The labyrinthine prison
Nathan Drake Jason Flemming navigated to save his woman of interest, Clair, wasn’t designed in a day. Nor was it designed, at first, on a computer. The
Shadow Complex team designed the game’s complicated
Metroid-style map with their fingers, putting to paper even the little things like every metallic nook and cranny as well as secret and not-so-secret item available in the facility.
MTV Multiplayer is
doing post-mortem on the two-month old Xbox LIVE Arcade title and, as you can imagine, the first bit covered is the game’s map. David Mustard and Chair Entertainment handed over an older sketch of the map (of which you can see in full over at MTV) and also shared some thoughts on the design process of the game’s most remarkable feature, the map.
Of course, the map didn’t stay on paper forever, by the way. Chair eventually pumped it into Adobe Illustrator. Still, it’s wonderful to hear about the design process, especially juicy little bits like this. Who knew writing utensils and paper were relevant? I haven't seen a pen in at least seventy billion Internet years.
Contest:
5:00 PM on 10.13.2009 | 
Also, I was pleasently suprised that it wasn't all buggy and laggy. Ya'know, cos of the whole Epic Games thing.
Dead Rising was fucking awesome. Not L4D2 awesome, but awesome nonetheless.
@nitex
Are you high? Dead Rising was great, especially for being so early in the console cycle. Plus,Frank West is a bad ass, he's covered wars you know.
Maybe Naughty Dog will realize Uncharted is a great universe to have a Metroidvania game to take place in. Games like La Mulana and Spelunky do things similarly.
I like how you said "I would have been." implying that you never played Dead Rising.
It was the first 360 game I wanted and the main reason I bought one at first, and I was very pleased with it. Replaying it right now.
sweet map.