Uncharted 4 To Have Many Dark Areas Thanks To Flashlight Tech From TLOU
It is no secret that Uncharted 4, easily one of the games that PlayStation 4 users are craving the most this year, will borrow heavily from The Last of Us, Naughty Dog‘s latest resounding success. Its gameplay, for example, will feature larger environments allowing multiple kinds of approach to combat, following the design of TLOU; that’s far from all, however.
In an interview with Spanish site HobbyConsolas, a few developers explained how the flashlight tech developed for Joel and Ellie’s game will impact Uncharted 4. Lead Designer Ricky Cambier said:
Yes, there will be a variety of scenarios exploiting the flashlight, always in relation the story. For example in the demo [shown at PSX], while looking for his brother Nathan must enter a cave; some of the mysteries of the island will be observed while exploring its darkness.
Designer Kurt Margenau added:
Yes, the flashlight allows us to design darker areas and take advantage of the animations allowed by the new hardware.
Finally, Director Bruce Straley explained how Naughty Dog fully embeds mechanics like the flashlight one into gameplay:
The good thing about the flashlight technology that we already used in The Last of Us is that, even though you’re entering a dark area, it’s not actually dark once you use the flashlight, and this creates a balance of sorts. Whenever we introduce new mechanics, we try to make it as efficient as possible in order to expand the game as a whole. For example, in this case you’ll be using the flashlight in puzzles to reveal something or even to highlight things in the environment, such as those crabs you see in the demo entering a skeleton. Small details like that gain importance simply by pointing the flashlight, which makes you feel part of the world.
With Rise of the Tomb Raider focusing a lot on actual “tomb raiding”, it seems like gamers will be happily exploring a lot of dark, abandoned environments later this year, when Nathan Drake and Lara Croft will inevitably clash for the crown of the action/adventure genre.