During "Among Friends," Richard Lemarchand's Uncharted 2 postmortem at GDC 10, the co-lead designer admitted that the macro-design of the story and gameplay beats early on in production resulted in a mechanically exciting, but narratively lacking final act in the mythic city of Shambhala.
"There aren't really enough strong story beats there to match the length and the intensity of the gameplay," Lemarchand said. "At the end of the day, we'd committed too much to the level in terms of its final art and we couldn't really bring about a perfect fit [between the story and the action]."
Maybe it was just the zombie Sasquatches and the final boss fight, but I'd tend to agree that Uncharted 2's final act was the weakest part of the story. Either way, it's always groovy to hear a designer with the honesty to criticize his own game.
UPDATE: SCEA's PR department contacted us and requested that we clarify Lemarchand's statement. Lemarchand did not specifically say that Uncharted 2's story "lags" in the final act, but that, in PR manager Jill Webber's words, "that he felt the Monastery level was where they didn't have quite enough story beats."
Contest:
4:45 PM on 03.11.2010
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Final boss was weird though, seems too much like "Evil for the sake of Evil".
The story did lack a bit in the end, and the boss fight was pretty boring, but, like DonHonk said, 'twas but a minor scuff on an otherwise flawless paintjob.
Unless that designer is Peter Molyneux, in which case it's simply an expected part of the "shit on my last game before promising disc-based blowjobs to the player in my next game" circle of life.
If anything, i noticed a severe lack of Sullivan, i demand more of him.
@ squakderby
you have no idea what you're talking about do you?
Yes, because I'm Richard Lemarchand.
You fucking idiot.
90% of indie games suck. Sturgeon's Law
I dunno though, the rest of the games pacing makes up for it winding down near the end. I don't think it necessarily hurts an already amazing game.
it wasn't bad, the narrative just shoved the player along by the time it got to the mystical city. super yetis.//
But in general, the first half of the game is better than the second. Not so much an insult to the second half, just a compliment to the first.
Uncharted 3 will be truly mind-blowing.
I loved the ending!
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