Naughty Dog on Uncharted 3 fire and locations

Uncharted 1 conquered jungle and water. Uncharted 2 laughed in the face of snow and ice. Uncharted 3 takes on fire.

“We’re always on the lookout for new technical challenges and we’re really happy with what we’re achieving with our fire effects,” Naughty Dog community and PR guy, Arne Meyer told PlayStation.Blog. “It’s not just a static asset – the fire deteriorates the wood realistically and there are blowback effects, like you would expect. The smoke is looking much better this time around. ”

Being shown The Chateau level, where Drake and Sully are tasked with escaping a burning building, SCEE blog manager James Gallagher asked how the game’s fire effects correlate with real life. Will the wood in the Chateau burn to the ground if the player takes too long?

“You could sit down and watch the chateau burn around you, if you sit there long enough; however, we want the player to proceed through the game at a decent pace so that’s not going to happen. Even in this demo, you can see beams deteriorating as they burn, and you can even take cover behind them when they give way and fall to the floor, only for that cover to disappear when the beam has burned away completely.

“Procedural fire is a pretty difficult technical challenge, especially on top of everything else you’re trying to get in the game, but it produces some brilliant effects, like the corners of the wallpaper starting to roll and then igniting, and then the embers flickering in the air. Essentially, we’re programming oxygen and then having the fire follow it around the environment.”

During one point tin Uncharted 3‘s debut trailer, we see Drake pull out a wad of £20s. Interested in the fact Drake is carrying around European currency, Gallagher asked whether or not Drake would be heading to the continent.

“Drake is going to be exploring many locations across the world. We’ve only shown two of them, the desert and the chateau, but he’s going to be exploring many different places. We like to drop hints everywhere so you should probably keep your eyes peeled.”