While Sony was understandably keen to talk up Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End during Paris Games Week, we’re going to have to wait a while longer for information on the main story campaign. For now, the focus of attention is firmly on the game’s five-on-five multiplayer mode.
Via a public showing, a behind closed doors presentation and a chance to go hands-on with an early version, we were able to get a good look at how this supplementary element will turn out.
Those expecting a grand reinvention of the Uncharted multiplayer formula (a range of team-based shooter modes, with some “search and destroy”-style derivatives) will be disappointed, but it was never really likely to happen. Instead, Naughty Dog has stuck with its familiar blueprint while bringing in a few interesting elements from the online Factions component in the Last of Us.
What this means is mechanics such as upgradeable abilities, character classes, a “downed” state and the ability to purchase weapons and related upgrades during a match with cash earned from knockouts, assists and all the things you are rewarded for in online shooters.
While each of the above changes how Uncharted 4’s multiplayer plays, it’s the purchasing and downed state that mix things up the most. The former allows your arsenal to be ever-evolving: string a few takedowns together and you can afford an upgrade to, say, your explosive weapon, reducing its cool-down period and allowing you to use it more often.
The downed state kicks in when a player is, well, downed – basically, mortally wounded a la Gears of War. While crawling around on the verge of death, they can continue to be attacked, resulting in a KO – or they can be revived by a teammate if there are any in the vicinity. It’s a simple addition, but one that shifts Uncharted 4’s multiplayer from a stop-start staccato game of firearm whack-a-mole to one where teamwork and sticking together actually matters – and helps.
Back with the purchasable upgrades, this leads us into a couple of other new elements Naughty Dog has added, rather than cribbed from another of its series. One is the ability to employ sidekicks: pay a fee (which increases each time you use that particular sidekick), place your beamed-in helper with a press of L1 and watch as they go about their business in various ways.
One sidekick, for example, is a sniper – placed strategically atop higher ground and around a blind corner, we found our hired help hitting plenty of the opposition with her shots. Not as powerful as player-controlled snipers, she was best used as an ambush unit to confuse other players, allowing you to move in and finish the job.
Another sidekick is the hunter; this unit spawns in and immediately sets out tracking down the closest enemy player. Once found, he approaches them quickly – and usually stealthily, though we did notice some poor choices on the AI’s part here – before grabbing them and leaving them open to attack from you or your teammates.
Backing up these supporting sidekicks are a bunch of new supporting magical items. These supernatural relics run the gamut of Uncharted’s history, from the first game to the present day, and all offer an impressive, useful and expensive super power to unleash during a match.
The Wrath of El Dorado is one Naughty Dog was keen to show off , taking the form of the giant golden statue from the original Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, this particular relic unleashes a bunch of angry spirits all around it, which pursue and attack any nearby enemies. Used to clear out enemy-held bottlenecks, it’s something we admittedly saw more in the promotional videos than in-game. Perhaps people were too worried about its intense magical powers? Or maybe we just weren’t sure how useful it would be in these early days encounters.
It’s not all angry attacks though, with the Cintamani Stone – Uncharted 2’s object of desire – offering a different magical approach for players. Now this one we did see employed quite a lot: once engaged, it coats an area with a blue flame, reviving downed teammates and speeding up the recovery efforts of those not instantly brought back by its powers.
None of these new additions felt overpowered or – importantly – out of place. In fact, the addition of supernatural powers is something that probably should have gone into Uncharted’s multiplayer some years ago, what with the main campaign focusing so heavily on these definitely-not-Indiana-Jones relics.
Aside from the updated and introduced elements, playing Uncharted 4’s multiplayer is an instantly familiar experience. Though it has its idiosyncrasies and neat little features to get your head around, if you’ve played a third-person shooter in the past few years you’ll be running and gunning (and climbing) with the best of them.
Navigation has the sort of looseness you do feel in the Uncharted games, with characters ducking heads and listing left and right rather than turning like human tanks, latching on to cover but breaking from it just as easily.
What has changed – for the better – is how the character you choose to control makes his or her way over obstacles. It’s not quite on a par with Mirror’s Edge parkour, but the free running at play does make for a quicker, more vital pace to proceedings. This pace is something Naughty Dog was keen to point out it aims to maintain, to the point that Uncharted 4 will run at 900p resolution in multiplayer, in order to preserve the 60 frames per second yardstick (for comparison, single player will be 1080p and run at 30 frames per second).
It’s a concession that, from some time with the game, does appear to be to the game’s benefit. That general sense of smoothness keeps things flowing, and the purring, slightly-lower-resolution engine is backed up by some smart mechanics.
Climbing – a separate element from the free running-like traversal of levels – is quick and easy, which makes sense as nobody wants to be shot in the backside while trying to scale a three metre high wall. The same goes for Uncharted 4’s new way to get around, the rope/grappling hook combo, which can be employed with a quick press of the L1 button in order to swing, Indiana Jones-like, across chasms.
The ability to emulate tree-swinging apes also brings with it new tactical opportunities, very much like those seen in an earlier trailer for Uncharted 4’s single-player. Basically, if some of your team can run distraction efforts, there are times when you’re able to utilise your rope swing to get behind the opposition.
We were able to use this as a genuine, workable tactic in a couple of the matches we played. It’s sure to be something the player base gets used to and learns to counter (or at least pay attention to), but for the time being it was effective and, honestly, good fun. It’s a simple touch, but one open to all manner of different strategic uses – flanking, escape, looking like a cool archaeologist – and does help highlight a depth to Uncharted 4’s multiplayer that might not otherwise have been expected.
That’s not to say this is a shooter that needs more brains than reflexes and effective use of explosives, but giving the player another tool to take advantage of – and the ability to engage in some thrilling death from above moments as you swing above your opponent before dropping on top of them with a melee attack – does broaden the player’s choice somewhat.
There are other elements Uncharted 4’s multiplayer has in common with its contemporaries, ones which divide opinion. Naughty Dog has confirmed the in-game purchases will be present in Uncharted 4 from day one, though lead multiplayer designer Robert Cogburn maintained this would “generally” be for cosmetic items. “We are definitely not for the mentality of gating gameplay mechanics,” he told assembled journalists, “It’s not something we at Naughty Dog want to do. [It’s] generally for cosmetic stuff.”
That “generally” does stand out, and Cogburn’s confirmation of Naughty Dog Points – Uncharted 4’s in-game virtual currency – raises the question of whether this videogame cash will be available for purchase with real money. One thing that was clarified, however, was that the Points can be used to unlock items in Uncharted 4’s multiplayer: “With that virtual currency there’ll be no gameplay items that you can’t unlock,” Cogburn said.
This would appear to be the most effort Naughty Dog has put into an Uncharted multiplayer mode to date. Beginning as a pleasant aside in Uncharted 2 before developing into a decent attraction in its own right by Uncharted 3, the push the studio is putting into Uncharted 4’s multiplayer mode is apparent for anyone to see.
Whether it will be engaging enough to keep people playing beyond a few days or weeks after Uncharted 4’s launch will be another story altogether, though. The fundamentals are solid, if unspectacular, and while there are plenty of elements we’ve not see in an Uncharted title before, none of it is actually new to competitive multiplayer.
Cautious optimism is the best approach for a proposal like this: the meat of Uncharted 4 is always going to be in its single-player campaign, but the sheer endeavour Naughty Dog is putting behind its online push makes this a part of Uncharted 4 that might end up a dark horse.
Thursday, October 29, 2015
Monday, October 26, 2015
GoldenEye on N64: Miyamoto wanted to tone down the killing
GoldenEye 007 was one of the greatest games of the 90s, and revolutionised the idea of the first-person shooter on consoles – but Nintendo was hugely concerned about its depiction of violence, game director Martin Hollis has revealed.
In a fascinating talk at the GameCity festival in Nottingham, the veteran designer explained how Twycross-based developer Rare was determined to forge a creative partnership with the Japanese company. After several approaches, the studio was finally visited by Genyo Takeda, the director behind the Punch-Out!!titles. “He went back to his hotel room, and when he came back for more meetings the next day, Rare had made a new version of Punch-Out!! over night, using their Silicon Graphics workstations and featuring huge rendered sprites. I imagine it impressed him a great deal.” A development deal was duly offered.
After producing the fighting game Killer Instinct, Rare was then offered the chance to make a game based around the GoldenEye movie, or “Bond 17” as it was known at the time. “Tim Stamper told me to write a design document,” says Hollis. “So I went away and thought about it for a month and wrote a ten-page document. And then I was making GoldenEye.”
According to Hollis, the game was originally much more graphic in its depiction of violence. “Bond is a violent franchise and making that fit with Nintendo, which is very much family-friendly, was a challenge. For a while we had some gore, it was just a flipbook of about 40 textures, beautifully rendered gore that would explode out. When I saw it the first time, I thought it was awesome, it was a fountain of blood, like that moment in the Shining when the lift doors open. Then I thought, hmm, this might be a bit too much red.”
He went on to explain that, towards the end of development, the team received a fax from Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto, with a series of suggestions for the game. “One point was that there was too much close-up killing – he found it a bit too horrible. I don’t think I did anything with that input. The second point was, he felt the game was too tragic, with all the killing. He suggested that it might be nice if, at the end of the game, you got to shake hands with all your enemies in the hospital.”
Instead of this, Hollis added a credits sequence into the game, introducing all the characters, almost as though they were being portrayed by actors. “It was very filmic, and the key thing was, it underlined that this was artifice,” he explained. “The sequence told people that this was not real killing.”
Hollis also admitted that the team borrowed the idea of having multiple objectives on each level from Super Mario 64. “I studiously tried to learn what Nintendo was. I played [Zelda] Link to the Past from beginning to end – I got all the hearts and all but two of the quarter hearts. I could write a thousand pages about that game. Then Mario 64 came out during the development of GoldenEye and we were clearly influenced by that game. Ours was much more open as a result.”
Hollis spoke at length about his great admiration for Nintendo. “I value the idea – which I do see as quite strongly a Japanese idea – of respect to the player and trying to see into their mind and their life,” he said. “We have jargon for it nowadays: ‘user-centric design’. Nintendo thought about where the player would be when they played the game and who would be with them at the time.”
But it’s not just the players. Hollis argues that Nintendo also respects the creators, even when it might be financially detrimental. Apparently, Rare was asked if it would consider making a game based on the next James Bond film, but the studio turned it down. “I thought about this and was not sure I’d really want to,” said Hollis. “We had a small chat, three or four of us on the team. It was like, ‘No’. We sent the message back, ‘The answer is no. We don’t plan to make another Bond game from another Bond film’. And that was it.”
Years later, Hollis still seems surprised at how easily Nintendo accepted their refusal. “It must have grossed, I don’t know, $400m or something. You might’ve thought that on a commercial basis someone at Nintendo, even lower down or higher up or whatever, would’ve said, “Well, are you sure?”, but out of respect for the creator and the importance of the people who actually made the game, that was it.”
Instead of making another James Bond game, Hollis moved on to work on Perfect Dark, which he says was “definitely a spiritual sequel”. While he left Rare 14 months into the game’s development, he was there for the important decisions.
“I wanted to make a game that starred a woman. Partly it was Nikita, the film by Luc Besson, and also Dishonored, a 1930s movie starring a spy who was a woman, and a general sort of sensibility that I thought it would be interesting to have a woman be the centre of attention. We constructed this character, to the very best of our ability, to be the centrepiece of the game.”
Joanna Dark was born of the best intentions – even her name comes from Jeanne D’Arc, or Joan of Arc – but her game inevitably made less of an impression than GoldenEye. If there are people who think Joanna Dark was less interesting than her male predecessor, Hollis has an explanation: “It’s very tough in a first-person shooter to develop a personality or a backstory, and what Bond brings you is honestly a lot more. You hear the theme tune and you’re right there.”
In a fascinating talk at the GameCity festival in Nottingham, the veteran designer explained how Twycross-based developer Rare was determined to forge a creative partnership with the Japanese company. After several approaches, the studio was finally visited by Genyo Takeda, the director behind the Punch-Out!!titles. “He went back to his hotel room, and when he came back for more meetings the next day, Rare had made a new version of Punch-Out!! over night, using their Silicon Graphics workstations and featuring huge rendered sprites. I imagine it impressed him a great deal.” A development deal was duly offered.
After producing the fighting game Killer Instinct, Rare was then offered the chance to make a game based around the GoldenEye movie, or “Bond 17” as it was known at the time. “Tim Stamper told me to write a design document,” says Hollis. “So I went away and thought about it for a month and wrote a ten-page document. And then I was making GoldenEye.”
According to Hollis, the game was originally much more graphic in its depiction of violence. “Bond is a violent franchise and making that fit with Nintendo, which is very much family-friendly, was a challenge. For a while we had some gore, it was just a flipbook of about 40 textures, beautifully rendered gore that would explode out. When I saw it the first time, I thought it was awesome, it was a fountain of blood, like that moment in the Shining when the lift doors open. Then I thought, hmm, this might be a bit too much red.”
He went on to explain that, towards the end of development, the team received a fax from Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto, with a series of suggestions for the game. “One point was that there was too much close-up killing – he found it a bit too horrible. I don’t think I did anything with that input. The second point was, he felt the game was too tragic, with all the killing. He suggested that it might be nice if, at the end of the game, you got to shake hands with all your enemies in the hospital.”
Instead of this, Hollis added a credits sequence into the game, introducing all the characters, almost as though they were being portrayed by actors. “It was very filmic, and the key thing was, it underlined that this was artifice,” he explained. “The sequence told people that this was not real killing.”
Hollis also admitted that the team borrowed the idea of having multiple objectives on each level from Super Mario 64. “I studiously tried to learn what Nintendo was. I played [Zelda] Link to the Past from beginning to end – I got all the hearts and all but two of the quarter hearts. I could write a thousand pages about that game. Then Mario 64 came out during the development of GoldenEye and we were clearly influenced by that game. Ours was much more open as a result.”
Hollis spoke at length about his great admiration for Nintendo. “I value the idea – which I do see as quite strongly a Japanese idea – of respect to the player and trying to see into their mind and their life,” he said. “We have jargon for it nowadays: ‘user-centric design’. Nintendo thought about where the player would be when they played the game and who would be with them at the time.”
But it’s not just the players. Hollis argues that Nintendo also respects the creators, even when it might be financially detrimental. Apparently, Rare was asked if it would consider making a game based on the next James Bond film, but the studio turned it down. “I thought about this and was not sure I’d really want to,” said Hollis. “We had a small chat, three or four of us on the team. It was like, ‘No’. We sent the message back, ‘The answer is no. We don’t plan to make another Bond game from another Bond film’. And that was it.”
Years later, Hollis still seems surprised at how easily Nintendo accepted their refusal. “It must have grossed, I don’t know, $400m or something. You might’ve thought that on a commercial basis someone at Nintendo, even lower down or higher up or whatever, would’ve said, “Well, are you sure?”, but out of respect for the creator and the importance of the people who actually made the game, that was it.”
Instead of making another James Bond game, Hollis moved on to work on Perfect Dark, which he says was “definitely a spiritual sequel”. While he left Rare 14 months into the game’s development, he was there for the important decisions.
“I wanted to make a game that starred a woman. Partly it was Nikita, the film by Luc Besson, and also Dishonored, a 1930s movie starring a spy who was a woman, and a general sort of sensibility that I thought it would be interesting to have a woman be the centre of attention. We constructed this character, to the very best of our ability, to be the centrepiece of the game.”
Joanna Dark was born of the best intentions – even her name comes from Jeanne D’Arc, or Joan of Arc – but her game inevitably made less of an impression than GoldenEye. If there are people who think Joanna Dark was less interesting than her male predecessor, Hollis has an explanation: “It’s very tough in a first-person shooter to develop a personality or a backstory, and what Bond brings you is honestly a lot more. You hear the theme tune and you’re right there.”
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