Here is the complete history of one of my all-time favorite Uncharted game franchise. Uncharted is a third person action adventure series created by naughty dog and published by Sony interactive entertainment. Practically every entry centers around the accomplished and frequently sarcastic treasure hunter Nathan drake as he decrypts clues, fights bad guys and uncovers long forgotten civilizations.
And because of its major success, it’s largely responsible for completely redefining the action-adventure genre.
But what so special about this Uncharted game franchise is, how exactly did naughty dog transition from their colorful cartoon platformer past reached to the much more mature style of video games that they created today.
Well to answer that, let’s start by taking it way back to naughty dog’s early days with the Sony playstation.Throughout the course of the late 90s, the game development studio naughty dog had built a major reputation for themselves. The crash bandicoot series proved to be a huge success.
The studio continued to refine their skills with each and every release improving on their graphical architecture. During this time, naughty dog was purchased by Sony computer entertainment.Later, the team had begun to completely overhaul their graphical architecture.
But the years that followed are considered by naughty dog as some of the darkest in the studio’s history as original co-founders Andy Gavin and Jason Rubin stepped down from the rolls while the rest of the programmers waited patiently for Sony to provide the development kits for the next gen playstation.
Finally in 2006, the kits arrived leaving them with very little time to churn out an ambitious open-ended game like before. They decided to transform their work into an entirely new property. Now, aware that they had the freedom to do whatever they wanted. They landed on the concept of a sort of serial action-adventure story but with a contemporary twist.
They added in more modern elements like pirates armed with ak-47s and old ruined forts to fight in using a smooth cover-based shooting system made popular by kill switch and gears of war. This project proved to be far more ambitious than anything the studio had worked on before.
Finally, in the fall of 2007, naughty dog released Uncharted drake’s fortune exclusively for the Sony playstation 3. Drake’s fortune begins on a small boat off the coast of panama where a young adventurer named Nathan drake along with reporter Elena fisher have just discovered an old coffin believed to contain the remains of sir Francis drake.
But as drake pries opened the coffin it’s revealed that the only thing inside is an old dusty diary handwritten by francis drake himself. Everything about uncharted is delivered in a way that feels like you’re actually controlling a movie with lots of high quality cutscenes, epic action set pieces and a likable cast of characters.
Thanks to plenty of hollywood-seque action sequences incorporated into the design of the gameplay. Uncharted at its core is a third person action adventure game with a heavy emphasis on environmental traversal and cover based shooting.
The title quickly became one of the playstation 3’s crowning achievements. Naughty dog decided to focused entirely on their next adventure with Nathan drake with a better understanding for the playstation 3’s hardware development for the sequel.
A major focus for the sequel story was to expand on the character of Nathan drake. To achieve this, they incorporated brand new characters that would help to bring out more complex aspects of the weed’s personality. And the team rapidly expanded on the concept adding in a new cooperative mode.
After a little over 20 months of development, the sequel went gold and uncharted 2 among thieves released exclusively for the playstation 3. Uncharted game franchise takes everything from the original that worked and builds from it. Uncharted 2’s most impressive new feature is its emphasis on active cinematic moments. It helped to make Uncharted game franchise one of the most epic and cinematic video games ever made.
Unfortunately, the online services for this game have been shut down but the style of gameplay still lives on in the most recent entries to the series. Overall, Uncharted 2 among thieves is considered by many as a masterpiece. It won several game of the year awards in 2009. The game is considered by many as one of the playstation 3’s greatest releases.
The development team were challenged to really push the hardware to its limits with lots of over-the-top sequences.
After nearly three years of work and a massive marketing budget to help promote the new title, naughty dog released their third entry to the series Uncharted 3. Uncharted 3 begins two years after the previous game.