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Naughty Dog’s Uncharted Could Have Been A Fantasy Game
If it hadn’t been for publisher pressure to push the series in a grittier direction, Naughty Dog’s Uncharted series might have been a more fantastical series in the vein of Jak and Daxter.
"We were talking about a more 'realistic' game in terms of how it was modeled and rendered but the concepts were much more far out. One was a forest world where the antagonists lived underground," Don Poole, former Naughty Dog environment modeler told Play Magazine in a recent issue.
"It had elements of Tolkien in for sure. Sony kept pushing for a more realistic game in all respects. The market had changed a lot by then. The demographic was older and gritty shooters were really dominating. Sony wanted very much to get into that market share, it pushed all of its developers in this direction."
"So the big push from Sony, not just at Naughty Dog but at all of Sony's development companies at the time, was to craft games for PlayStation 3 that were much more realistic. The pressure from Xbox's success with gritty shooters was a very real force on our direction at that time."
We love the direction that Naughty Dog eventually took with the Uncharted series, and we have trouble imagining what a more fantastical version of the game would have been like, but it would be interesting to see some of the game’s early concept art.
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