Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckmann has elaborated more on the struggles that Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End protagonist, Nathan Drake, is facing in the hotly anticipated action-adventure sequel.
According to Druckmann, one of the narrative threads that runs throughout the PlayStation 4-exclusive title will be Drake’s struggle of balancing life with his family and his passion for adventuring and seeking fortune.
“The heart of this is Nathan Drake’s – and maybe an artists’ – struggle: how do you balance your relationship with your family and friends, and your passion, the thing you’re willing to dedicate your life to and make big sacrifices for? If you look at Nathan Drake, he has dealt with obsession his entire life. Whether it’s El Dorado in Uncharted or Shangri-La in Uncharted 2 or Iram of the Pillars in Uncharted 3, those have been major obsessions for him and we’ve seen it hurt his relationship. We’ve seen how between each game his relationship with Elena falls apart."
“There’s something that happens there in that gap that was really interesting for us. That’s what we want to get into. Because maybe you can’t have both. Maybe you can’t have your family and that passion and the obsession.
“When we start this story, Uncharted 4, with the scene we showed [at PSX] today, you see Nathan Drake is living what’s for him a very mundane life. Maybe he’s not doing what he’s meant to do. And it might not take much for his brother just to lure him back in.
“And then every level, every character interaction, it’s like, are we always coming back to that? Everything has to get filtered through – is this building on that theme? Are we presenting different arguments of how you handle this kind of conflict in your life.”
Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End is scheduled for release on April 26 in the U.S. and April 29 in the U.K. Naughty Dog has confirmed numerous times that the game will be the last to feature Nathan Drake, suggesting that doing a sequel featuring the cocky fortune hunter following UC4 would be very difficult.
Druckmann also revealed during the same interview that Uncharted 4’s dialogue options won’t be anything like those seen in Mass Effect. Naughty Dog has got at least one more game coming out for PS4, though remains tight-lipped on its future plans for now.