Naughty Dog on Uncharted: Drake's Fortune: 'We Showed the Game [too] Early'

A recent interview with Naughty Dog's Evan Wells reveals that the company behind Daxter and the Crash Bandiccot series is quite unhappy with Uncharted's image on the market, having showcased the game during Sony's unveiling conference at E3 2005, as one of the first titles to hit the PS3. As Wells himself hints, Naughty Dog was hoping that the public would be more profound and less picky about it, since the game was in its early development stages:

"Something else that I would say might change is something you guys pointed out in your 1UP Yours show -- the fact that we showed the game so early. In fact, we knew at the time that it wasn't, you know, solid -- in particular the A.I. and the gunplay," Wells told 1UP. "And we put it out there hoping we'd get the benefit of the doubt that we still had seven months of production left and then of course, we got the feedback...and it was good feedback, and in some ways it was a great focus test for where we were headed."

Naughty Dog's, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune is the first game in a new fast-paced action-adventure series developed exclusively for Sony's PS3. The plot says that a 400-year-old clue in the coffin of Sir Francis Drake sets a modern-day fortune hunter on an exploration for the fabled treasure of El Dorado, leading to the discovery of a forgotten island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

The search of course takes a wrong turn as Nathan Drake becomes stranded on the island, threatened with death by mercenaries. Outnumbered and outgunned, Drake and his companions must fight to survive, facing threats from both the mercenaries and the island itself, which begins to unravel terrible secrets every step of their way.

The game is said to sport life-like character facial expressions (gesture and facial) through the use of Naughty Dog's proprietary technology, the Wrinkle Mapping Facial Animation system.