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Crafting Uncharted 3

Co-lead designer Richard Lemarchand on the "quite, quite mad" Naughty Dog.

Wesley Yin-Poole avatar
Interview by Wesley Yin-Poole Former Editor-in-Chief
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27 comments
Eurogamer That kind of investment is what you'd typically get from an actor who stars in a film. Do you see a case where a Hollywood actor would invest that kind of time in a video game and it being considered like them starring in a film?
Richard Lemarchand

I'm not sure actors working on movies spend quite that long working on a movie. It depends on the movie of course, and it depends how they're put together. For instance, part of Peter Jackson's innovative process was to have a longer, more ongoing level of involvement from all the actors taking part in the creation side of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. But many actors might spend just 100 days or so shooting a film. They might come back later to do looping, to do some additional dialogue recording.

A better analogy, that Nolan mentioned today, is a long-form TV serial, like The Wire, The Sopranos or Mad Men, where there is this ongoing commitment of time and effort to realise something that's even bigger and more complex than a 100 minute feature film. We're going to see a lot more people slipping the channels as film and television and video games continue to bump into each other.

Eurogamer Do you have any involvement in the Uncharted movie?
Richard Lemarchand

It's being developed separately. Making a movie is quite different from making a video game, but we have been involved in the ongoing development process. Amy in particular has been in regular consultation with the producers.

Eurogamer I assume you want to retain a certain degree of creative control over the project so they don't go nuts, as it seemed like it might have done.
Richard Lemarchand

The producers of the movie project have a lot of integrity, and they are keen to make the kind of film fans of Uncharted want to see made. We've been impressed at Naughty Dog with the level of interest they've shown in talking to us and to Amy in particular in order to get it right. The attachment of Neil Burger to the project is a very good sign in that regard.

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Eurogamer How did you feel when you found out the game universe you created was going to be made into a movie?
Richard Lemarchand

I've always been very excited about it. I'm interested in this concept of transmedia, perhaps because of the kind of media environment I grew up in, that we all grew up in. I'm a big Doctor Who and Star Wars fan. You have the primary thing, which is the TV show or the movies, but then you extend your enjoyment by re-experiencing those story worlds through these other channels.

The Marvel comics that were produced immediately after Star Wars were a very interesting case study in the way stories get extended into different forms of media. They were made immediately following Star Wars in probably 1977. They had just the first Star Wars film to go on. They were largely set on Tatooine, and they used the Mos Eisley cantina scene as a jumping off point to have the ongoing adventures of Luke and Han and Chewie and Leia fighting for the Rebel Alliance, on Tatooine.

They spun a bunch of yarns that might not be of much interest to devotees of Star Wars canon, now. But when I was nine, they were of intense interest. I could only see Star Wars so many times then. This was pre-VCR. So I read these comic books and I continued to dream about Star Wars and continued to make my own Star Wars drawings, and make Millennium Falcon play sets out of cardboard boxes for my Star Wars action figures. As a game designer I'm very interested in all of that stuff that goes on in kids heads - and in adults heads too for that matter - as we re-experience these primary experiences in other different ways.

It might sound silly; I even had a Star Wars cookbook.

Eurogamer What was in that?
Richard Lemarchand

It was R2-D2 cookies and things. It had clearly come from the States because they called them cookies instead of biscuits. And even that was a way for me to continue having fun in the world of Star Wars.

Eurogamer You should do an Uncharted cookbook.
Richard Lemarchand

We should, yes. Maybe I'll suggest it to Nolan. There could be like, Victor Sullivan's Chilli Con Carne.

Eurogamer There you go.
Richard Lemarchand

There you go. Maybe I should write the cookbook. You can imagine then, how I feel about a feature film experience of Uncharted 3 would be different in some ways from the games and similar in others. We've set out to make the most cinematic character action games that have ever existed. Cinematic in the right sense, we hope, because it's all about ongoing, real-time interactive gameplay as much as we can possibly make it. We're happy with what we've been able to achieve in that regard.

We're all big fans of film. We had to study on the techniques of cinema very diligently to be able to make these games. So yeah, I remain excited about the future of the Uncharted feature film.

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