20 Things You Didn't Know About Uncharted
2. Gears Of War Led To A Complete Overhaul Of Drake's Fortune
Changing Elena's hair colour wasn't the only tweak Naughty Dog made to Drake's Fortune as development progressed: in fact, at one point, they decided to overhaul the entire game.
Gears of War and Uncharted were two of the most important gaming franchises when it came to popularising cover-based, third-person shooters, but one of them had to come first, and in this case, it was Gears.
The first game in the Microsoft-exclusive series launched in November 2006, a whole year before Drake's Fortune hit PS3. The timing of this meant that Drake's Fortune was midway through development when Gears of War hit shelves, and as a result, Naughty Dog took some lessons from their rival game, and made their own game better.
“One of the cool things about Uncharted 1 is, we had no f***ing idea what we were doing", confessed former Naughty Dog developer Lucas Pope in a chat with Ars Technica. "Suddenly, Gears came out and showed them how to do it. So we changed everything, six months before release."
Naughty Dog had initially planned on giving Drake's Fortune a stiffer, Tomb Raider-esque camera and control system, but Gears convinced them to grease those joints and make Uncharted feel a lot more fluid.
And this monumental change to the game was implemented six months before it came out. Crikey.