Last week at The Game Awards, a new trailer for Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End was aired. Which to the surprise of many showed that Naughty Dog’s upcoming release would feature dialogue options. A first for the series.
In an interview with Kinda Funny Games Uncharted 4 co-director Neil Druckmann went into more detail on the new mechanic. He stated that branching dialogue options would be limited to ‘a few spots’ and would only be used when the mechanic would add ‘something interesting’ to the overarching narrative.
The aforementioned trailer shows Nathan Drake meeting his brother Sam for the first time in 15 years. Here, the player is given the option of detailing Nathan Drake’s previous adventures in the series. This seems as to it would be useful for catching new players up on the series, as well as making sense within the narrative. After all the two brothers likely have a lot to catch up on.
Additionally this inclusion seems to be in line with the growing trend of choice in video games, something I’m personally sceptical about when it’s included for the sake of marketing. Let’s hope that in Uncharted 4’s case it does add ‘something interesting’.