Uncharted 3 Blurring the Line Between Game and Reality

Arne Meyer the Community Strategist at Naughty Dog recently sat down for an interview about the highly anticipated Uncharted 3.  While still discussing The Chateau Level, Meyer feels that it’s a great spot to discuss many of the gameplay mechanics that people haven’t seen before.  Of some of the new features, the expanded melee options in Uncharted 3 include elements of stealth where Drake will set himself up for silent kills.  There are also new brawling moves inlcuded in Uncharted 3.  Drake will have the option of dispatching an enemy with objects in the environment “whether that ‘s grabbing a chair, slamming an enemy into a wall or removing their gun and dispatching them that way.”

The bottom line is that Naughty Dog is “blurring the line between game and reality” ultimately “making the player believe in this world”.  By using a multiple motion capture studios the development team is able to capture their ideas in much of the way that major motion pictures are developed.

As you can probably imagine Naughty Dog has been focusing on fire effects in Uncharted 3.  But just how close to reality are they getting?  The fire in Uncharted 3 “is not just a static element the fire deteriorates the wood realistically and there are blowback effects, like you would expect.”  One of the most amazing things to come out of the interview, the effects of the fire are in real-time.

“You could sit down and watch the chateau burn around you, if you sit there long enough; however, we want the player to proceed through the game at a decent pace so that’s not going to happen. Even in this demo, you can see beams deteriorating as they burn, and you can even take cover behind them when they give way and fall to the floor, only for that cover to disappear when the beam has burned away completely.

Procedural fire is a pretty difficult technical challenge, especially on top of everything else you’re trying to get in the game, but it produces some brilliant effects, like the corners of the wallpaper starting to roll and then igniting, and then the embers flickering in the air. Essentially, we’re programming oxygen and then having the fire follow it around the environment.”

Source: PlayStation Blog