How Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection’s PC launch speaks to Naughty Dog’s present and future

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How Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection’s PC launch speaks to Naughty Dog’s present and future

Naughty Dog reflects on the studio’s first PC launch, and why it’s such an important step forward for the studio.

The release of Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection on PC is an important one for Naughty Dog, as it lets us celebrate our past and introduce a new, meaningful audience to the world of Nathan Drake and Chloe Frazer. But it also represents a pivotal moment for us, a chance to look ahead and expand the way we develop games, all while ensuring the level of quality our audience expects.

To achieve that, we partnered with Iron Galaxy Studios to bring two of the most emotional and thrilling Uncharted adventures to a new platform with PC-centric quality-of-life features. We’re so thrilled new players can experience these two incredible stories, all in one great package. So with its launch, let’s reflect a bit on why this release is so meaningful to Naughty Dog, and how we hope it will continue to showcase our commitment to delivering unforgettable games, now to more players than ever.

How Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection’s PC launch speaks to Naughty Dog’s present and future

Bringing Uncharted to PC

While PlayStation 5 remains our primary platform, we saw the possibility of bringing our games to PC as a great chance to reach a new massive, worldwide audience. When considering what to debut on PC with, we looked through our catalog and decided the beautiful, globetrotting stories of the Uncharted series felt like a natural fit to introduce to players all around the world. Now, you may be wondering why we didn’t start with the original Uncharted. We felt that, while Nathan Drake’s first three adventures from the PlayStation 3 console still stand the test of time narratively, they would require a major overhaul visually to stand-up to modern PC releases and the expectations players may have.

The Uncharted franchise comprises standalone adventures that players new and old can jump into, and so while there’s still incredible stories and character development in those first three games, we felt 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 getting into and out of trouble as Nathan Drake. And Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, which is also included in the collection, offers a new playable protagonist in Chloe Frazer. Fans who know the original trilogy will be delighted to see her return, but newcomers will have no trouble understanding her wonderful story by starting with the collection.

And so, these two games, both 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 players. We also wanted to ensure we were providing players with a worthy value, and so we bundled both experiences together, offering an overall suite of PC features and customization options to suit as many players as possible.

We also knew this PC release wasn’t going to be a one-off. As you may already know, The Last of Us Part I is in development for PC following its successful launch on PlayStation 5, and with this being, ahem, Uncharted territory for us, we knew we have a lot to learn about bringing our games to PC. But we were also determined to bring our careful consideration for every aspect of our games to this new version. 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 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 would deliver a high-quality version of these two Uncharted games, and with whom we could work closely to better understand PC development while internally staying focused on current and future projects and bringing them to PC as well.

Lessons learned

The Uncharted series’ PC debut is both thrilling and reflective, a chance for us to take the lessons learned about offering our games on a new platform, and the expectations and opportunities that go along with it. In learning so much through our partners at Iron Galaxy, we’re able to look ahead to the future of Naughty Dog games on PC more excitedly than ever.

First and foremost, we learned, particularly 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 release. But we still wanted to provide flexibility in fine-tuning an experience PC players expect, and so it was important for us to support more cinematic resolutions as well as specific PC graphical features. One of the biggest visual changes for Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection is Ultra-Wide Monitor Support*, which allows you to experience the Uncharted series’ breathtaking environments like Madagascar, the Western Ghats, and more like never before. But, with our cinematic cutscenes, we tested a host of graphical variations to see what worked best. Ultimately, we decided to actually add black bars to our cinematic scenes because, through all our iteration and testing, we determined that maintaining the original artistic intent and design of those bespoke scenes was paramount to the emotional experience. 

The PC space is also one that offers users a ton of flexibility in hardware specs, controls, and more. As we’ve primarily only ever had to focus on considering one or two system specs in the past, this was simply eye-opening for us. Having primarily developed for console controllers, we had to learn about the preferences and flexibility keyboard and mouse controls offer, and we found that we had to re-evaluate certain game mechanics to fit the new input methods. For example, Uncharted: The Lost Legacy features a tense lock-picking minigame that utilizes a controller’s analog stick and haptic feedback to help players unlock them. But without those features inherently on keyboard and mouse, we had to rethink the application of that mechanic.

We also needed to account for the variability of PC hardware as it pertains to data loading, and so we reworked our engine to add a “safety valve” of sorts to ensure a smooth gameplay experience across various PC specs. This isn’t something we’ve had to worry about since the Jak and Daxter days, when we added an animation of Jak stumbling if data was loading in too slowly. 

Learning all of this through our partnership with Iron Galaxy Studios only helps to bolster Naughty Dog’s understanding of PC development, and allow us to deliver the quality you expect in our future releases.  We’re excited to be offering The Last of Us Part I on PC in the future, and know that, moving forward, adding PC development to the way we develop games, which in no way undermines the importance of PlayStation 5 as our primary platform, will continue to benefit our team in the long run. As Naughty Dog has come to better understand hybrid and work-from-home development over the last few years, PC development offers our team flexibility in how, when, and where our games are created. Much like 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 pieces of hardware from home or in the office.

Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection’s PC release is a transformative pivot point for Naughty Dog. We not only have another chance to celebrate our beloved franchise but also introduce it to so many new players. In doing so, we set the stage for Naughty Dog to deliver high-quality games on PlayStation 5, with the option of a PC release as well, with an understanding of how to cater to the different needs of both audiences now and in the future. 

Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection has created a tremendous foundation of technology and learnings that will only benefit our future development. We’re 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.

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163 Comments

  • To all the people crying, these games have been on playstation for YEARS. For newer releases, you still get to play your exclusives a year early, and PC gets the scraps later on. This doesn’t bother me anyways because I actually have the money to afford all platforms, and don’t limit myself to just the ps5.

  • There were PC ports this year than exclusive game launches on PS5.

    There is more talk about PC than PS5 from PlayStation and it’s social media accounts.

    Let me lay the facts on the table here: We got no event this year and there is no mention of ever having a live event and I know the reason. It’s not because you dont have the games, it’s not because you don’t have the money… it is because you are cowards running PlayStation now…. Jim Ryan and Hermen are afraid of being called out, afraid of having to answer real questions and being held accountable to the fanbase, they are afraid of facing their decisions. Instead they hide behind their desks and organise softball interviews and fireside chats where they try and make themselves look better than they are.

    But Jim and Hermen, you sold out the platform and when you are seen in public you will be told what people think of you, you will hear our voices sooner or later.

    You will be made to face it.

  • PlayStation wants to become the next SEGA.

  • Another thing SONY, why are console owners punished for buying a PS5 by having to pay a $10 upgrade fee on every game. Meanwhile PC gets all the bells and whistles at no extra cost. $10 extra for haptics, adaptive trigger, 60fps,raytracing on PS5, $0 on PC. Especially since today Capcom just announced free upgrade on RE4. And every other company does it as well. Is that a way to actually treat the people that invest in your platform ?

  • This is the last Playstation I will ever own. Console owners are not a priority anymore, feels much more of a second class citizen. I wonder why Mark Cerny wasted his time and effort showcasing the system for us only to have the investors and leadership (Jim & Hermen) do a big uturn and focus on Microsoft Windows based hardware. Investing in your hardware has proven to be just a waste of money and being locked up in 4k 30fps while on mircrosoft windows based hardware the experience is worlds better. What a shame. I know this will just fall on your leadership deaf ears but I am done with this company.

    • Bevanaveb

      I’m also done with Sony at this rate.

      I’ll stick with them until RE4 is released but from there who knows🤷‍♂️

  • Pathetic…deplorable to see such bs on the blog,lamentable to see Sony doing this to their brand,their games and moreover their fans.As for ND they can go to hell after the mess with TLoU 2 and anyone with sane mind didn’t care much less didn’t support that cash-grab TLoU 1 recycled for the 2nd time.I love Uncharted,have a deep history with it and unfortunately if y’all make a new one which you probably already are I’ll buy nonetheless but very cheap…since Uncharted 3 I pre-ordered pretty much every Sony game but never again supporting Sony much less ND.

    Have a bit of F shame in your dirty faces…quit posting pc crap here or change the damn name of this blog to PS/PC Blog,just like you had to remove “only on PS” from your games.

    • Welmosca

      Yep, TLOU2 was Naughtydog worst ever game. Just a pile of woke narrative. And killing off a certain character that has now ended the franchise with a miserable ending.

      Naughtydog has lost the plot since Bruce Straley ran away after Uncharted 4.

  • Not releasing The Nathan Drake collection is a huge mistake. The remaster that Bluepoint did for PS4 is good enough for a PC release. Many PC players want to play the first 3 games and understand they are older. That’s way better than jumping into Uncharted 4 and not having any attachment to these characters. There’s plenty of “Let’s Plays” of Uncharted Nathan Drake collection in the last 2 years of people falling in love with the franchise, so it’s not too old. I love Naughty Dog but this is a massive misstep

  • Reports came out and this game peaked at 10k players on Steam. 🤣 How pathetic is that, you want to now become a multiplatform developer and ruin PS5s future potential for 10k peak players? Uncharted 4 sells 20m copies on PS4, and you want to risk the studios future and game development quality for 10,000? 😂

    • Bro chill, the game is mid anyway.

    • Yep, pretty much. I’ve already done very clear and concise comparisons with Horizon Zero Dawn’s PC release and how it is NOWHERE near the 10 million the game hit on PS4 after only 12 months.

      They just don’t want to listen anymore and are hemorrhaging money.

  • Please, no more PC ports, Sony. We console customers demand a cease immediately. You are devaluing our purchase.

    • Imagine begging a company to make their products less available to consumers.

    • @thexpfiend ………….. while giving us no current gen games in the process, like every PS console had MANY of, 2 years after launch.

      Yeah, just conveniently leave that part out.

    • @andrewsqual still not a good reason to make their product less available. You sound like an entitled child.

  • PC PC PC PC PC
    PC
    PC
    PC
    PC

    PCPCPC

    All I hear from Sony is how PC is amazing and the future of their gaming division

    Why not just discontinue de PlayStation brand right now and stop wasting our time with your unsupported console.

    PCPCPCPC

    PCPCPCPCPCPC
    PC

  • Its confirmed that Uncharted 4 and Lost Legacy is the weakest PC launch yet. And that’s saying something considering the strongest launch wouldn’t even touch 10% the sales of an adjacent PS4 release.

    This is a terrible “present”. So THIS is the future you want ND? Compromised development, time, money , talent wasting that simply IS NOT FEASIBLE.
    Look how well its going for Xbox. Series S (another complete and utter bottleneck for developers) along with PC development has grind their game development cycles to a HALT. Its now the 1 year anniversary of Xbox announcing that Crystal Dynamics had to jump in and work on Perfect Dark………. and still not a single screenshot another 12 months later. What is the next announcement for that game, that another 700 strong studio needs to help out?

    This is what you want going forward? You are killing PlayStation one month at a time. I called it Summer 2021 and it just becomes even more true with every passing month.

    • Uncharted was a mid game anyway. And it released alongside Persona 5 Royal (a much better game). Nobody on pc cares about uncharted when P5R is out.

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