E3: Uncharted 3 Preview
By Dustin Mendel | June 11, 2011 | Previews | No comments | Share
At E3 this year, Naugthy Dog revealed a ton of information on their upcoming blockbuster, Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, and Nathan Drake’s next adventure is looking to build on the previous Uncharted games in every way.
The Story So Far
At Sony’s E3 conference on Monday, a trailer was shown for the game, setting the stage for Uncharted 3’s story. A great many questions are still unanswered regarding the plot, but we know that Sully, Elena and Chloe will be returning from Uncharted 2: Among Thieves in some capacity and that for the first time in the franchise, the villain will be a woman, by the name of Katherine Marlowe. All we know about Ms. Marlowe is that she shares some connection to Sir Francis Drake, the focal point of the original Uncharted and Nathan’s namesake. Uncharted 3 will take players to an ancient Arabian city, with some amazing set pieces along the way. Naughty Dog has hinted at a much more personal story for Nathan Drake this time around, and the subtitle for the game, Drake’s Deception, could hint at any number of possibilities.
Meet the new face of evil.
The trailer looks like it will continue Naughty Dog’s trend of delivering Hollywood-caliber storytelling, and that’s all well and good, but what really matters is the gameplay, and the developers obliged us with a demo which showed off some of the new locations and features in the game.
During the demo, Drake finds himself on a massive cruise ship, although the details surrounding his situation were kept a secret. From a visual standpoint, the game looks amazing; Nate steadied himself on the deck as the ship pitched and rolled on the rough water, and the lighting gave a great sense of tone and scale, from the faint strings of bulbs on the exterior of the ship to the massive chandeliers inside.
About five seconds before everything goes wrong for Drake.
Kitty Gets Wet
Stealth combat will be returning from the last game, as Drake crept through an enormous ballroom, dispatching guards with a variety of choke holds. Deeper into the ship, after nearly being caught and when Nate throws an active grenade into a corner, things start to get interesting. The explosion tears a hole into the ship, and water quickly begins to flood the room. For the first time in the series, water is no longer an instant kill for Drake; the demo showed off his new swimming abilities, both on the surface and underwater, with a few button mashing QTEs along the way.
One of the highlights of Uncharted 2 was its incredible set pieces, like the train and some of the crumbling buildings Nathan Drake found himself in, and the new game is already looking like it will raise the bar even further. In the demo, after the ship had taken on enough water, it violently pitched to one side, flipping the entire level ninety degrees. As Drake scrambled to escape from the water and his pursuers, he now had to climb over staircases that acted as barriers. After another swimming sequence, the demo ended with a blast of water rushing at Drake as he sprinted towards the camera.
It’s too early to give the game a grade obviously, but if the rest of the game is filled with moments like this, it has to be considered a front runner for game of the year at this point. Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception is set for release on November 1 of this year.
