‘Uncharted 4’ Director Neil Druckmann on Nathan Drake, Sexism in Games
You once said you weren’t nervous about losing players who just want wall-to-wall action from Uncharted, because you don’t make games for them. What if I said I don’t believe you?
Which part of it?
I don’t believe that you weren’t nervous. I do believe that you don’t make games for them.
I’m always nervous how a game will be received, how successful we’ll be, is it going to make its money back. I guess what I meant is that I know we’re going to lose some people. I know there are people on NeoGAF right now complaining about the beginning of this game. Because I read some. They hate how slow it is. They don’t believe it’s really a game until you get to the end of the auction and you get your gun and you start shooting at people. That, to them, is the game. I’m OK if we lose some of those people. Hopefully they’re replaced with other people who are intrigued by the more conscious pacing.
You’re surfing the comment forums at NeoGAF right now?
That’s my sick obsession. You listen to movie directors in interviews, and they can go sit in a theater and get the reaction of people to their movie. We don’t have that experience. Sure, I can invite someone over who hasn’t played the game and watch them play, but it’s not quite the same. Going on NeoGAF or watching Let’s Play videos is how I get to experience the game now, and see what works, what doesn’t work, how people interpret the material. That, to me, is part of the payoff of making this game. You have to have thick skin. But it can be quite enjoyable.
I’ve heard that the game was not always a cover shooter.
For most of its development cycle, the first Uncharted was a brawler slash lock-on shooter. There was no aiming. You had a gun, and you could lock on to enemies and shoot at them. But we thought we could create a game that had that kind of pulp-action feel, where you would just run around without having to worry about moving a second analog stick and aiming.
We tried all these minigames – if I have a lock-on, how do I make aiming challenging? Is it timing based? None of those ideas were fun. And we tried them for many, many, many months.
The first iteration was, OK, only when you take cover, we can let you aim. As soon as we put that in, all of a sudden combat became even more engaging. There was an interesting challenge that wasn’t there before.
We built a lot of the game, and a lot of story, and then we were like, “Oh my God, we built a really short game. Let’s throw a bunch of combat into every environment.” To me, playing it back, I still think it’s an awesome achievement, but it’s a little overstuffed with combat in waves. I think it kind of ruins what has a really beautiful story underneath it. Maybe “ruins” is a bit harsh. But hampers, a little bit.