Uncharted 4's "one last epic adventure" for Nathan Drake

Uncharted 4: A Thief's End writer Josh Scherr fleshed out a few interesting points about Naughty Dog's latest Uncharted adventure as we talked to him post-presentation at E3, where the team demoed a more elaborate demo for the game than that which'd formed their conference playthrough earlier in the week.

"Whenever we make one of these games we want to bering a new facet to Nathan Drake that we haven't seen before," Scherr explained when we asked how the studio was getting back into the headspace of the adventurer this time round. "he way we do that is through character. In this case, it's through his older brother Samuel, who he believed to be dead 15 years ago and who has now come back into his life. Meanwhile Nathan has went into what is more or less retirement."

While the consequences of his return, as Nathan discovers "every treasure has a cost" and how much he'll put on the line for his recently returned brother, is ultimately in the hands of the studio ("we don't do branching narratives in Naughty Dog games. We have a very specific story we want to tell"), they'll be offering a richer world than ever before for player to explore.

"Anywhere we can make it open, we're making it open," Scherr emphasises as we discuss the larger areas - both on foot and driving - that tantalise us during the demos. It's partly to reflect the character's headspace ("[he's] stranded on this island, he's trying to find his brother, and you want to make him feel a little bit lost. He's not quite sure where to go") but also to give the player more choice and variety.

"We make it a little more open, we make it a little more exploratory. we're ultimately bringing you to the same spot. but we're giving you that chance to feel lost... within that linearity, we're giving you the choice of where to go."

One change the studio is bringing in is the continuous, uncut flow between gameplay to cinematic to gameplay again.

"All our cinematics are 100% real time," Scherr affirms, explaining how previous games pulled you out of the experience. "The thing is with those you had this black frame before everything so you could tell when one was coming up and likewise because they were pre-captured whatever Drake was wearing or holding wouldn't be persistent. Now because it's 100 percent seamless the scenes never take you out of the narrative."

If this is Nathan Drake's swan-song, Naughty Dog are saying goodbye to the adventurer in style. "What we're trying to do is take all the lessons we've learnt from making the first three Uncharted games and, to a certain extent, lessons that we've learnt making The Last of Us and trying to combine them all into one last epic adventure for Nathan Drake."

Check out the full interview below.