Anonymity has its advantages, says Naughty Dog’s creative director.
The official announcement of the third Uncharted game has fans of the series rather excited, to say the least. But at developer Naughty Dog, the success of Uncharted 2 is making the working on the sequel more complicated than it might like.
While the exact phrasing differed, the consensus at Naughty Dog was that Uncharted 2 had set the bar incredibly high, and the studio was feeling the pressure. Creative director Amy Hennig described the pressure as “crushing.” “I’ll tell you,” she said. “There’s something to be said for being under the radar and being the dark horse that nobody’s heard of yet.”
She admitted that a hefty part of the anxiety actually came from within Naughty Dog, as people tried to figure out how they could improve on the previous game. Naughty Dog co-president Christophe Balestra echoed this sentiment, saying that managing the pressure that came from outside the company was “a piece of cake” compared to the what the developers and designers put themselves under.
Trying to top Uncharted 2 will be a legitimate challenge for Naughty Dog, but it’s certainly not the worse problem in the world. There aren’t many studios that can say that their previous game was so good that they don’t know what they’re going to do for an encore.
Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception comes out for PlayStation 3 on November 1st, 2011.
Source: CVG
