Uncharted 4: Walking Simulator - Reading List for May 2016 (Patreon)

Hey! Thanks for supporting me on Patreon this month. As always, I've collected a bunch of articles and videos that I think you'll enjoy. And this month's main topic is...

Uncharted 4: walking simulator?

In this article, Eurogamer says "Uncharted is a walking simulator in action game's clothing", saying that these games dedicate a whole lot of time to gameplay sequences that don't ask much of the player.

Sometimes you simply watch cutscenes and have zero input whatsoever. The rest of the time you're being funnelled through intentionally frictionless scripted puzzles or button-tapping your way through automated platforming sequences. Technically you're still "playing" the game, but your agency is left out of your hands.

And beyond that, there are sequences in Uncharted games that blur the line between cutscene and gameplay, and really start to feel like mini bites of Gone Home or Firewatch. Like the village in Uncharted 2, the desert in Uncharted 3, and many sections throughout Uncharted 4.

In an IndieCade talk, written up by Gamasutra, ex-Naughty Dog chap Richard Lemarchand says that Tale of Tales' The Graveyard (an experimental indie game where you simply move a woman through a cemetery) inspired the village sequence in Uncharted 2.

Some people at Naughty Dog didn't think that this scene would work as we couldn't allow the player to run, jump or climb, perform combat moves on villagers or pull out their gun. I had just played a game however that made me feel that it was definitely going to work. I thought that in the same way that The Graveyard had created a space for me where I could reflect, so could our village.

As for Uncharted 4, in this spoiler-packed post-mortem interview with Neil Druckman, the co-director talks about crafting these slower sections (and much more)

It's not like we played Gone Home or Firewatch and said, Oh, we've got to get more of this in our game. Usually when something is just a cut scene, there's going to be someone who says, "Should we make this playable?" That's always a motivation: How can we put more of it "on the stick," as we say?

He also talks about The Last of Us DLC: Left Behind which, if you missed it, was a delightful little experience that barely featured combat at all. Just Ellie and her friend Riley exploring a mall.

Anyway, these slower sections are all well and good, but when used so frequently they do give Uncharted 4 a slightly weird feeling.

That's something Mother's Basement touches on in his video, "Uncharted 4 isn't a real video game". An inflammatory title, yes, but he touches on how U4 moves further away from having an actual mechanic (previously. shooting) that's built on throughout the game.

But whatever you think of the slower sections you can't deny their beauty! Watch this technical analysis video from NX Gamer, and this one from DigitalFoundry, to see just how much work went into creating this technical masterpiece.

And if you want to read more about the narrative, Film Crit Hulk smashes his way through the argument that cinematic needn't be a dirty word in video games.

Design Trivia

This month, with the announcement of Civilization VI, I was reminded about this funny fact that explains why Ghandi was such an asshole in Civilization. And it's about integer under flow.

Ghandi had the lowest possible aggression stat of any leader in the game - 1. But because of the way that number is stored, if the number was reduced it would underflow and loop to the highest value: 255. Thus, turning Ghandi into a super jerk.

Firaxis obviously fixed this in later games but Ghandi is now given the highest nuke rating, which makes him the most likely leader to start dropping bombs, to reference the old bug.

Read and watch

Cagey Videos looks at some different ways of handling loading screens in games. One idea I really like: the loading screen in XCOM, which has your soldiers nervously squirming in their seats as they fly to the battlefield, really ramps up the tension.

Speaking of XCOM, smarty pants designer Tom Francis offers some suggestions for solving the game's snowball problem. Which is where "if you’re finding the game easy, it gets easier. If you’re finding the game hard, it gets harder"

If your troops survive the mission, they get stronger, tougher and get more abilities, which makes them more likely to survive future missions and get tougher still. If they die, they’re replaced by vulnerable, weak rookies, who are likely to die and be replaced by vulnerable, weak rookies.

There was a lot of hullabaloo leading up to the launch of Overwatch, where Blizzard decided to change one of Tracer's poses (the butt one) after agreeing with criticism from a player. Dan from Extra Credits goes in depth on this - from the perspective of animation and pose design.

Oh yeah, speaking of Overwatch, Eurogamer's got a great video on the game's sound design. Some really smart choices in this game: for example, when a character announces their ultimate move they'll use a different sound clip depending on whether they're on your team or the enemy's so you know if you need to get out of dodge.

Plus, this interesting video goes into the similarities and differences between Overwatch and Team Fortress 2.

Matt Lees of Cool Ghosts talks about how the new Ratchet and Clank "fudges" nostalgia. The game isn't actually a remake of the original PS2 game, he says, but more like a remake of how you remember the PS2 game in your nostalgia-addled brain. Good stuff.

Here's a nice article on "residual play artifacts", which is about the joy of seeing leftover stuff from your time in the game - like the blown-up map in Worms, or your sea of ineffectual meat men in Super Meat Boy's nifty replay mode.

I can't get enough of videos where critics compare modern games to their retro counterparts. It can be like shooting fish in a barrel, like this video about how Fallout 3 pales in comparison to the originals. If you like that, this one on old Thief and new Thief is equally delicious.

I also love level design analysis. This video from Turbo Button talks about how the open environments help sell FEAR's much-loved AI, and I'm sure this Super Bunnyhop video on the Souls world design is great but I can't watch it until I finish Dark Souls.

This is getting long so let me start speeding up.

Interested in RPG quest design? Here's an interview with some Witcher 3 developers. Watch this to learn way too much about Game Boy hardware and programming. And here's a nice thing about cameras (the photographic kind) in games.

This Firewatch video is, if nothing else, beautifully produced. And I love this video about Calvin & Hobbes and art before commerce.

Excelling in Accessibility

I wanted to dedicate a section of the reading list this month to two games that do a fantastic job with accessibility options.

Uncharted 4 has specialised accessibility features, like the ability to turn off button bashing, which were inspired by Josh Straub - editor-in-chief of DAGERS (Disabled Accessibility for Gaming Entertainment Rating System) -

When I turn on a game like Uncharted, I'm not, you know, confined to a wheelchair," said Straub. "I'm a swashbuckling, ne'er-do-well treasure hunter, like Nathan Drake. That brief period of escape is why accessibility is so crucial. Because the more games that offer that, the more people with disabilities will be able to escape and have better lives.

As I said in my Q&A this month, I personally really appreciated the option to turn off button bashing QTEs because that stuff makes my repetitive strain injury flair up like nobody's business.

And then there's Overwatch, which also has lots of options. In a heartwarming Reddit post, a gamer with Cerebral Palsy thanks Blizzard for including so many options to reconfigure the controls.

Because of your extensive options I am able to play every character in the roster and it feels great. Because of you I made my first snipe in a video game today.