Naughty Dog set a very high bar with Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, a game that many PS3 owners still treat as the benchmark for console visuals. So the obvious question since Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception was revealed in December has been simple: how much further can the studio really push the same hardware? To get a clearer answer, we lined up eight pairs of images from both games side by side, with Among Thieves on one side and the officially released Drake’s Deception material on the other.
Effects And Lighting Are Where To Look
The result is a useful snapshot of where the sequel stands roughly eight months before launch. Among Thieves still holds up remarkably well, so this is not the kind of generational leap we saw between Drake’s Fortune and its sequel. The places to look are the areas Naughty Dog itself has been talking up: effects, lighting and the density of detail packed into each environment. That is where any extra headroom the studio has found is most likely to show when the two games sit next to each other.
That lines up with what the studio has said about the project so far. Speaking in an exclusive Game Informer interview with Naughty Dog in December, co president Evan Wells and creative director Amy Hennig explained that adding stereoscopic 3D forced the team into months of optimization, since the engine now has to draw two images in the time it once spent on one. Those savings, they said, also opened room for more particles, physics and dynamic effects in the standard 2D version.
Desert Sand Is The Big Technical Test
The new setting is a big part of the technical challenge. Drake and Victor Sullivan are heading into the desert in search of the fabled Atlantis of the Sands, a story the developers have tied to T. E. Lawrence and to Nate’s claimed ancestor, Sir Francis Drake. Hennig described sand as a material that behaves partly like a solid and partly like a liquid, something that drifts in the wind, shifts underfoot and pours, which is notoriously hard to animate convincingly. Hennig also named escaping a burning building as a set piece the team wanted to tackle, another showcase for fire and smoke.
Sony’s own messaging has leaned on the same themes. When the game was first detailed, Naughty Dog’s Arne Meyer promised new locations around the world along with bigger strides in physics, particles and visual effects, and high resolution stereoscopic 3D support was confirmed for 3D television owners. Gameplay additions announced so far include hand to hand combat against several enemies at once, expanded traversal and deeper gunplay.
Screenshots Only Tell Part Of The Story
Of course, screenshots only tell part of the story, and released media is always chosen to flatter a game. Uncharted 2 itself looked better in motion than in stills, thanks to its animation blending and camera work, and the same will likely be true here. The full verdict will have to wait until we can see longer stretches of the sequel running in real time.
For now, the comparison suggests the PS3 still has some room left to give in the right hands. Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception is a PS3 exclusive scheduled for November 1, 2011, a date Sony locked in alongside the full announcement trailer at the Spike VGAs last December. Take a look at the images and decide for yourself how big the jump really is.