Developer Naughty Dog has quashed speculation suggesting that Uncharted 3 will be dipping its sandals in the open-world genre.
Fans got a little hot under the collar following the game’s debut trailer a few weeks back, which depicted cheeky treasure hunter Nathan Drake stranded in a sprawling desert following a plane crash.
However, while admitting Drake’s Deception will “feel” more open than previous iterations, Naughty Dogs’ Justin Richmond was most emphatic in declaring the studio isn’t about dunk Drake into GTA’s sandbox any time soon.
"We’re not an open-world game," he told Eurogamer. "We’re never going to be an open-world game – just because that’s not what we’re interested in making.”
"It’s still up in the air how much gameplay we’re going to let you wander around," added Richmond. "It will probably feel more open than the other games have. For sure.”
"But we’re never going to let you just ride a thousand miles off into the middle of nowhere. Ultimately the feel we want to get is, yeah, you’re lost in the desert. So it needs to feel like that. But it’s not going to feel open-world."
Fair enough, but how will Naughty Dog attempt to rope players in who stray a little too far in the baking heat? Richmond’s not going in to specifics, though teased the studio has something up its sleeves nonetheless.
"When we said ‘desert’ the first thing all the game designers said was, ‘Well, crap. How are we going to rein you in?’ he commented.
"We sent guys to the desert and looked at desert reference and realised that the desert actually does have some natural barriers. There are dunes that are impossible to climb. We sent a couple of our art guys out there and they were trying to climb these dunes and the sand was just sliding. We get away with some of that kind of stuff."
"But at some point we have to do something. And I don’t want to say what we did because I think we came up with a really cool solution. But we try not to kill you."
Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception is due out on November 1, 2011. See why we’re itching to get sand in our shoes here.