Uncharted 4 Will Include Context-Based Dialogue

While many eyes are on Naughty Dog for news of The Last of Us Remastered, many more fans are waiting for details about the mysterious Uncharted title in development. We know almost nothing about it, save that it will be a PS4 exclusive.

Naughty Dog’s audio team recently took some time in an interview to explain how the dialogue system in The Last of Us will affect Uncharted 4.

Both The Last of Us and the Uncharted games are narrative-driven, and that means the dialogue is an integral part of the experience.

“A lot of the exposition of that story happens in the dialogue. This creates nightmares for us, because game designers can create situations where they’re not thinking about dialogue, and yet dialogue is very tricky to create. If you and I are sitting across from each other and talking, the projection of my voice will be completely different than if I’m 8 feet away.”

With The Last of Us, the audio team took steps to ensure sound worked properly, and that characters’ voices wouldn’t be cut off because they walked around the corner. Contextual dialogue was another point they focused on, to make sure the characters’ AI didn’t break the atmosphere of realism and fall into the uncanny valley as a result.

“We shipped this game with close to 70,000 of dialogue, which is huge amount for a non-RPG game this size. We also built a context awareness system so that enemies can call out your location when you’re fighting. In order for that to work, you have to record every single object and location that are in the different environments. ‘He’s by the van!’ or ‘She’s by the bar!’ or ‘She’s across the street!’.”

Naughty Dog took great strides with The Last of Us, and “the next Uncharted will benefit heavily from this.”

Meanwhile, a supposed insider promises we’ll get to see more about Uncharted 4 at E3. We certainly hope this rumor proves to be true.

What are your hopes for the next Uncharted game?