Naughty Dog Dev Clarifies Uncharted 4’s Branching Dialogue

Naughty Dog's Neil Druckman has clarified how branching dialogue will work in the developer’s upcoming Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End. In an interview with Eurogamer, the game’s director discusses everything from the dialogue to parting ways with Nathan Drake.

The branching dialogue itself is meant to take place during “optional conversations” where players can turn to other characters and “dig a little deeper.” Druckman emphasized that this was a choice for the player that can be ignored entirely.

He continued to elaborate on how the branching dialogue is limited, gameplay wise:

"The thing I want to make sure we're clear about is that we're not making Mass Effect. Uncharted has a very specific story, it has a very specific ending that's very definitive to the franchise. But every once in a while we felt a dialogue tree would really bring you more into the scene.

And there's something about Sam asking Nate about his old adventures that's like, it would be kind of fun to have Nate – and therefore the player – pick which story they want to tell first. And there's a few other instances like that where it felt like a dialogue tree was just going to get you more into the scene and make it more interactive."

Druckman also discusses how this is Naughty Dog’s last Uncharted game, saying that whatever happens next with the series is up to Sony.

"Whether that's it for Uncharted? I don't know. At the end of the day Sony owns Uncharted and they can do whatever they want," he said. "But with the end of this story it will be really hard to do a sequel with Nathan Drake. Maybe there'll be a prequel, maybe it will be a different character–I don't know. But this is the end for Nathan Drake."

Sony debuted a demo at PSX last month where Nate caught up with his brother, Sam. The option for branching dialogue was revealed in the demo, showing different response options the player had to choose from.

Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End is scheduled to release, after another delay, on April 26^th in the US, the 27^th in Europe, and the 29^th in the UK.