Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End Detailed

Naughty Dog’s upcoming action-adventure, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End is featured on the latest issue of Game Informer’s magazine cover, the digital issue went live and we have some details from the cover.

The development of the game began with a small team after Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception ended. When the development of The Last of Us completed, half of them moved over to Uncharted 4 and rest of them joined after The Last of Us: Left Behind.

Uncharted 4 is set three years after Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, it begins with Nathan Drake & Elena living happy life together. Until Drake’s long lost brother, Sam appears, who he thought was dead.

Sam’s life depends on finding an artifact from Henry Avery. Drake feels indebted to his brother and can’t resist getting back to treasure hunting with his brother. Drake & Sam travel to Libertalia “a mythic Madagascar colony purportedly founded by pirates.”

The entire game won’t be in Libertalia, the game will feature snowy & urban environments. Drake & Sam meet two rival hunters, Rafe and Nadine along the way.

Rafe is a very different treasure hunter than Drake, with different morale and approach. Nadine owns a private military company in South Africa. The villains will play a bigger role in the game. It will feature a multiplayer mode.

Here are the additional details from the digital issue:

• “The lack of Sam being in Nathan life for so long is what’s driven him in the last games”
• Sam is five years older than Drake
• Teases Elena and Sully
• Sam is even more reckless than Drake
• Sam is jealous of Drake, sees him as the ‘better at everything little brother’
• Lots of rivalry between them
• ND didn’t want to talk about Drake and Sam past
• Artifacts (collectibles) may contain notes poiting to more treasures/artifacts
• Enemies can grab your leg if you try to push them over ledges
• More tools besides Rope and Piton (metal spike)
• They’re not ready to talk about them yet
• Wants to incorporate the tools into puzzles
• GI saw an extended demo with a new scene. Drake is beaten down while Sam is rested, they start arguing the existance of Avery secret, then something catches Drake’s eye, he moves forward, pull some foliage, revealing a gray monument with a carving.
• Focusing on navigational freedom for this entry
• Showed multiple paths, one finding an extra cave, other bypassing a group of enemies
• Plenty of side stories if you’re looking for them
• In the demo they showed Drake taking a more riskier climbing route, that almost makes him fall in the sea
• All paths have consequences, there’s no “Golden path”
• Rehauled A.I system
• Compared Sam A.I to Ellie, but says Sam is a grown up treasure hunter, so he’s much stronger than Ellie
• Trying to “explore what it’s like to be with somebody as capable of Nathan Drake”
• Not giving a straight answer if this is Drake last adventure
• Still plenty of humour in the game

Update Some more details from the Magazine:

• There are 60 different animations just of Drake picking up objects.
• Talk a lot about how weight distribution plays a big role in the animations
• You can attack enemies from all sides with unique animations to them, you wont magically warp in front of them if you punch.
• Lots of talk from Druckman on the cost of adventuring on Drake’s life, it will be a major focus of the story. Compares his addiction to treasure hunting to a drug addict.
• All the new items they added were chosen cause it can help keep the pacing and gives you a better sense of exploration and adventure.
• Cutscenes are now all real time
• Tools will be used to enhance traversal and puzzle solving
• They said the large puzzle rooms from Uncharted 3 will still be there, they say U3 had the best puzzles of the series and they want to build on that.
• TLOU moments where the characters react to what they see or read will happen in this game.
• Lots of talk about brotherly banter and building a bond between the NPC and the player, “there are some nice cooperative moments between Nate and his brother.”
• On the gigantic setpieces, this is exactly what they say “So now our concept of a set piece is ‘what’s something impactful we can do to switch expectations and how can we have it emotionally charged?’ We want to constantly surprise the player, so it can be really intimate, or really big and bombastic.”

Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End will be available in 2015 for PlayStation 4.

Thanks, NeoGAF.