What Uncharteds Creative Director Would Change About Uncharted 3

What Uncharted’s Creative Director Would Change About Uncharted 3

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Uncharted’s Creative Director Amy Hennig shares some of her behind-the-scenes memories, and what she would change in Uncharted 3, with VA Nolan North.

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What Uncharteds Creative Director Would Change About Uncharted 3

The Uncharted series is often credited as being one the best video game franchises of all time. The developers at Naughty Dog succeeded in creating a series of stories with compelling narratives, engaging characters, and cinematic locations, all while striking an impressive balance between action-packed RPG and playful, light-hearted humor. But even with the success of the franchise, there is something that Amy Hennig, the Creative Director for the acclaimed series (up until Uncharted 4), wishes that she had done differently within 2011’s Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception.

Throughout the Uncharted series, players follow the story of treasure hunter Nathan Drake as he makes his way from lovable rogue with some questionable morals to happily married businessman, father of one, and owner of one the most incredible beach houses known to grace video game screens. Throughout the four main games in the franchise, Nathan Drake discovers many historical and fantastical locations, such as Shambala nestled within the hostile Nepalese mountains and Libertalia in the lush Madagascan waters. The third game in the Uncharted canon takes Nathan Drake to the sandy wastelands of Arabia, as he follows in the footsteps of his alleged ancestor Sir Francis Drake, in search of the lost city of Ubar. Joined by his loyal sidekicks, including Sully, Chloe, and Elena, as well as some new allies (looking at you Salim), Drake crosses the globe from London to Yemen (via France and Syria) and uncovers the secrets of the desert.

Famously large and arid, the Rub’ Al Khali desert serves as the eventual location of Ubar in Uncharted 3, and it is in this vivid and sand rich landscape that Amy Hennig has one of her biggest quibbles about the game, even 10 years after its initial release on the PlayStation 3. Speaking with Nathan Drake voice and mo-cap actor Nolan North on his YouTube channel, Retro Replay, Amy Hennig revealed some of her behind-the-scenes memories and retrospectives for Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception.

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Uncharted 3: The Moment Amy Hennig Would Change Now

While joining Nolan North on his definitive playthrough of Uncharted 3, Amy Hennig discussed the desert scene, that sees Nathan Drake abandoned in the Rub’ Al Khali desert having survived a plane crash. This sequence was divisive among players due to the slow pace and lack of action. Hennig told North how she wanted to try it and make it feel like it goes on and on and on to reflect the actual toll this ordeal would have had on Nathan.

Even the passage that Marlow (Uncharted 3’s antagonist) recites over this section of gameplay with a delirious Drake, which is TS Elliot’s The Wasteland, is meant to add to the arduous and toilsome experience Nathan would really be having. The themes within the poem are of things unravelling and fragmenting. It reflects on the sense of dislocation and the fear of loss. Hennig deliberately chose this piece, not just because it is a personal favorite of the Creative Director’s, but because it drew a parallel between Elliot’s prose and Nate’s current situation within the game.

The whole isolated desert sequence in Uncharted 3 only takes about 15 minutes of real-time gameplay, but throughout this duration Drake becomes noticeably weaker and exhausted. His gait becomes staggered, he hallucinates and often complains of his thirst. Nolan North, while playing through this part himself, reflects to Hennig that “, Nate is exhausted and almost dead… We should have done a scene where I got to drink something.”

To this, Hennig admits to an error that she feels she made during the development of Drake’s Deception “It is something I kind of screwed up, in hindsight. In the rush of development, you don’t get to do everything you want to do and (you are) doing everything out of order… There is an opportunity for him to get a little drink in the village and I would have played it differently than we did.”

Uncharted 3: How Amy Hennig Would Change The Desert Scene

This opportunity that Hennig refers to in Uncharted 3 sees Drake discover an abandoned village within the Rub’ al Khali desert. In the village there is a well, but it is, alas, dry. At the very back, however, there is a small, dank area that Drake manages to scoop up a small mouthful of water from before exclaiming, “Sh*t, it’s undrinkable.” Hennig regrets this added line, telling Retro Replay, “He has had enough hits; he needs a little win. Then the next thing is a whole bunch of standard gameplay… it would have been wise to make it seem like that drink revived him. That was the intention, but we put in that “undrinkable” line and its confusing.”

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After discussing the slow pace of the desert up until this point within Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, Hennig says, “You (the player) want it to start getting back to normal, we just should have motivated it better.” She has a point. After his sip of supposedly “undrinkable water” Nathan scales a rocky well wall, crashes through a jammed door, and engages in armed (and unarmed) combat with numerous enemy NPCs. He is jumping, diving, dodging and generally taking out more mercenaries than a fully trained member of the SAS can on a good day, despite having no clear reason for his sudden health and vitality recuperation. Removing the “undrinkable” line from the previous segment of the game would have added more gravitas to Drake’s impressive recovery.

Hennig left Naughty Dog after starting the production of Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End. She went on to work with EA on a Star Wars game, which sadly never came to be. After her departure, Naughty Dog added several different elements to Uncharted 4 that were not part of Hennig’s original ideas, including the character of Nadine Ross. But, while she may not have played as big a part in the concluding chapter of Nathan Drake’s story arc, she is no doubt one of the main reasons that the Uncharted series and all its characters are still so treasured today. Really, given all the incredible storytelling and action sequences within the Uncharted series as a whole, players can let that one little drink (or lack of it) slip-up slide.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/uncharted-3-amy-hennig-nathan-drake-thirsty-water/

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