14 DAY TRIAL // Uncharted is one of the biggest video game properties on the PlayStation 3 and Richard Lemarchand, who is the co-lead designer for the series, says that he drives the team working on it to always deliver bigger and better set pieces for it.
Speaking about ideas that were in development but were not included in the actual game, Lemarchand told CVG that, “There was going to be a vehicle crash on a bridge - the vehicles had fallen off the edge but got tangled up in the ropes and the struts. There would have been a mess of machinery hanging down and live enemies. Drake and Elena were right at the bottom, having to climb and shoot their way back to the top. I think we were planning to have it be partly a traversal sequence, partly a combat sequence . There were going to be pirates on the bridge and in other vehicles.”
The sequence failed to get the traction needed to actually be included in an Uncharted game but the work that developers put into it led to them developing the intro sequence for Uncharted 2, which included a train and challenged the player to guide Drake out of the wreckage.
The developer was also asked about the main Uncharted feature that bothered him and answered, “I wouldn't say there are any big things, because overall I'm very satisfied. Oh, but there's one thing that always bothered me about Uncharted 2... I worked in collaboration with lots of different colleagues on the tank battle in the formerly-peaceful village, and there's one little place where it's confusing where to go next.”
The answer makes it pretty clear that the Uncharted team is obsessed with delivering games that are as close as possible to perfect and that they tend to obsess over sections of the game that gamers might never think twice about.
It’s not clear whether Naughty Dog will again work on an Uncharted game or whether the developer will move to new intellectual properties.
We already know that a second team is working on The Last of Us, a game which mixes zombies and a father – daughter love story.