Uncharted: Drake's Fortune "is rough around the edges," ex-Naughty Dog designer says, and "went through a whole lot of hell during development"
Despite an annoying difficulty curve that I'm now learning was the result of me being too lethal with a Desert Eagle, I have warm memories playing the original 2007 Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, even though I played it around 2010 after beating Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and wanting to learn more about this newfangled mass murderer, Nathan Drake. Even in retrospect, I liked the first Uncharted game and don't remember it being particularly janky, but one of the game's original designers, Benson Russell, has very different memories about its development and gameplay.
"Uncharted 1 went through a whole lot of hell during development," he tells FRVR. "They made a decision when going to PlayStation 3 that they were going to ditch all the old tech and rewrite all new stuff from scratch. Well, that caused a lot of problems because systems came online way later than they should be. So you have this issue of, like, they were still doing paper design… and artists were just making cool art because there was no gameplay."
Various Naughty Dog developers have opened up about Gears of War's seemingly pivotal influence on Uncharted over the years. Tools programmer Lucas Pope said back in 2019 that Uncharted's gameplay was essentially overhauled in the last six months of development following the release of Gears of War after originally mirroring Tomb Raider's control system. Now, Russell says it was precisely that lack of cohesion that led to a disjointed-feeling final product.
"You can tell it's rough around the edges," he says. "And also a lot of people commented that it didn't know what it wanted to be. Because it was influenced by Gears of War, 100%, but it was also this Tomb Raider style adventure game, but it didn't really pick a lane. It felt like it wanted to be both at the same time, but neither at the same time."
Hearing all of this, you might think Russell isn't the biggest fan of the first Uncharted, but he clarifies that he's still "proud" of it and thinks it was "a great achievement," especially with "how it redefined certain things" and "led to Uncharted 2 and stuff like that."
"But as a developer, I know all the s**t that went into it," he adds. "It definitely is rough around the edges and I would love to go back and do some things, but hey, that's history, right? It goes into the annals of history and people play it."
It's true. Uncharted: Drake's Fortune kicked off one of the most beloved video game franchises of all time and spawned three full sequels, a standalone spinoff game in The Lost Legacy, and a Hollywood adaptation starring Tom Holland. Whatever you think of the first game in the series, there's no denying its impact.