Hosted in the basement of the Hilton Bonaventure in the downtown financial district of Montreal, this year's Montreal International Game Summit kicked off with a keynote looking at one of the year's biggest - and, as our review outlines, best - action-adventures. Richard Lemarchand, co-lead designer of Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception, took to the stage to dissect the development processes that have evolved along with the franchise itself.
After a brief history of Naughty Dog, Lemarchand explained how “we put everything we learned making the previous games into Uncharted 3,” then elaborated on the processes and principles behind the design of the series.
"We wanted the player to remain directly in control of the hero, moment to moment," he said, adding that a key goal from the series' inception was to "capture the spirit of pulp adventure. We were big fans of the pulp genre, from Robinson Crusoe to Tintin."
During development of the first game in the series, Drake's Fortune, creative director Amy Hennig "really studied pulp adventure and detail...she discovered some common themes." Those common themes are peppered throughout the trilogy: chases, casts of eccentric characters, reversals of fortune. Uncharted also shares pulp's lightness of tone, something Lemarchand was keen to highlight at one of the series' particular strengths. "In every Uncharted game we've tried to express this tone," he said, "often through the colour palette."
While the series is one of the most polished out there, development was far from a smooth process. "We really were all making it up as we went along," Lemarchand said, "even after our experience with Jak And Daxter." Former Naughty Dog staffer Philip Morin briefly took to the stage and praised the studio's ability to erase and rewind, saying it was "never afraid to go back and redo something."
Lemarchand reserved special praise for Naughty Dog's thoroughly atypical management. "We have a flat hierarchical structure," he said. "We're very management-light. No-one has the title of producer; our game is produced by the artisans on the team. It's an open, meritocratic studio culture."
That lack of leadership does, of course, have a downside. "Everyone is encouraged to [provide] ideas and criticism - that's the core of our development approach," he admitted. "It does get messy and chaotic, but in a good way - [it means] bad parts of a game always get called out."
In closing, Lemarchand gave his thoughts on storytelling in games - another area in which the Uncharted series excels, though which he still thinks is "a big problem - it's often simply a lack of emotional connection with player and character. When videogames are at their best they can create deep emotional resonances with a player.
"I understand the source of at least part of that problem: we as game developers are often acting too tough and too snarky when we make our games. It's very important we have something to say; we must be in touch with our emotions and become adept at portraying them in detail, with nuance and, above all, vulnerability."