that I would recognize all three of us is to create that feeling of what we were creating, seeming to go beyond a mere sequel," says Stein. "Everyone in the studio was clear about the characters, the tone and the quality standard we were aiming at. Everyone had that instilled, so we could make small decisions along the way without necessarily consulting each design choice." .
Obviously, it is impossible to talk about Uncharted 2 without doing it from its epic first scene aboard a train about to fall off a cliff. "It was not the original beginning, in fact," Straley acknowledges. "The structure was simpler, one with three acts, but it was Neil who, already involved in the process and production, came up with the idea of introducing the game with this section that takes place halfway through history, which creates this timeline that jumps back and forth. It doesn't matter if such a change comes in production, if it makes the experience better, we'll do it nine times out of ten. "
For Stein it was also something special, since the level he had been working on for months, and that over time has become one of the most remembered by the fans of the franchise, perhaps the most, was going to be the introductory scene of the game. "I remember Neil telling me at a meeting that that was going to be the beginning, and I had a mixture of fear and emotion at the thought," Stein acknowledges. "My main concern was that our audience had some problem with that non-linear structure of the narrative, but during the development there was an explosion of television series that dealt with time travel and flashback, with a very sophisticated narrative, so people were very comfortable with that unconventional structure, which was not a problem. "
Finally, Bruce Straley considers Uncharted 2: the Kingdom of Thieves the most important delivery of the franchise, at least on a personal level. "It is my absolute favorite, and personally, the best in the series, and not only because it was a great training experience and defined my career," Straley says flatly. "We could not have done Uncharted 3 and Uncharted 4 without him, not even The Last of Us without everything we learned in that game," he concludes.
