Naughty Dog is developing the PlayStation exclusive, The Last of Us.

The bombshell was dropped: Naughty Dog is developing the PlayStation exclusive, The Last of Us.

Shown at the Spike Video Game Awards, the trailer features a father and his daughter fighting it out with a thug and then battling some fast-moving zombie-like creatures. “This is our routine, day and night,” she narrates. “All we do is survive.”

The adventurous exploits of Nathan Drake continue. In a closed presentation, Naughty Dog’s Richard Lemarchand unveiled primaeval antagonist Katherine Marlowe, a middle aged British woman with a long standing grudge against our adventurous protagonist.

“The long-contested fight for possession of the ring will propel Drake and Sully to the heart of the Arabian desert,” said Lemarchand. “This will be a much more dangerous and insidious threat than Drake has ever faced before.”

For months, rumors of a third Uncharted installment percolated. Now, Naughty Dog has confirmed its development on Drake’s Deception, the long rumored threequel in the beloved franchise.

The setting takes inspiration from adventurist Lawrence of Arabia as our protagonist, Nathan Drake, explores the Arabian peninsula. The game deals with the theme of deception, while also focusing on Drake’s relationship with his traveling companion, Victor “Sully” Sullivan, in his search for the legendary city of the sifting sands.

The sequel will include  “all of the core principles” established in previous installments delivering a “compelling” interactive experience. However, the main campaign isn’t the only focus.

There’s also a focus on competitive and cooperative modes, which are a key “ingredients” in the sequel. “We want to take on the big boys of the multi-player genre,” said President Evan Wells. “It has become something here at Naughty Dog that will become an important part to all our games.” Drake’s Deception is expected to hit retail Late 2011.

Naughty Dog released the first episode of Uncharted: Eye of Indra, the motion comic series following the early adventures of Nathan Drake – the main protagonist for Uncharted series – before the events of Drake Fortune, on PlayStation Store.

“We actually started [Among Thieves] game with an idea for a prequel story that we eventually cut,” said Lead Designer Neil Druckmann, when announcing Eye of Indra. “However, you’ll get to see that story fleshed out in the upcoming Uncharted Motion Comic.” Eye of Indra is a four-part motion comic series that’s available exclusively on the PlayStation Store for the price of “free”.

With Among Thieves not even out the door, Naughty Dog has already started talking about another Uncharted sequel. Well, it’s actually a prequel to the first Uncharted, Drake’s Fortune. However, it’s not the kind of prequel you play, it’s the type you “receive”.

During the live chat for Uncharted 2: Among Thieves on the PlayStation.blog, the game’s Lead Designer Neil Druckmann revealed that Naught Dog is planning a prequel motion comic called Uncharted: Eye of Indra - featuring voice talent from the cast of the video games – that goes into Drake’s adventures before the first game.

“We actually started [Among Thieves] game with an idea for a prequel story that we eventually cut,” said Druckmann. “However, you’ll get to see that story fleshed out in the upcoming Uncharted Motion Comic.”

Also, when responding to a question about his favorite female character, Druckmann replied stating that, “I’m gonna go with Rika… You’ll meet her in Uncharted: Eye of Indra - the upcoming Motion Comic.” Sounds exotic. More information should be revealed soon.

In the credits for Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Naughty Dog thanked so many developers, including rival system developer Bungie – which is probably one of the most surprising things about the game’s credits. However, what’s the key meaning behind Naughty Dog thanking all these developers?

Today, Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckmann took his time explain, during a live chat session with fans, why they decided include Bungie and other development studios in the game’s thank you credits. “We try to be quite open with our technology and our process,” he said. “We exchanged technology and ideas with other developers. We wanted to make sure we thanked everyone that helped us out in some way.”

Personally, I hate the fact that I have to install my games onto my PlayStation 3′s hard dive to play them. But, we have been informed by one of the developers at Naughty Dog that Uncharted 2 does not require an installation on to your PS3, which is exciting news for all the installation haters out there.

Anyway, Christophe Balestra has informed people on his twitter, which is somehow the news hub for all the latest gaming related information, that, “Uncharted 2 does not require any install.” Basically, meaning that you can get right into the action.

Along with this announcement, Balestra also revealed that Naughty Dog will be feature that the upcoming GamesCon event. “Naughty Dog will be at GamesCon. One of our artists, who’s German, will make the trip.”

In an ongoing discussion with Naughty Dog, co-president, Evan Wells stated that fans should expect to sample the games multiplayer once more before Uncharted 2′s historical release – which hasn’t been announced yet.

“Yes, we’re going to have another multiplayer demo before the game hits shelves. The exact timing isn’t finalized yet, but it should be available to an even wider group this time, so if you missed the last one I don’t think you’ll have any problem getting in this one.”

Developed by Naughty Dog, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, the highly-anticipated follow up to Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, will feature up to 10 players in 5-versus-5 competitive gameplay. Cooperative multiplayer modes allow up-to-3 players to progress through a variety of environments by working together to accomplish set objectives.

Using a robust party system, groups of players will remain together in ranked and custom matches while earning currency, which used in combination with currency earned in single player missions, will unlock additional content and upgrades.

Just incase you weren’t satifyed with the first peek, you’ll love this extended look into it. Not only is it five minutes long, but there’s guns, grenades, climbing and a hole lot of sneaking.

“Adding a multiplayer aspect to the Uncharted franchise is a significant step in the re-playability of the game,” said Christophe Balestra, co president Naughty Dog when announcing the games multiplayer mode. “Uncharted 2: Among Thieves will be the most impressive and ambitious game that Naughty Dog has done and we are thrilled to let our fans experience it this fall.”

It looks like inFamous is about to sell a boat load of copies. According to the PlayStation Blog, after keeping this secret for a long time, Naughty Dog is tackling the task of creating a fully-realized multiplayer and co-op mode(s) for their upcoming title, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves.

And, as rumored, there will be beta of the game in inFamous, which will be of the multi-player mode and it will be releasing on June 3rd – inFamous releasing May 26.

However, the games’ full co-operative mode will be playable with up to 3 players: Nathan Drake and Chloe Frazer along with a third character. In addition, the co-operative story will be different from the single-player campaign and there are mini-bosses to top the levels off.

Also the game will have a five versus five death-match in its Multiplayer as well as a Capture The Flag mode called Plunder.

“Adding a multiplayer aspect to the Uncharted franchise is a significant step in the replayability of the game,” said Christophe Balestra, co president Naughty Dog. “Uncharted 2: Among Thieves will be the most impressive and ambitious game that Naughty Dog has done and we are thrilled to let our fans experience it this fall.”

In video game sequels there has always been that very despicable link between the first game and the second title that leaves you wondering what has transpired. Anyway, this seems to always be that case, but it looks like that’s going to change.

In an interview with GamePro, issue #247 that’s currently out now, the president of Naughty Dog, Evan Wells, revealed their current ideals for the upcoming title, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves.

He stated that they’re are “making sure that you do not need to know about the experiences Nathan Drake had in Uncharted: Drakes Fortune to understand or follow the story in Uncharted 2: Among Thieves” – when reacting to a question about new comers to the seires. 

When continuing to speak, “Although Uncharted 2 starts off a couple of years after the first story ends, it’s important to remember that the two stories and games are independent for each other…”

Update: Here’s a picture of one of the areas featuring snow in the game.

Original: We have all seen snow, or looked at it in the movies, and in some of these cases you may have seen some of the most beautiful showcases of snow. Well, it looks like you really haven’t seen anything, yet.

Naughty Dog is working to make Uncharted 2’s snow and ice as visually impressive as the stunning water effects found in Nathan Drake’s original adventure.

In a recent interview with Gamereactor.se, Naughty Dog producer Evan Wells boasted that with the new improvements to the Naughty Dog Engine 2, “[Uncharted 2] will have the prettiest snow you’ve ever seen in a game!”

“With Uncharted 2 and the Naughty Dog Engine 2 we can do much more, do it better and do it faster,” said Wells. “For example, we can see more polygons on screen, which allows us to create areas with even more detail than in the previous game.”

“In addition, we save no effort when it comes to the rendering of snow in Uncharted 2. It should be a banner to me to be the prettiest snow you have ever seen in a game!”

How do you measure the intelligence of a man? Is it by the color of his skin…. Wait, what am I talking about? Anyway, in the past Uncharted title the enemies weren’t as smart as they should of been, but that has seemed to has changed with Naughty Dog’s upcoming title, Uncharted 2.

When speaking to Computer And Video Games, Game Director Bruce Straley gave a little insight on Naughty Dog’s upcoming title Uncharted 2: Among Thieves.

And since they have decided to go with an more stealthy element within the game, which, by the way, is going to be awesome, it has inspired Naughty Dog to create some very lifelike enemies. “As a result of expanding our gameplay to account for action-stealth, there are two new behaviours added to enemies, ‘investigate’ and ‘hunt,’” Straley reported.

“With ‘investigate’ the enemies have peripheral vision just like humans. When Drake enters this peripheral vision the enemies will look over in the direction they think they saw him in and depending on how long he was in this vision cone, they may just look or they may walk over and check out what they think they saw.”

“With the ‘hunt’ behaviour the enemies have already spotted Drake and are in combat with him. While in combat the enemies make certain assumptions on where Drake is based on his last known location,” he continued .

Forget about India. When the game was first revealed about a month ago, we were already given some details about the game. Like what the story was going to be about, and what treasure Drake was after, but in the latest issue of Edge magazine it gave new light on Drakes newest quest.

“Our catalyst is this man who cataloged all of his journeys — all the details of everything that happened in his life — but despite that he left one gaping hole,” said Amy Hennig to Edge magazine.

The hole is somewhere in 1292, and in that time Polo left Kublai Khan’s court for Venice, commanding a fleet of 14 treasure-laden ships and a crew of 600 plus men. But, by the time he arrived home in Venice, he was down to one ship and a dozen or so survivors.”He never once said anything about what happened to him… And on his death bed, after people had called him a liar for what he had spoken about in his book, he said: ‘I didn’t say even half of what I saw,” she continued.

In Uncharted 2, the game kicks off with the search for Polo’s fleet and moves on to Polo’s real secret: the Tibetan city of Shambhala, also known as Shangri-La. Gone are the rich foliage of the first game, and in its place, snowy mountains and the war-torn urban Tibetan streets.

In the article it says that it explores the “shadier” side of hero Nathan Drake, who, as Naughty Dog points out, is sometimes “a jerk,” I really wonder what that means?

Personally, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune has to be one of my favorite games of all time, I’ve spent more time playing it then any other game on the PS3. And just recently Naughty Dog released the teaser trailer for the second game, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, and that is when everything changed.

Now, the first details for the game have been posted from the latest issue of Game Informer – it is the cover article of GI and everyone is always quick to put up information like this.

The details are as follows; there is a new girl named Chloe Frazer, no comment Elena and Sully’s return. Melee combat is more dynamic. Naughty Dog is planning to use nearly 100% of the PS3’s power in Among Thieves. Drake is more stealthily. Nolan North returns as Drake and Chloe Frazer is played by Claudia Black. The Sixaxis mechanics were ditched.

One weapon revealed is a rocket launcher that Chloe uses (might only be for the cinematic). No load screens. The score is being composed by Greg Edmonson. Weapons can be used in any stance (running, behind cover, hanging etc.). You can now move while aiming behind cover.

When the game was announced the forums went into mass hysteria and almost everywhere you had looked there was a new question about the game. And one question that had seemed to appear most was “if the trailer was in real-time?”, meaning was it using the games engine.

Seeing that in the first game every cutsence was done in that manner, GameZine had to confirm with Naughty Dog if the trailer was done in real-time. It just happen to be that the games lead character artist Richard Diamant who answered the question saying, “yes, it was all rendered real-time in our engine.”

Anyway, GameZine had also asked Richard about the cutsense to game-play differences. Richard responded saying, “the in-game models are the exact same models that are used in the cutscenes. They also use the exact same textures.”

What this announcement means that Naughty Dog is trying to make it so that “there really is no difference between them at all,” so we can expext a very good looking game from them.

Last year, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune became one of the best PlayStation 3 games available, and ever since, many of us have been waiting for a sequel. But, we’ve already heard that Naughty Dog was working on it, we were just waiting for them to announce it.

Well, today we can rest a bit happier knowing that, that time is almost here but to keep you happy Naughty Dog has released a teaser trailer for the game. It also was confirmed today that Game Informer will be revealing the game in the January issue of their magazine. So it looks like we’ll be hearing alot more about the game in the upcoming months.

There was also a little information given about the game. It is said that the game would take Nathan Drake on a quest that revolves around 13th century explorer, Marco Polo. Also, the game will feature a new emphasis on story, as well as a “free climbing mechanic” and stealth gameplay. There was also the official name given for the game which is Uncharted 2: Among Thieves – thanks to the cover of the next Game Informer mag.

Anyway, the official trailer will debut on Spike TV’s 2008 Video Game Awards ceremony on Sunday, December 14.

Naughty Dog co-president Evan Wells told the semi-official PlayStation 3 blog Three Speech "We developed Uncharted as a franchise. The pulp action/adventure genre lends itself perfectly to serialization and continued episodes which is one of the reasons we were attracted to it," He goes on to say "Right now we are brainstorming on what Naughty Dog’s next project will be, but even if we don’t do an Uncharted sequel right away, you can pretty much count on us doing one in the near future."

He goes on to talk about the next Jak & Daxter game "Jak and Daxter is a definite possibility some time in the future," he said. "There is a lot of interest around the office in going back to that franchise and seeing what we could do with it using the Uncharted engine."

[Naughty Dog Talking Uncharted 2, New Jak via Next-Gen.biz]