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Nolan North on UC4- 8mths of Hennig's story/performance work was thrown away

stryke

Member
https://youtu.be/YHWChn7AvoQ?t=18m

A bit over a week ago, Nolan North did a series of Q&A panels at MetroCon and one guy finally had the balls to ask him about Amy Hennig's departure and the changes made to the game thereafter. It's probably the first time we've had someone gone somewhat in depth as to how the departure and change of teams affected the project.

Q: With Amy Hennig leaving, did they change the script at all to Uncharted 4?

NN: Yeah. I can't really say too much about that...but I will. We had shot 8 months of her story and it was all thrown away. The Last of Us guys came in, and you have to understand, new producers, new people, they want to do it. I don't know what happened exactly. Amy is still a very dear friend of mine and she's brilliant but the Last of Us guys were the next team there so they took over and they just wanted their own flavour. They got rid of some of the other people that were involved and just redid their thing. Great move they made with Troy Baker [who] played my brother and they knew that was going to work because Troy and I are friends and he had done Joel and they knew he and I had good rapport. So it'll be fun, the tone I think is gonna be slightly different. It has to be, you know, you can't have a Robert Ludlum novel that's going to be the same as Steven King. It's just that they're different styles. But it's true to the story.

Q: So it really hasn't affected it at all?

NN: No, it's going to be along the same lines with the story but I think there'll be...I don't know. I don't know how it'll affect the how thing and to be honest I am just as curious as everyone to see what the final product will look like. I do know there's trust with the Naughty Dog designers and programmers, that place is still top notch and from the things I've seen and sound and all the stuff they've done, it's amazing.

[...]

It's gonna be phenomenal. I mean the story, visuals, the same wacky crew.

Nolan then goes on to talk about Hennig's project at Visceral but some weird wording. It's also not 1313 -

If you're a big fan of Amy Hennig with her styles of stories, the big thing bout her is that she's gone to EA and is going to reboot a brand new Star Wars franchise in the style of Uncharted and I happen to know a lot about it and it's gonna be awesome

I can't tell if she came in and rebooted what they had been working on or they're actually rebooting an old Star Wars game franchise.

_________________________________________

Other interesting tidbits about other games he's worked on -

As a joke, Naughty Dog replaced Chloe with Lazaravic in the hotel bedroom scene with Drake in Uncharted 2, including voice acting from McTavish. It was going to be included as a bonus on disc but Sony said no.

Assassin's Creed's original concept was Desmond to become the "ultimate assassin" by learning all the skills from his ancestors over a series of ~6 games. Nolan added he hated what Desmond had become by the end of ACIII. (https://youtu.be/5_kbIon1G98?t=34m6s)

Activision prematurely cut funding to the Deadpool game. Apparently the final product was only 60% of what High Moon Studios wanted to achieve.
 
Assassin's Creed's original concept was Desmond to become the "ultimate assassin" by learning all the skills from his ancestors over a series of ~6 games. Nolan added he hated what Desmond had become by the end of ACIII.

Sigh.......they fucked it up so bad. I remember how much I enjoyed the series through Brotherhood.
 

SoulUnison

Banned
Assassin's Creed's original concept was Desmond to become the "ultimate assassin" by learning all the skills from his ancestors over a series of ~6 games. Nolan added he hated what Desmond had become by the end of ACIII.

It was so painfully obvious from the very first game that this is where they were going with the story - leading up to a final modern day showdown with Desmond utilizing everything he'd learned through the Animus over the course of the series.
Then they just HAD to contort the hell out of the plot to dilute it, make it infinitely stretchable and aimless so they could milk as many settings and as much money out of the brand name as possible.

I've never seen a promising concept and a fairly intriguing character amount to absolutely nothing like what happened with Desmond and Assassin's Creed.

Don't even get me started on what they did to Lucy, either - writing her out of the plot simultaneously casually, callously and dramatically, then giving you all the actual backstory and motivations as DLC to a game that she wasn't even in.

Now Assassin's Creed has spent multiple games just cleaning up its own mess and trying to course correct a sinking ship that they'd shot full of holes themselves.
 

moniker

Member
As a joke, Naughty Dog replaced Chloe with Lazaravic in the hotel bedroom scene with Drake in Uncharted 2, including voice acting from McTavish. It was going to be included as a bonus on disc but Sony said no.

Now this would have been something.
 
I think it was pretty much known given that they changed actors for Drake's brother. It would mean that all scenes done with him would have to be redone because of how performance capture does.

Oh for sure, but given how pent-up and secretive Naughty Dog have been over Hennig's departure, I get the impression it's a touchy subject for some involved, so for Nolan to openly talk about it in a public forum is going to rub them the wrong way I bet.

Yeah, the original actor who was due to play Sam, he sounded so much more antagonistic and menacing compared to what we've seen and heard of Troy Baker's portrayal so far. I get the inkling that Uncharted 4 was originally intended to be darker than it is now under Straley and Druckmann's direction, but there's not much to go on so I'm just talking out of my ass.
 
While it wasn't unexpected when Troy got cast, it's still surprising to think Wellestra allowed Druckley to essentially reboot the project.

Given Bruce and Neil's track record, it's best to just let them do what's best for the game. If they thought that it needed to be reboots, then it probably needed to be rebooted.
 

Spinluck

Member
Sounds kind of like a mess honestly.

Throwing away 8 month of work? Lol. They're Naughty Dog and they will probably bounce back and make a damn good game, but I wonder if the story will take a hit.

That E3 demo shows me they haven't missed a mark, but it is what is. Just a demo.
 
Yeah, the original actor who was due to play Sam, he sounded so much more antagonistic and menacing compared to what we've seen and heard of Troy Baker's portrayal so far. I get the inkling that Uncharted 4 was originally intended to be darker than it is now under Straley and Druckmann's direction, but there's not much to go on so I'm just talking out of my ass.

Where have we seen the original brother? I am intrigued...
 

Raonak

Banned
I really hope theres a postmorteum some day detailing the differences between henning's script and the current one.
 
Just hope ND gets some talent, be it new hires or promoting someone internal to replace Justin/Hennig as another director duo.

Would suck to revert back to a one-team studio, even if Druckley is arguably one of GOAT director duo's in gaming today.
 

Pie and Beans

Look for me on the local news, I'll be the guy arrested for trying to burn down a Nintendo exec's house.
Uncharted 3 was sort of a disaster story-wise (and dat broken aiming!) so I do wonder what was going "wrong" with U4 to require such a drastic change to development and of course staff.
 

Walpurgis

Banned
Given Bruce and Neil's track record, it's best to just let them do what's best for the game. If they thought that it needed to be reboots, then it probably needed to be rebooted.
This is probably what Naughty Dog management said to Amy Hennig and probably why she left. It's pretty disrespectful to just throw someone's work away like that. If they didn't like her work as much as Druckman and Straley's, they should never have told her to work on Uncharted 4 in the first place. She could have started a new IP.
 

Altairre

Member
I think Last of Us is superior to Uncharted in every way though that doesn't mean this change will work out of course. I'll definitely play this so I guess we'll see.
 
It was so painfully obvious from the very first game that this is where they were going with the story - leading up to a final modern day showdown with Desmond utilizing everything he'd learned through the Animus over the course of the series.
Then they just HAD to contort the hell out of the plot to dilute it, make it infinitely stretchable and aimless so they could milk as many settings and as much money out of the brand name as possible.

I've never seen a promising concept and a fairly intriguing character amount to absolutely nothing like what happened with Desmond and Assassin's Creed.

Don't even get me started on what they did to Lucy, either.

Now Assassin's Creed has spent multiple games just cleaning up its own mess and trying to course correct a sinking ship that they'd shot full of holes themselves.
Yeah it's a shame. The Desmond story and the plan they seemed to have in the beginning was the reason I loved the Assassin's Creed franchise, and the first civilisation plot has made me buy the ACs up until Unity. But now it is over, I have given up on it and will not buy Syndicate. Sadly.

Regarding the Uncharted info I love what we have seen so far with U4 and I believe that it will be a remarkable game. Still it would be interesting to see what was going on at ND and how the story has changed.
 
Woah, Nolan spillin' all the truth tea as he airs out the dirty laundry! (That version of AC sounds so much better than what we got, goddamnit.)

I can't wait to see what Amy does with Star Wars, it's such a good fit. Uncharted 4 will be all kinds of amazing under Druckmann/Straley, but I still feel absolutely awful for Amy. I unfortunately also know it's the nature of the gaming/film/television industry, but man, it still really sucks.
 

Servbot24

Banned
This is part of game development. I have no insight into Naughty Dog, but I can guarantee you they have thrown waaaaaaaaaay more than 8 minutes of story away.

edit: oops, read months as minutes, haha
 
Just hope ND gets some talent, be it new hires or promoting someone internal to replace Justin/Hennig as another director duo.

Would suck to revert back to a one-team studio, even if Druckley is arguably one of GOAT director duo's in gaming today.

They currently have a small team working on another project, so that has to have someone other than Bruce or Neil heading it up. The studio has a lot of talent, so they can pretty much pull it from anywhere. For example, Neil started out as the first and only intern the studio has ever had.
 
Sigh.......they fucked it up so bad. I remember how much I enjoyed the series through Brotherhood.

It was so obvious from AC 1 and 2 that that was the plan from the beginning but Ubisofts greed fucked up any chance of a good story from happening. 3 was just a mess on so many levels.
 

Markitron

Is currently staging a hunger strike outside Gearbox HQ while trying to hate them to death
Damn, I really can't wait for that Star Wars game to be announced. Was hoping it would be during E3, VGA's is most likely place now.

It was so obvious from AC 1 and 2 that that was the plan from the beginning but Ubisofts greed fucked up any chance of a good story from happening. 3 was just a mess on so many levels.

Yea, 1 and 2 had so much mystery and potential, the end of 2 was particularly great. I really started to nosedive from then on. It got so bad that they titled one of the games 'Revelations', despite it containing zero revelations about anything.
 
Why Nolan refer Neil and Bruce as The Last of Us guys?

Well, they are pretty famous now for The Last of Us, most people recognize Neil for it.

And maybe he liked Amy and is a little burnt that they ditched her work after she left
got forcibly removed from the company by Neil
. Or maybe they aren't really friends, who knows!
 

RamzaIsCool

The Amiga Brotherhood
I get the impression that Uncharted 4 was in a messy state. Don't think that ND/ Sony booted out Amy Hennig, thrown away 8 months of assets and had to ask Bruce/ Neil to step in for the fun of it. Something must have been really off.
 

Rising_Hei

Member
Uncharted 3 was sort of a disaster story-wise (and dat broken aiming!) so I do wonder what was going "wrong" with U4 to require such a drastic change to development and of course staff.
This. Uncharted 3 premise was good, and the story was good as well from the very beginning... until the midgame, i can see how they'd pulled something similar for uncharted 4 and the original team couldn't dig it
 

Johndoey

Banned
This is probably what Naughty Dog management said to Amy Hennig and probably why she left. It's pretty disrespectful to just throw someone's work away like that. If they didn't like her work as much as Druckman and Straley's, they should never have told her to work on Uncharted 4 in the first place. She could have started a new IP.

Peoples work gets tossed all the time in entertainment industries, starting fresh with just an outline instead of incomplete work to sort through probably makes more sense in the long run to create a cohesive story.
 
Uncharted 3 was sort of a disaster story-wise (and dat broken aiming!) so I do wonder what was going "wrong" with U4 to require such a drastic change to development and of course staff.

I agree. I still don't know what that Talbot guy was all about. Heck, that game was all over the place and a rushed bang up job. Despite that, I think Uncharted 4 could've been slated for a fall 2014 release before Hennig got sacked due to it either not meeting the required quality, the time frame or internal fallout.

That's what I think anyway.

Best wishes.
 
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