Naughty Dog discusses Uncharted 4: A Thief's End's multiplayer mode's game design influences, citing Bungie's Destiny as one of the major inspirations.

Naughty Dog's community strategist Arne Meyer took part in a Q&A panel at PAX Austrailia 2015 to answer questions regarding Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, and since most of the game's single-player campaign has been explained, fans mostly asked about the title's multiplayer instead. Meyer fielded queries such as whether or not the mode's maps will be built around some of the series' set pieces, if characters from other franchises might make an appearance in Uncharted 4 like they did in Uncharted 2, and if fans can expect a better experience than Uncharted 3's multiplayer.

Meyer answered all of the aforementioned questions in full, which can be found over at PowerUpGaming, but perhaps the most interesting tidbit he shared pertained to Uncharted 4's multiplayer game design influence. Naughty Dog's community strategist made it clear that while the studio studied lots of different titles' multiplayer, Bungie's action-RPG Destiny was a major motivator, as he said:

“The multiplayer team plays all sorts of different games, because we’ve been trying to do our research from what everyone else is doing, and try to use that as a guide for what we want to experiment with. Without a doubt, there are a lot of people at the studio – myself included – who have been playing Destiny for a long time.

“I’ve personally felt that Bungie has always done really satisfying multiplayer games, and I think that’s one of the reasons why a lot of us ended up playing Destiny when it came out – and we still play it regularly, as well. But pretty much any time someone has come out with a multiplayer game, we’ve made sure we’ve hammered it pretty hard. Sometimes we’ll play the game in the studio and then the week of release we’ll play it quite a bit and come back and talk about it.”

Although Meyer didn't offer specifics as to exactly what kind of impact Destiny's multiplayer model had on Uncharted 4's, its safe to presume Naughty Dog's recent promise of microtransactions to buy guns and upgrades took its cue from Bungie's decision to add in-game purchases to its sci-fi MMO. After all, the financial firm Cowen & Company's analyst Doug Creutz claimed that the addition could bring Destiny “hundreds of millions” in extra yearly revenue, and it could also do the same for Uncharted 4 if implemented well and unobtrusively.

Nevertheless, Destiny's influence doesn't extend to online hosting issues, for Bungie's action-RPG uses mesh-based networking, while Uncharted 4 won't feature dedicated servers at all, opting to use peer-to-peer hosts instead. While it's hard to say how big of an issue this will be for fans of Naughty Dog's forthcoming sequel, the multiplayer team from The Last of Us who are developing the mode undoubtedly had their reasons for choosing P2P.

At any rate, gamers are at least going to have to wait a little more than a month to encounter Uncharted 4's online component firsthand, as the multiplayer beta dates begin on December 4 and last through December 13. And even then, the experiences gamers have in the tests won't necessarily be indicative of the title's final product. Hopefully, though, Naughty Dog will deliver the goods with both the multiplayer and single-player component once Uncharted 4 drops, and send Nathan Drake off with a bang.

Uncharted 4: A Thief's End is set to release on March 18, 2015 exclusively for PlayStation 4.

Source: PowerUpGaming