It was during the E3 2015 when Sony put its cards on the table and prepared to show its future titles for PS4. The star dish of that conference was the highly anticipated Uncharted 4 Naughty Dogwhich showed us the Madagascar sequence with Sully and Nate shooting everyone.
However, that demo started off on a very bad foot. Once the initial cinematic ended, it was time for the protagonist to start walking, but it simply didn't happen as it should during the live show. 30 eternal seconds in which more than one developer in the studio wanted the earth to swallow it, but after that time everything began to work as it should. Starting at minute 1:35:50 of the following video you can see the sequence.
Who was in charge of playing Uncharted 4 at that moment? Well, none other than co-director Bruce Straley, who arrived at the place where he was supposed to grab the PS4 controller and realized that he was not there. There was a rush, but he managed to find it, connect it and calm down, although it would be at that moment when the nightmare would begin.
“I'm hitting the joystick and it's supposed to respond. This is gameplay, this is what happens when you're playing a game. Nothing happened! Nothing happened,” Straley cursed as he looked for solutions. He found a second Sony console controller and, believing that this was the one that really worked, picked it up with an equally unfortunate result. It was then that Neil Druckmann also began to lose his temper.
“Walk! Bruce, why don't you walk? Walk. I started pacing. I didn't know what to do. [risas]”, said the person in charge as Straley headed towards a second PS4 that they had installed in case everything went wrong. Without being able to communicate with the staff in charge of directing the event, the creative trusted that everyone would understand what he was doing behind the scenes. They loaded the demo one more time and, this time yes, Uncharted 4 It worked without problems.
In the event of an absolute apocalypse, Naughty Dog still had a definitive ace up its sleeve in the form of recorded video, so there was always a lifeline. However, the mistake was so remembered and, above all, so well accepted by the workers that they introduced a very curious bronze trophy.
“Stage Fright” is the name given to the achievement that asks us to “Just before the city chase, stay completely still for 30 seconds (stage demo glitch).” A very strange request for those who were not aware of what happened at E3, but a very nice wink to remind them of the story.
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