Naughty Dog’s upcoming action-adventure, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End is featured on the latest issue of EDGE magazine and we have major chunk of details regarding the gameplay, story, engine, & more from their latest issue.

Check out the details below:

• They tried to get clarification about the Amy Hennig thing but that was thrown right out the window
• Animation system from PS3 games was scrapped and rebuilt to allow full analogue movement through 360 degress using real body physics
• Slip Events (like when he used to grab on handhelds and they break or come out of place) they are not mapped to scenery like in older games but instead are dependent on the angle and distance of the jump also less stable ones will break easier if they do you need to take another route
• Drakes Piton which is similar to Lara’s Pickaxe from Tomb Raider differs from the latter because its designed to empower freedom
• The grapple points are fixed but allow Drake to swing, rappel, climb or run along and around cliff faces
• They say Uncharted’s most linear system has become freeform and instead of pushing up on the stick and following a preditermined path path your making your own. They also compared it to solving a puzzle.
• The enemies have a similar traversal set to drakes and can clamber up ledges and leap gaps in pursuit of the player.
• Breaking the line of sight by using the foliage or by other means and the enemy will not return to normal patrol patterns and instead seek you out or stay in place while staying in constant communication with each other
• The combat is a mix of stealth, traversal, melee, and gunplay which is an evolution of what they began building from UC2
• Tremendous amount of The Last of Us blueprint in UC4 in regards to the combat alternating between stealth and combat is fluid
• Learned a lesson from Jak II where they designed a level where you Daxter rides a rocket, was kind of upset about how they spent so much time on something you only seen once in the entire game. Came to appreciate adding systems that flow throughout the entire game more
• Part of ND’s evolution is getting comfortable with systematic approaches, wider layouts and the intergration of Story, Gameplay, music etc.,
• Edge thinks its the prettiest game the new gen has produced
• ND is pleased with the added memory and are taking advantage of it
• Texture resolution at least quadrupled from UC3
• Drake wakes to an island shore off the coast of Madagascar waking to a backdrop of procedurally tessalated water, Dynamic wind that moves trees, bushes, Drakes hair (Head and Chest)
• Up close a system developed by ND and Sony’s Advanced Technology Group offers a more efficient way of making highly detailed surfaces without using performance adaptive tessellation while farther away the studio is relying more on background LOD algorithms more than ever before
• A physically based shader two years in the making makes materials look like their real world counterparts
• They were showed a wireframe wall with 100 handholds showing the shape of his body adapting to the shape of the wall as he climbed
• On PS3 Drake had 250 bones in his model on PS4 800 in his face alone
• They are over 30 but have locked at 30 for the demo they are gonna try to hit 60 but won’t compromise if they have to lose something that can impact the player experience
• Druckmann says the adventure has to stand on its own with hints to Drakes character in the older games for people who haven’t played if you have then you understand more of the nuances of Drake and his relationships
• UC3 ending gave them a clean slate dealt with all his present problems so that they could delve into his past
• 4 years after he’s settled down and retired when he is lured back into the life by his brother sam who he last saw 15 years ago during that time they were bosessed with finding a treasure plundered by Henry Avery who ammassed the largest haul over the space of two years in the 17th century its worth half a billion dollars by todays standards
• Drake moved on but Sam continued looking and came back into his bro’s life with incentive for both of them he has a new lead on Libertalia, Every’s pirate Utopia
• When they add new characters it has to reflect a facet of the protagonist in a unique way
• A brother allows them to ask who is Nathan Drake and how has he evolved into the person we see today
• Sam’s arrival makes it seem as if there is no female foil, Elena is seemingly at home and not really happy with him coming out of retirement and Chloe and Drake when their seperate ways in UC3 third act
• The only known female in the game at this point is Nadine Ross the leader of the South African Private Military army that patrols the island she was hired by Rafe Adler, another treasure hunter in which Nate and his Bro have history with
• They’re the enemy but ND doesn’t like to think of them like that, when they are writing these characters they don’t want to write them as cliches so they they just write it as if it were from their POV because those character’s don’t necessarily see themselves as the antagonist
• They are trying to look at all moments even between cutscenes as a scene; they are thinking in filmic terms but what’s important is how much they can put on the “stick”
• Climbing mechanics overhauled
• A.I has been improved with similar traversal movies to Drake’s (they can now jump gaps, climb ledges, enemies don’t return to their preset routes they’ll seek you out)
• Edge says it feels more like a sandbox style game
• Says the ledges are too obvious
• Lots of new (small) screenshots
• Shows where the demo began. He’s passed out following a shipwreck and lost all his gear
• Druckmann says story will stand on it’s own with hints and reveals to help newcomers understand who Drake was in previous adventures
• Edge says the game is 4 years later
• ND’s engine was extremely specialized for the PS3 and they never had a PC version

In the end, EDGE goes on to call Uncharted 4 the “prettiest game” current gen has produced. What do you think?

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

Thanks, NeoGAF.