The release of Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection on PC is an important event for Naughty Dog, as it allows us to celebrate our past and introduce new, meaningful audiences to the world of Nathan Drake and Chloe Frazer. But it also represents an important moment for us, an opportunity to look ahead and expand the way we develop games, all while ensuring the level of quality that our audience enjoys. expectations.
To that end, we’ve partnered with Iron Galaxy Studios to bring two of the most emotional and thrilling Uncharted adventures to a new platform with PC-centric quality of life features. heart. We’re excited new players can experience these two incredible stories, all in one great package. So with its launch, let’s think for a moment about why this release means so much to Naughty Dog, and we hope it continues to demonstrate our commitment. us in delivering unforgettable games, now to more players than ever before.
Bringing Uncharted to PC
While PlayStation 5 remains our primary platform, we’ve seen the ability to bring our games to PC as a great opportunity to reach a huge new audience around the world. As we considered what to launch on PC with, we went through our catalog and decided that the beautiful, global stories of the Uncharted series seemed like a natural fit to introduce to people. play around the world. Now, you might be wondering why we didn’t start with the original Uncharted. We feel that, while Nathan Drake’s first three adventures from the PlayStation 3 console will still stand the test of time, they will require a major visual overhaul to match the needs of the future. modern PC releases and the expectations players can have.
The Uncharted franchise includes indie adventures that both new and old players can take part in and so while there’s still incredible stories and character development in those first three games, they do. I feel players can easily dive into Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End and pick up Nathan, Elena, and Sully’s stories. Especially with the introduction of new characters like Sam Drake, Rafe Adler and Nadine Ross, A Thief’s End offers players a lot of things regardless of their troubled history like Nathan Drake. And Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, also in the collection, offers a new playable protagonist in Chloe Frazer. Fans who know the original trilogy will be delighted to see her return, but newcomers will have no trouble understanding her amazing story by starting with the collection.
And so both of these games, which were developed on more modern hardware and also received remakes for the PlayStation 5 console, feel like perfect candidates to showcase the franchise. commercial, and Naughty Dog, for the modern PC player. We also want to make sure we’re providing players with the value they deserve, and so we’ve combined the two experiences together, providing a comprehensive set of PC features and options. Customizable to accommodate as many players as possible.
We also know that this PC release won’t be a one-off. As you may already know, The Last of Us Part I is in development for PC following its successful launch on PlayStation 5, and with now being Uncharted territory for us, we know we have a lot going on. to learn about putting your game on COMPUTER. But we’re also determined to thoroughly consider every aspect of the game for this new release. So for the Uncharted Collection: Legacy of Thieves, we deliberately partnered with Iron Galaxy because we saw in the studio not only a deep understanding of PC development, but that we could learn. ask but also as a group that share the love of our series as if it were their own. Iron Galaxy has recommended a partner we can trust to deliver high-quality versions of these two Uncharted games, and with whom we can work closely to better understand the development of these two Uncharted games. PC while internally focusing on current and future projects and bringing them to PC.
Lessons Learned
The PC launch of the Uncharted series is both suspenseful and reflective, an opportunity for us to learn from our experience of delivering our games on a new platform, and the expectations and opportunities that come with it. with it. As we learn so much through our partners at Iron Galaxy, we can look to the future of Naughty Dog on PC with more excitement than ever before.
First and foremost, we’ve learned, especially through our partnership, what it takes to bring our own engines up to par for distribution on PC hardware. Uncharted 4 and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy are already beautiful games in their own right, and we wanted to maintain that quality in the PC release. But we still wanted to give us the flexibility to refine the experience PC players expect, and so it’s important that we support more cinematic resolutions and PC graphics features. Specifically. One of the biggest visual changes for Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection is the Ultra-Wide Monitor Support*, which allows you to experience the breathtaking environments of the Uncharted series like Madagascar, Western Ghats, etc. However, with cutscenes In our cinematic scenes, we tested a variety of graphic variations to see what worked best. In the end, we decided to actually add black bars to our cinematic scenes because, through all of our iterations and testing, we determined that maintaining the original artistic intent and The design of those bespoke scenes is paramount to the emotional experience.
The PC space is also a place that offers users a lot of flexibility in hardware specifications, controls, and more. Since we’ve mostly had to focus on looking at just one or two system specs in the past, this simply opened our eyes. Since developing primarily for console controllers, we had to learn about the options and flexibility of keyboard and mouse controls, and we found that we had to re-evaluate a certain number of game mechanics to accommodate the new input methods. For example, Uncharted: The Lost Legacy features a tension-lock select minigame that uses controller analog sticks and haptic feedback to help players unlock them. But without the features inherent in the keyboard and mouse, we had to rethink that mechanic’s app.
We also need to take into account the variation of PC hardware as it relates to data loading and so we have reworked our engine to add a kind of “safety valve” to ensure the gaming experience smooth across various PC specifications. This hasn’t been something we’ve had to worry about since the days of Jak and Daxter, when we added the animation of Jak tripping if the data was too slow to load.
Learning all of this through our partnership with Iron Galaxy Studios only strengthens Naughty Dog’s understanding of PC development and allows us to deliver the quality you’ve come to expect in games. future releases. We’re excited to make The Last of Us Part I available on PC in the future, and know that, in the future, we’ll be adding more PC development to the way we develop games, which doesn’t make it any better. diminishing the importance of PlayStation 5 as our primary platform, will continue to benefit our team in the long run. As Naughty Dog has gained a better understanding of hybrid development and working from home over the past few years, PC development gives our team flexibility in how, when, and where our games will be located. we are created. Just as players can enjoy Uncharted Collection: Legacy of Thieves on PC from various PC versions, our developers can work on PC iteratively on a variety of hardware from home or in the office.
The PC release of Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection is a turning point for Naughty Dog. Not only did we get another chance to celebrate our beloved franchise, but also introduce it to so many new players. In doing so, we set the stage for Naughty Dog to deliver high-quality games on PlayStation 5, with the option to release on PC, with an understanding of how to meet the different needs of both audiences and audiences. current and future pseudo.
Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection has created a tremendous base of technology and knowledge that will only benefit our future growth. We are grateful to our partners at Iron Galaxy Studios, as well as our fans new and old, as we achieve this important milestone for Naughty Dog.
*Requires a compatible PC and display device.
