Naughty Dog talks Uncharted 4 combat, stealth and more

Uncharted 4: A Thief's End's creative director Neil Druckmann says he want to create a Nathan Drake adventure that thinks big and takes advantage of all the lessons Naughty Dog has learned from working on the series, and on The Last of Us.

Interviewed in a Game Informer video released today, Druckmann said that he wanted to achieve "a wider more sandbox feel" for the game, that was extensively demoed in a video at PlayStation Experience late last year.

"With the verticality of Nathan Drake, with adding set pieces that weren't necessarily in this demo, how do you get a bigger flow, something that is deeper at an emotional level? All those things come together to make the Uncharted that we want to play," he said.

He added that the milestone of releasing the demo allows the team at developer Naughty Dog to focus on completing the project, due out late this year.

"We have our vertical slice and we've found our flow and the voice of this game. Now it's like, how do you expand on that?" he said. "How do you flesh that out across the entire experience, making sure it's got its proper pacing, it's got its ups and downs? It seems like an eternity from now until when we'll be finished with it."

Druckmann said that the team is working on creating a big comic-book-style adventure, but in a world that feels vibrant and real. One area where much work is being focused is, of course, combat. "To us the Uncharted combat works best when it has a flow to it, when you are not just behind cover, shooting over and ducking back down. When your cover is getting flanked and you have to jump and move down to another level." He said that more advanced use of stealth and traversal were examples of how the game is moving on from previous offerings in the series.