I was very surprised, upon visiting Uncharted developer Naughty Dog’s new downtown office, to discover that the walls were all stained yellow. It’s a bold choice, coming from a developer known for its games’ exceptional polish. Their Production Lead, who identified themself only as K, smiled oddly as they led me down the tunnel to what they called the studio’s ‘testing apparatus’. Uncharted 7 will make use of an exciting new haptic technology, they explained, to really immerse you in the vibrant world of Nathan Drake. When they first showed me the apparatus, I admit I was skeptical; the upfront cost of 270 motorized syringes would price most gamers out of the market, never mind the ongoing expense of fluid cartridges. I asked K if there would be an option to play the final game WITHOUT strapping into the needle machine, but their PR person told me there are no details about that at this time.
Uncharted 7 will be the first Naughty Dog game to run at a solid 500 frames per second. They can do this, K explained, because the game contains no computer graphics whatsoever. Instead the forthcoming adventure will be rendered directly onto the player’s back using the aforementioned motorized syringe array! That’s right: every second, 500 needles will inject differently-mixed pain fluids beneath the surface of the player’s skin, communicating all the action directly via their central nervous system. K said there is far less latency than a traditional computer setup, but I was in shock for most of it so I can’t confirm this firsthand.
It was a little weird, in retrospect, that there was no sign above the studio’s front entrance. And that K’s PR person had talons instead of a face. Oh well. Uncharted 7 is coming to all needle-based gaming platforms on the Eve of Dar’ghul’s Awakening, which I assume is like Fall 2018? Stay tuned for our obligatory 5-star review and, hopefully, some much-needed skin grafts.