News

Uncharted 4 dev explains visual differences between E3 and PSX footage

Naughty Dog has moved to address accusations of Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End being downgraded from its impressive E3 showcase for the PlayStation Experience gameplay reveal earlier this month.

The company’s 3D Environment Artist, Anthony Vaccaro, posted his thoughts on the Polycount forum (via GamePur), in response to a comparison image produced by a fan, which ostensibly showcases the visual disparities between the E3 trailer and PSX demo.

Said Vaccaro: 

Here are just a couple of things about those comparison shots.

1.Time of day is different in both. – Our first trailer is at night, moonlight. Our gameplay demo is early morning. So the moonlight is slightly over exaggerated to give more contrast to give it that night feeling but enough light so you can see whats going on. Dawn is not a time of day where you have a lot of contrast.

2. His face is so spec-y [editor’s note: specular] in the first image! – Have you seen the trailer? He literally just gets up out of water so his face/chest/shirt are wet and have a high sheen. Bottom one he is not wet so of course he looks dry.

3. Trailers are Art Directed for every frame – A trailer is not gameplay so we have the ability to do a lot of art direction in that shot, that could otherwise hamper gameplay. It allows us to give a lot more emotion to a trailer.”

Rockstar’s Owen Shepherd also chimed in on the matter:

"There’s a difference in what you can do for a trailer and actual in game, not in respect to technology but in terms of art direction.

For example, you have a dynamic exposure system, you tend to have to be conservative for in game to avoid players not being able to see, this will then mean that your cutscenes need to be consistent with the game, so you tend not to have as much deep shadowing and less contrast.

You don’t have these issues with a trailer that’s viewed in its own bubble.

Having said that, the image above looks like its in the wrong colour space giving it the washed out look that i didn’t see when viewing the trailer in some video players.

I honestly think you could get 90% similar images in similar lighting conditions.

I think it looks great, looking forward to playing the shit out of it."

Uncharted 4 is due out on PS4 in 2015. Naughty Dog spilled a heap of info on the game last week, including the fact Nathan Drake will feature 800 facial animations, as well as providing a comparison shot of his Uncharted 4 model with that of Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception.

Here’s six things we learned from the gameplay trailer. What did you spot?