First Uncharted 4 Gameplay Shows Freeform Climbing And Fighting

Nathan Drake is back. Properly this time, though, will plenty of comments on the situation at hand, not-quite-curse words, and little wisecracks that we know and love. This is as he’s travelling through a watery cavern in the first gameplay video for the fourth Uncharted game, A Thief’s End.

It does look very similar to previous Uncharted games – which isn’t a complaint – but the animations, particularly when Drake is climbing, seem quite brilliant. It seems even more freeform than before, with a grapple allowing him to traverse walls more easily. It makes sense that he’s finally brought some climbing gear along for the ride.

The world looks quite open, too, and certainly less linear than previous games even though it’s likely you’ll be following one path, but the gunplay looks more freeform. It’s also clear that they were demonstrating it live, as Drake falls through the map at one point, but it’s good to see at least that it works to this capacity right now, even if there are a couple of bugs.

They also demonstrate that you don’t need to finish encounters, as Drake slips away from the enemies and onwards through the jungle, rather than fighting wave after wave until the end. And then, there’s a nice reveal at the end which we won’t spoil.

If the formula ain’t broken, then don’t fix it is all I’ll say. Just make sure to improve on it enough so that we don’t have another Uncharted 3 – and it looks as though Naughty Dog are doing just that.

19 Comments

  1. Looks amazing. So many great little touches, like the improved climbing animations and as mentioned the open ended approach to traversing environments and combat. The water effects look beautiful as well, and that’s without mentioned the graphics as a whole. Hopefully they don’t quite stick to the same ‘big set piece’ formula that Uncharted 3 was guilty of, but needless to say this could be another well deserved entry into the ‘one of the greatest games of all time’ category that Naught Dog is so familiar with.

  2. It looks amazing, but so did Uncharted 2. And I think I got about 2/3 of the way through before getting bored. I liked the look of the combat, it looks different to the constant pushing forwards from arena to arena that I got tired of in UC2.

    • I could understand Uncharted 3, but being bored of Uncharted 2? Colour me shocked

      • I loved the first half, and then it just got too repetitive for me.

        What’s so bad about UC3? I thought all of them were highly thought of?

      • 2 is seen as being better in the opinion of many, but it agree Uncharted 3 was better because it showed how human drake is by seeing him at his lowest in the desert scene.

      • I agree*

      • Uncharted 3 wasn’t exactly bad, it just felt like a retread of Uncharted 2 with a worse story.

        Still a great game though.

  3. Uncharted! Awesome
    South African protagonist! Double awesome
    Though some of those accents were a bit ropey at times …

    • Protagonist? Nathan Drake is American. The enemies are South African.

  4. Does this mean you can play as drake without having to kill an army of thousands? I have to say that this new stealth mechanic looks very interesting!

  5. Super pretty, can’t wait!

  6. Seems they’ve significantly improved the encounter design and enemy AI. Animations look wonderful as well.

  7. Wow..! Looks amazing, especially the climbing and fighting section.
    Looking forward to this..!

  8. Compare the fluidity of this with the demo of The Order and I must say this looks miles better. The Order needs something changed.
    Uncharted 4 looks brilliant.

  9. So this is what next gen looks like. Bout time somebody showed us.

    • It does look amazing but the only game showing to be truly next gen/this gen is No Man’s Sky imho.

  10. Looks amazing. Going to try my hardest now to stay off the grid with this one until release so I don’t have it spoiled – have made that mistake with far too many big name titles. Cannot wait

Comments are now closed for this post.