The release of Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection on PC is important for Naughty Dog, as it allows us to celebrate our past and introduce a meaningful new audience to the world of Nathan Drake and Chloe Frazer. But it also represents a pivotal moment for us, a chance to look to the future and expand the way we develop games, while ensuring the level of quality expected by our audience.
To achieve this, we’ve partnered with Iron Galaxy Studios to bring two of Uncharted’s most emotional and thrilling adventures to a new platform with PC-centric quality of life features. We’re so thrilled that new players can experience these two amazing stories, all in one great package. So with its launch, let’s think a little about why this release is so meaningful to Naughty Dog, and how we hope it continues to show our commitment to bringing unforgettable games, now to more players than ever.
Bring Uncharted to PC
While PlayStation 5 remains our primary platform, we saw the opportunity to bring our games to PC as a great opportunity to reach a massive new, global audience. When we thought about what to debut on PC, we scoured our catalog and decided that the great globe-trotting stories of the Uncharted series seemed like a natural choice to present to gamers everywhere. Now you might be wondering why we didn’t start with the original Uncharted. We felt that while Nathan Drake’s first three adventures on the PlayStation 3 console would still stand the test of time, they would require a major visual overhaul to stand up to modern PC versions and the expectations gamers may have. .
The Uncharted franchise includes standalone adventures that players new and old can embark on, and while there’s still some amazing story and character development in those first three games, we thought players could easily dive into Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End and pick up Nathan, Elena, and Sully’s stories. Especially with the introduction of new characters like Sam Drake, Rafe Adler, and Nadine Ross, A Thief’s End offers so much to players, regardless of their history of getting in trouble as Nathan Drake. And Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, which is also part of the collection, features a new playable protagonist in Chloe Frazer. Fans familiar with the original trilogy will be delighted to see it return, but newcomers will have no trouble understanding its wonderful story starting with the collection.
So these two games, both being developed on more modern hardware and also receiving a remaster for the PlayStation 5 console, felt like perfect candidates to introduce the franchise and Naughty Dog to modern PC gamers. We also wanted to make sure we were delivering worthy value to gamers, so we bundled the two experiences together, offering an all-encompassing suite of PC features and customization options to suit as many gamers as possible.
We also knew that this PC version wasn’t going to be unique. As you may already know, The Last of Us Part I is in development for PC following its successful launch on PlayStation 5, and since this is, um, uncharted territory for us, we knew we had a lot to learn. to bring our games to PC. But we were also determined to bring our special attention to every aspect of our games in this new release. So for the Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves collection, we deliberately partnered with Iron Galaxy because we saw in the studio not only a tremendous understanding of PC development that we could learn from, but also a team that shared a love for our series as if it were their own. Iron Galaxy offered a partner we could trust to deliver a high-quality version of these two Uncharted games, and who we could work closely with to better understand PC development while maintaining an internal focus on the projects. current and future and also bringing them to PC.
Lessons learned
The PC debut of the Uncharted series is both exciting and thoughtful, a chance for us to learn the lessons of bringing our games to a new platform, and the expectations and opportunities that come with it. By learning so much from our partners at Iron Galaxy, we are able to look to the future of Naughty Dog games on PC with more excitement than ever.
First, we learned, especially through our partnership, what it takes to bring our own engine to parity to deliver on PC hardware. Uncharted 4 and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy are already beautiful games in their own right, and we wanted to maintain that quality in the PC version. But we still wanted to provide flexibility in fine-tuning an experience that PC gamers expect, and so it was important for us to support more cinematic resolutions as well as specific PC graphics features. One of the biggest visual changes for Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection is support for an ultra-wide monitor*, which lets you experience the breathtaking environments of the Uncharted series like Madagascar, the Western Ghats And much more. But, with our cinematic cutscenes, we tested a slew of graphical variations to see what worked best. Ultimately, we decided to add black bars to our cinematic scenes because, through all of our iterations and testing, we determined that maintaining the original artistic intent and design of these bespoke scenes was paramount to the emotional experience.
The PC space is also one that gives users a ton of flexibility in hardware specs, controls, and more. As we’ve only had to focus on one or two system specs in the past, this was simply an eye opener. Having primarily developed for console controllers, we had to learn more about the preferences and flexibility offered by keyboard and mouse controls, and found that we needed to re-evaluate some game mechanics to accommodate new methods. input. For example, Uncharted: The Lost Legacy features a tense lockpicking minigame that uses a controller’s analog stick and haptic feedback to help players unlock them. But without these inherent keyboard and mouse features, we had to rethink the application of this mechanism.
We also had to take into account the variability of PC hardware when it comes to loading data, so we reworked our engine to add a sort of “safety valve” to ensure a smooth gaming experience on various PC specs. . It’s not something we’ve had to worry about since the days of Jak and Daxter, when we added an animation of Jak stumbling if the data loaded too slowly.
Learning all of this through our partnership with Iron Galaxy Studios only solidifies Naughty Dog’s understanding of PC development and allows us to deliver the quality you expect in our future releases. We’re excited to bring The Last of Us Part I to PC in the future, and know that moving forward, adding PC development to the way we develop games, which in no way compromises the importance of the PlayStation 5 as a primary platform. , will continue to benefit our team in the long term. As Naughty Dog has come to better understand hybrid development and working from home over the past few years, PC development gives our team flexibility in how, when and where our games are made. . Just as players can enjoy Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection on PC from a variety of PC builds, our developers can work on PC iterations on various hardware items at home or in the office.
The PC version of Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection is a transformative pivot for Naughty Dog. Not only do we have another chance to celebrate our beloved franchise, but to introduce it to so many new players. In doing so, we’ve set the stage for Naughty Dog to deliver high-quality games on PlayStation 5, with the option of a PC version as well, with an understanding of how to meet the different needs of both audiences, now and in the future. .
Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection has created a tremendous foundation of technologies and learnings that will only benefit our future development. We are grateful to our partners at Iron Galaxy Studios and to our fans, new and old, as we reach this important milestone for Naughty Dog.
*Compatible PC and display device required.
