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Since the PlayStation Vita was first unveiled, Sony has held up a new Uncharted title from Bend Studios as the flagship game for the new platform. Featuring state-of-the-art graphics, proven gameplay, and the franchise’s signature storytelling, Uncharted: Golden Abyss is poised to be the biggest game in the Vita’s launch lineup.
Most hands-on impressions coming out of E3 have been very positive, but one aspect of the game has garnered near universal criticism, if not ridicule: the optional touch and motion-based controls. But adding these features may be the smartest thing Sony could do for the series.
For its entire existence, the Uncharted franchise has been known for its core gameplay — it has always featured cover-based third-person shooting, platforming and traversal elements, all built on top technology. Gamers are very comfortable playing these kinds of titles using the standard twin-stick controller scheme they’re familiar with.
But the Uncharted series is also known for its crossover story appeal. Like the PS3 games in the series, Golden Abyss is scripted by Amy Hennig and features performance-captured animations and cut-scenes, not to mention stellar voice work by Nolan North as the lovable rogue Nathan Drake. These games are pulpy adventures in the same mold as an Indiana Jones film, with well-realized characters, fun plots, and witty dialog.
Sony knows the property has appeal well beyond the relatively narrow demographic who’ve been able to experience the games on the PS3. Their own commercials for Uncharted 2 highlight this in a humorous fashion by depicting a gamer’s girlfriend who thinks the game is just a movie. And despite recent setbacks with a previously attached director leaving the project, Sony still has plans to adapt Uncharted to film.
But for anyone who wants to experience Uncharted in its native form, the barrier to entry is a Dual Shock controller. Even as a lifelong gamer, I’ve never fully adapted from playing shooters on a computer with a mouse and keyboard to playing on a console with a gamepad. For anyone with even less experience, playing and enjoying Uncharted may seem completely out of reach.
Ken Levine of Irrational Games addressed this problem directly when he took the stage at Sony’s E3 press conference to announce PlayStation Move support for Bioshock: Infinite. According to him, it’s not about supporting motion controls as a gimmick or even necessarily as an enhancement to the core experience. To Levine, the goal is to make the content Irrational are creating — and are rightfully very proud of — accessible to as wide a spectrum of players as possible.
Uncharted: Golden Abyss follows that same line of thinking. While it’s easy for us as core gamers to dismiss, or even excuse, the added control methods as a way to show off the Vita’s new capabilities, they do seem to have a deeper purpose.
Too often we forget that our point of view is not the only one that counts. Most people in the world have never held a Dual Shock controller, and right now an entire generation is growing up with devices like iPhones. For them, touch is the obvious and natural way to interact with a game. When you have a franchise like Uncharted with such broad appeal, it makes a great deal of sense to make that awesome world as inviting and accessible as possible.
Sony’s entire strategy is to layer accessibility into their games as a viable alternative (not just a clumsy replacement) to traditional controls. This is very different from Microsoft’s attempts to create “hardcore” appeal for Kinect by publishing compromised, on-rails versions of popular properties like Star Wars or Fable, or shoehorning added Kinect functionality to solve nonexistent problems in games like Mass Effect 3.
No one will have to play Bioshock: Inifinte with a Move controller, nor will they ever need to bother with Uncharted: Golden Abyss’s optional touch controls. The core appeal of these games remains intact, and there’s nothing to fear from casual-friendly alternative input schemes. And while it’s doubtful that casual gamers will, en masse, trade in their iPhones for a Vita to play Uncharted, it will be very cool to hand a Vita to your girlfriend or mother or grandfather and let them experience the game for themselves in a fun and intuitive fashion. It's a perspective I hope gamers and press alike will keep in mind.