Benson Russel, a developer who has worked at Naughty Dog for nearly ten years, said that the first Uncharted hired Dynamic difficulty system The purpose of the design is not to adapt to the player’s abilities; Slowing its progression and masking its short duration Nathan Drake’s first adventure.
It’s no secret that some video games, including the recent Resident Evil Requiem, use dynamic difficulty to keep challenge levels balanced and fun. However, in the case of the first Uncharted, Naughty Dog concluded that “You can’t charge $60 for a 5 hour game No multiplayer”, so the decision was made to fundamentally change the system.
Naughty Dog’s “pull soup” trick
Russell explained in an interview on the FRVR Podcast Transitioning from PS2 to PS3 development resulting in the need to “throw out all old technology and rewrite everything from scratch”, resulting in serious delays On the first Uncharted: “The system came out much later than expected… They were still designing on paper and the artists were making cool stuff because there was no gameplay.”
The result is a perverse process: In the first Uncharted, the environments were completed first, and the game was built around those locations. However, this approach has a serious side effect: The overall length of the title is too short.
Naughty Dog’s solution is Change dynamic difficultythe game becomes more difficult if the player does well, or rather if he progresses too quickly in the adventure. In fact, the system used by the studio is different from other works: It’s not based on skill, it’s based on game time.
Uncharted designer sees no point in remaking first game
“If you do well at a set difficulty level…it’s just a matter of time,” Russell added. “We did a lot of focus testing and calculated the average time for each race. If you finished a race faster than our average speed, we started increasing the difficulty.”
Although the initial goal was to calibrate difficulty, “the final system was simpler for Slows down players and prevents them from reaching the ending quickly. Dynamic difficulty is present in all three games, but in the second and third, it’s adjusted to suit the player. This is not meant to slow down the game or hinder you, but is meant to be consistent with your skill level. “
