If you haven’t seen it yet, stop what you’re doing and watch the E3 footage of Uncharted 4 gameplay:
During their E3 conference, one of the headlining announcements from Sony was the 2016 release of the upcoming Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, and they brought twenty solid minutes of gameplay footage to drive it home. The game is objectively impressive relative to its predecessors, and the footage is filled with cinematic stunts and chase sequences that make it seem as much like a movie as it does a game.
This latest installment to the franchise is centered on resolving narrative strings involving Nathan Drake’s older brother, Sam. While Nate’s backstory has been delved through inside and out over the past three games, Sam’s is only lightly touched on, meaning there’s plenty of meat left in the plot to dig into for long-time fans.
Fans of the franchise will recognize the familiar tone of the tense, fast, high-action sequences that change up what the player is doing and how they do it. With the goal of uniting with his brother, Nathan moves immediately into enemy forces in a crowded town market located high in some hills. From that point, the action doesn’t halt until the last few minutes of the demonstration. With Sully at his side, Nate pushed through the forces until the two are forced to some rooftops by a large turret-mounted truck. The tempo picks up as the two of them reach an off-road jeep and a chaotic chase scene erupts.
The duo loses the turret-mounted pursuers temporarily and they locate the convoy chasing Sam. The scene comes to a climax when Nate and Sam are driving alongside one another, one in a jeep and one on a bike, and they simultaneously order the other to leave their vehicle to jump on their own.
As far as demos go, this one was gorgeously choreographed. It all followed a steady interest curve, even during the high-action sequences in the form of transitions between gameplay types, and showcased the implications of this new major character brilliantly. Viewers got to see some brotherly chemistry and were treated to a foundation for the plot of the rest of the game. It even ends on a cliffhanger!
In the features department, mechanical changes regarding player experience, UI, or anything else relevant was seemingly pushed aside for the sake of spectacle, but spectacular it was. All in all, the demo got to elegantly boast all the aspects of Uncharted gameplay that players of the series enjoy, and promised better and more to come.