STACK New Zealand October Issue 67

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GAMES FEATURE
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PS4 owners will get the chance to play Uncharted:The NathanDrake Collection in
High-Def this spoke with senior producer at Naughty Dog, SamThompson.
W hether you missed them the first time
around or just want to revisit the
ternion with some next-gen spit and
polish, the timing for this remastered collection
couldn’t be better with Uncharted 4: A Thief’s
End just around the corner.
“Naughty Dog has been kicking around this
idea since before The Last of Us Remastered,”
reveals senior producer Sam Thompson.
“There were lots of conversations, tons of
ideas internally about how to best make it
happen, but it wasn’t practical considering the
direction of our technology, and resource wise,
it wasn’t something Naughty Dog could support
internally. It took aligning with a great partner
like Bluepoint to make the idea a reality.”
Bluepoint Games were selected when,
Thompson says, the studio literally “moved
mountains for the chance of working with
us”. While Bluepoint did most of the hump
work, Naughty Dog were on hand to dispense
guidance and feedback during the project.
“We knew we needed to work closely in
order to maintain the integrity of Naughty
Dog’s product, while providing opportunities for
Bluepoint to try to improve the product where
possible,” says Thompson. “The key to this
process was being flexible and open to how
Bluepoint wanted to work, and allowing them
to put their stamp on the collection wherever
possible.”
So where do you start on a monumental
project like this? What’s involved in bringing
three games from the last generation of
consoles to Sony’s latest platform?
“To start, just resurrecting a decade of code
from tape backup and old hard drives is not
an exact science,” explains Thompson. “Then
there was locating old PC hardware, software
licenses, graphics cards, software plug-ins,
middleware, licenses, rights to fonts, locating
tape backups, master audio files, session tapes
and stems – the list went on and on.
“Next there was defining
the scope of the remaster:
i.e., how far do we want
to push improvements on
the title? This was followed
by getting the source code
and the compiler running
on the Bluepoint side. If
that isn’t enough, there was
coordinating legal approvals,
localisation, resurrecting
old QA bug databases, and
sorting through years and
years of old emails looking
for submission materials.
Oh, and then there was actually making the
game, play balancing and tuning, feature
implementation!”
Not wanting to delay load times or supply the
game on several discs, Naughty Dog resisted
the temptation to throw in a heap of bonus
features, as the studio had originally intended to
do. Instead, they decided to place an emphasis
on gameplay and visual enhancements.
“Some things are sacred, others not
so much. We knew we didn’t want
to touch the story, but there were
gameplay improvements we could
make that would be meaningful.
Removing certain motion controls,
unifying the weapon and aiming systems
across the three titles, updating character
models, audio, localisation, bug fixing, lighting,
particle systems, shadows, texture resolution,
draw-distance – this was all important to make
happen.
“For example, eliminating the screen tearing
issues in Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune was a
huge win," Thompson adds. "There were so
many areas where we improved the product, it
would be challenging to list them all here.”
While there was universal praise for the
recently remastered Gears of War, originally
released in 2006, some of the gameplay did
feel dated. So is Thompson concerned that
Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, a game of a similar
vintage, may garner a similar reaction in 2015?
“I do believe the franchise has stood the
test of time, and I have really enjoyed going to
back and working on it again for the PS4,” he
counters. “It’s been incredible to be able to
elive those classic Uncharted moments
and experience them again on the PS4.
It never gets old. I still get goosebumps
playing; it’s always a very emotional
experience for me.”
Naughty Dog has been
kicking this idea around
since before The Last of Us
Remastered.
Drake Remastered