The Uncharted 4 trailer that debuted at the PlayStation Experience last weekend was full of surprises for Nathan Drake and fans alike: Nate was reunited with the brother that he thought was dead for the last 15 years; and fans saw the first interactive bit in potentially all of Uncharted 4 was a dialogue menu.
Have RPG mechanics completed their conquest of all other genres? Will Nathan Drake be regularly notified that "Elena will remember that?" Will he spend Exploration Points on a branching tree of Grappling Hook Perks? Uh, no, probably not - don't expect more than a handful of dialogue options to pop up throughout the entire campaign.
"There's a few spots in the game where we felt a dialogue option would give us something interesting," Uncharted 4 creative director Neil Druckmann explained to Kinda Funny Gaming. "So with Sam talking to Nate about his previous adventures, we were like, 'Oh, this is kind of a cool nod to the fans' [...] So where would Nate start the story, which one? Let's give the player the option and they can start the story however they want."
Druckmann joked about doing Telltale-Games-style stat tracking to prove once and for all which game people like best (Uncharted 2, duh), but it sounds like they're more of a fun way for fans to put their stamp on the story than to shape its course. Deciding how to end Nathan Drake's adventuring career is all up to Naughty Dog.
"These characters are real to us," Druckmann said. "When we're writing for them you can hear their voices in your head. It's actually quite easy to get in there. But it felt like it's time to wrap it up. Nathan Drake is letting us know, 'tell the final story.' And we felt we came up with something that looks at the three previous games as the start of an arc, and this is the finish."
Seen something newsworthy? Tell us!
