Uncharted started out as a fantasy game

By Fred Dutton Published 22 September, 2011

"Gritty Xbox shooters" inspired new direction.

PlayStation 3 tentpole Uncharted started out life as a fantasy adventure, according to a former Naughty Dog employee.

Speaking in an interview with NowGamer, Don Poole, who worked as an environment modeler at the studio, revealed that Sony asked for a change of direction to take advantage of the "gritty shooter" boom on the Xbox 360.

"We were talking about a more 'realistic' game in terms of how it was modelled and rendered but the concepts were much more far out. One was a forest world where the antagonists lived underground. It had elements of Tolkien in for sure," he explained.

"Sony kept pushing for a more realistic game in all respects. The market had changed a lot by then. The demographic was older and gritty shooters were really dominating. Sony wanted very much to get into that market share, it pushed all of its developers in this direction."

"So the big push from Sony, not just at Naughty Dog but at all of Sony's development companies at the time, was to craft games for PlayStation 3 that were much more realistic. The pressure from Xbox's success with gritty shooters was a very real force on our direction at that time."

Apparently the suggestion wasn't met with universal enthusiasm from the studio's staff.

"We had a lot of internal grumbling about the realist bent. More of the old dogs were from the Crash and Jak era and preferred that more whimsical style. But alas, that was a losing battle."

The next entry in the goblin-free franchise, Uncharted 3: Drake's Fortune, hits PlayStation 3 on 2nd November.

Picture of Fred.

About Fred Dutton

Fred Dutton is Eurogamer's US news editor, based in Washington DC.

Read more articles from Fred by visiting the Fred Dutton archive page.

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Comments (42) Latest comment 8 months ago

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  • Markitron #1 8 months ago

    Normally I would say 'thank christ for that' but I'm sure this abandoned game woulda been awesome too. Hope they make it eventually

  • MENTAL1ST Verified Senior Software Engineer, Picsel UK Ltd. #2 8 months ago

    I kind of wondered why all 3 major 'whimsical' platform franchises of PS2 were jettisoned in favour of a setpiece-FPS, a cover shooter and a superhero-gta-clone.

  • Captain_JMac #3 8 months ago

    In the future, all games will be gritty first person shooters and special editions will come with a free bag of grit for players to sprinkle in their eyes as they grit their teeth.

  • thiagots85 #4 8 months ago

    @markitron... totally agreed ...

  • TaniumZX #5 8 months ago

    Thats a shame, as playing through the original Jak and Daxter every night after a hard late shift at work when I first got my PS2 is one of my fondest gaming memories.

  • GamesProgrammer Verified Games Team Programmer, Eutechnyx Ltd. #6 8 months ago

    Thankfully its still full of colour, not carved out of pure brown like a lot of realistic gritty games.

  • chris_ace #7 8 months ago

    Post deleted at 11:55:13 13-12-2011

  • Collymilad #8 8 months ago

    Oh god the SDF aint gonna like this one :p

  • bladdard #9 8 months ago

    We could all think what might have been but Uncharted 2 is arguably the best game this gen. It would seem Xbox grit & ND's creative vision was a match made in pixel heaven.
    Edited by bladdard at 22/09/11 @ 16:55

  • FenderMaster #10 8 months ago

    As much as I love Uncharted, this Tolkien esque forest based game does sound more interesting. Uncharted is as unimaginative as they come, but fortunately it's also crafted amazingly well, thanks to the skilled artists, programmers, sound directors and writers at Naughty Dog..

  • Kazzahdrane #11 8 months ago

    @Mentalist: Ratchet & Clank are about to get their 4th game on PS3...not sure they've been "jettisoned".

    (I'm assuming you were talking about J&D, R&C and Sly).

  • Phoenisis #12 8 months ago

    The day "gritty Xbox shooters" are no longer seen by the industry as the ultimate benchmark for games will be a great day indeed.

  • Penguinzoot #13 8 months ago

    Thankfully its still full of colour, not carved out of pure brown like a lot of realistic gritty games.

    Grey. Don't forget grey ;)

    Also, I'm with Markitron. I thought both Uncharted I and II were great. But it would have been interesting to see what the original concepts were like. I guess we'll never know.
    Edited by Penguinzoot at 22/09/11 @ 17:11

  • Architect_z #14 8 months ago

    @Penguinzoot

    I love you name. ^_^

  • the_dudefather #15 8 months ago

    They still manage to sneak the odd fantasy element in though!

    /looks forward to fighting the loch ness monster in UC3

  • taurus82 #16 8 months ago

    Actually it was the 'gritty shooter' part that put me off.

    Is there any reason why this fantasy adventure can't still be made?

  • SteveHolt #17 8 months ago

    By "gritty xbox shooters", he means gears of war. This is uncharted's achille heel IMO: this franchise would be much better if Drake wasn't killing so many people, it just doesn't fit with the game's writing and tone.

  • Penguinzoot #18 8 months ago

    I love you name. ^_^
    Erm, thanks

  • carlosdfn #19 8 months ago

    Who says Uncharted 3 wont have goblins?

  • Kaonazhie #20 8 months ago

    Sony again copying somebody. It's not really surprising. What IS surprising is that they admit to it this time. I never really saw why Uncharted was so lauded, to be honest. The graphics're great and there were nice set-pieces, but the art design was boring and generic (would've been nice to see it as a fantasy game - because realistic games often have little to no art style, using said realism as an excuse), the story was the stuff of plonkers and the shooting mechanics/gameplay in general were... well, they weren't rubbish, but they were far from the level that Gears of War set for TPS games.

    By the way, keep up with the ad hominem replies to this post - they just prove me right. If Uncharted has such incredible shooting mechanics, why does nobody play it competitively? Answer: it has terribly sloppy and wonky shooting mechanics. I suppose you'll say that it was never designed to be a competitive game. Neither was Call of Duty, nor was Gears of War. But at LEAST it has a B-grade action movie story and script with lots of explosions to keep you interested.
    Edited by Kaonazhie at 22/09/11 @ 18:21

  • The-Bodybuilder #21 8 months ago

    Before people start maoning about "suits crushing creativity" remember this; if sony didn't do what they did, there's a strong likelihood that the original vision of uncharted may have very well not sold well.
    That also means that there was a chance of people at NG being made redundant. So before you attack the suits, let it be known that the suits potentially saved their jobs.

    I hate the suits as much as the next man, but this is the reality of the world we live in; what sells keeps jobs.

  • callum9999 #22 8 months ago

    Everyone copies everyone. Microsoft copy. Sony copy. Nintendo copy. Samsung copy. LG copy. In fact name an electronics copy and I can almost guarantee someone did something similar before them.

    Copying is how the world works. Everything we have today didn't just appear at random, it has been copied and refined time and time again.

  • Psiloc #23 8 months ago

    "The next entry in the goblin-free franchise, Uncharted 3: Drake's Fortune, hits PlayStation 3 on 2nd November."

  • man.the.king #24 8 months ago

    @Kaonazhie

    "Sony again copying somebody..."

    Why am I not surprised?

  • king26 #25 8 months ago

    I wouldn't have Uncharted any other way! Though I am guilty of loving grity FPS franchise Killzone. And it's Drake's Deception not Drake's Fortune to be released in November.

  • Freki #26 8 months ago

    The concern for me isnt that this was done to Uncharted but more that Sony was pushing it onto all their devs. I want variety in genres please!

  • funkateer #27 8 months ago

    " I never really saw why Uncharted was so lauded"

    Heh, yeah I'm pretty sure you never really saw it.

  • danhese007 #28 8 months ago

    @man.the.king

    I see what you did there, you deserve a thousand pluses

    @Kaonazhie
    And on that note of copying, is there any particular game on xbox 360 that looks or even play like uncharted? All these sony is copying this and that is starting to piss me off. So toyota added a circular wheel to their car, i guess honda is copying toyota, they should use a triangular wheel on their car. Its a bloody genre, any developer is allowed to create a game from any genre they like just like every musician is allowed to create music of any genre they like.

  • Architect_z #29 8 months ago

    @penguinzoot

    "Erm, thanks"

    No problem, now pass that shit!

  • Boab #30 8 months ago

    Three gritty brown knockoffs on one console would have been hilarious.

  • danhese007 #31 8 months ago

    The gaming industry is starting to get filled with morons with each new generation of consoles and devices, and it is more prevalent in this current gen of consoles. They are so obsessed with who's copying who and what without realizing all these things had been done years before by the likes of Atari, Sega, Coleco, Magnavox, Mattel, Microvision, Smith Electronics, Tiger Electronics and many more. Ranging from motion control, to analog sticks, DPad, 3D both glasses and glasses free, portable consoles, touch screens etc, if you just bother to do some research. Innovation in gaming industry has stopped since 1997 and what we are seeing now are refined, re-imagined and reincarnation of what was done years ago. Seems the only things improving are Graphics, Animation and AI.

  • king26 #32 8 months ago

    @BOAB
    The other two knockoff being?

  • Ahskay #33 8 months ago

    I hope they pick it up again one day, maybe outsource it for the Vita.

  • Toplinkar #34 8 months ago

    Imagine a fantasy Uncharted? If the "real" one already has so much over the top action sequences the fantasy version would be crazy. Hope it sees the light of the day eventually.

  • Farzlepot #35 8 months ago

    Personally I'm glad. Uncharted is one of my favourite franchises; they embody the concept of fun, something that many game devs seem to take for granted these days. It's just a big adventure in tropical locales, with beautiful women, even more beautiful scenery, funny dialogue, likeable rogues and plenty of over-the-top action. It doesn't have any pretences about being a deep or meaningful experience, it knows it's just a lark, and ND puts it all together with their typically high production values.

    It's freaking Indiana Jones for the gaming world.

  • evnewell #36 8 months ago

    I guess nintendo didn't get the memo. Glad they're keeping it... real.

  • Mister-Wario #37 8 months ago

    A pity. I loved the whimsical nature of the Ratchet, Jak and Sly games. Sure, Resistance, Uncharted and Infamous are solid games, but I'll remember their predecessors a lot more fondly. The later releases largley blend into the woodwork for me, although Infamous is pretty unusual to be fair.

  • ilmaestro #38 8 months ago

    Phew, glad Sony managed to sidestep that landmine of creativity and followed the herd a bit more closely.

  • greenfanguy #39 8 months ago

    "Goblin-free?" I could have sworn there were some goblins near the end of the first game..

  • 3william56 #40 8 months ago

    I reckon a little bit of Drake getting drugged, having to fight a way out of a nightmare would be an interesting switch of pace, the way the pants browning undead of part 1 did.

  • menschenfracht #41 8 months ago

    >> Phew, glad Sony managed to sidestep that landmine of creativity and followed the herd a bit more closely.
    Fantasy setting = creativity?

  • RSene #42 8 months ago

    What? Drake fighting Sauron?