We’re back from Comic-Con International 2011 and we’ve barely survived this year’s awesome, and awesomely busy, show!

One of the our personal highlights from Comic-Con was being able to be in front of over 400 fans and talk about Uncharted 3 during our panel on Friday, July 22. Moderated by USA Today’s Mike Snider, the panel was called “Developing Interactive Entertainment: The Performance Capture Techniques of the UNCHARTED Franchise and Today’s Film Industry” and it gave Amy Hennig, Taylor Kurosaki, Josh Scherr, Nolan North, Emily Rose and Richard McGonagle the perfect setting to discuss everything that goes into creating the industry-leading cinematics in the Uncharted series. The panel also gave our fans their first look at a brand new cinematic scene, and some behind the scenes footage of the cast, that we prepared especially for Comic-Con.

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All of Naughty Dog has been looking forward to tonight ever since we announced Uncharted 3 with Entertainment Weekly and showed it for the first time at the SPIKE VGA show back in December. And just a few minutes ago, if you were watching the SCEA Press Conference on any of the live streams, you go to see what we’ve been working so hard to be able to show you!

At the SCEA Press Conference, our Co-Presidents, Evan and Christophe, took the stage and with just a short intro, launched into the first live demo of Uncharted 3 ever shown publicly. The brief Cruise Ship sequence shows just a small slice of one of the most challenging scenarios we’ve concocted for any of the Uncharted games – as a massive, moving environment of the Cruise Ship gets turned on its side mid-battle, Drake has to scramble for his life. This sequence showcases the next level of our physics and water technology – and you’ll see video of this sequence later this week.

The Cruise Ship isn’t everything we’ve got up our sleeves – Naughty Dog is bringing more content to E3 2011 than we ever have before. We’ve also brought a ton of PS3 systems all hooked up with a massive chunk of the Uncharted 3 competitive and cooperative multiplayer modes – those are all on the floor of the SCEA booth for all E3 attendees to check it out. Do drop by!

We’ve also prepared what I think is one of our best trailers to date of any of the Uncharted games. Check out the Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception E3 2011 trailer above!

Have a great E3 everyone – I’m looking forward to a crazy, yet awesome week working the show floor!

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Just a few days ago we hosted a large press event with editors from the US and Europe where we gave everyone a first taste of our expansive multiplayer mode in Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception. I’m sure you’ll easily find your way to the many articles that hit the net today if you want to check out an independent perspective of what was shown. Read on for our own rundown – we’ve got so much to share that I don’t even know where to start!

First off, Uncharted 3 multiplayer is a complete evolution from the initial foray we made into multiplayer with Uncharted 2. The leap forward in gameplay, technology — not the least of which is 3D stereoscopic support — and depth is nothing short of astounding, no joke. Our goal has always been to take the signature Uncharted gameplay and our penchant for awesome set-piece moments to serve as the key building blocks for creating a multiplayer experience like no other. We dipped our toe in with Uncharted 2. Now, with Uncharted 3, we’re diving in headfirst.

The Uncharted 3 Multiplayer trailer, which was JUST released today, is the best crash course on everything we’ve revealed about our competitive multiplayer modes — and more. Check it out below.

At the event we provided the assembled editors hands-on time with two of our multiplayer maps – The Airstrip and The Chateau. Both are great examples of the whole spectrum of map design and dynamic environments we’re aiming to have available in Uncharted 3.

The Chateau is a more traditional style arena map, with multiple levels to take advantage of our unique Uncharted traversal options — including ziplines. The Airstrip is a two-part map where the location and map layout actually changes in the middle of the match! The first part of the match takes place on a massive cargo plane being chased by trucks, with players jumping from truck to truck and between the cargo plane and the truck convoy. You can see some of this better in the Uncharted 3 Multiplayer trailer we released today. The second part of the match begins when the cargo plane is about to take off from the runway. After takeoff, the match changes locations for all players to the airstrip hangar area for a slightly more traditional multiplayer setting and layout. Just watch out for the fighter planes that will inevitably come in for a strafing run.

We revealed two of our new competitive modes, along with the perennial favorite Team Deathmatch. One is Three Team Deathmatch, which is a small-team 2 vs. 2 vs. 2 variation on Team Deathmatch. The other is the oft-requested Free For All – with every player out for themselves. Over the months left until release – that’s about six-and-a-half months if you’re counting – we’ll detail all of our competitive modes.

As you’re looking to get into matches, we’ve made some updates to make it easier to get into games quicker, and with your friends. The first is Late Join, which is a staple of many online games and for good reason. It ensures that matches stay full, that you can get into matches faster and you can get into your friends matches faster if there’s a slot for you, instead of waiting for your friend to finish their current round. We’ve heard that many of you want to play with a friend on the same couch and we’re really proud to say that we were able to not only implement same-console split screen but you can log into two independent PSN IDs for most gametypes – the ones you can’t are to prevent unfair collusion between players.

Playing with friends and creating a team environment is extremely important for us and we’re trying to encourage this with the Buddy system. Each player will be partnered with a Buddy and you’ll be able to collectively share your successes throughout the match with each other. You can even pick up Treasures — more on that later — for your Buddy. The Buddy system also allows you to choose to spawn on your Buddy if they are safely out of combat so you can jump into the action together quicker. This is key since most of our game modes are all about team play and teams that stick together will do far better than teams who don’t.

New to Uncharted 3 multiplayer is character customization. Both heroes and villains skins will have a hundreds of customizable parts, from accessories to shirts and pants to a deep weapon customization feature. Even named characters, like Drake or Sully, will get plenty of options to make your character your own. Hand in hand with customization is our emblem editor. If you’ve worked with emblem editors in other games, you’ll be pretty familiar with the one we’ve implemented in Uncharted 3. Our emblem editor extends the level of customization of your online profile with hundreds of decals, three layers, rotate and scale functions – you’ll see your final emblem on your character and even possibly in the environment during matches.

Speaking of weapon customizations – it goes beyond the cosmetic. We have weapon mods that not only change the look of your weapon of choice, but they are functional too, adding precise scopes, bigger clips and more!

Boosters are back in Uncharted 3, but we didn’t just carry over the Booster selection from Uncharted 2. There are a few old favorites in there, but we’ve created what we feel is a more satisfying mix of old and new based on your feedback and selection patterns. We’ve extended the Booster system with a special subset of Paid Boosters, give you a one-time Booster that you spend some cash to have the option of using during a match. There are still other ways to get minor advantages during a match. You have to option to select a specific Medal Kickback, which activates when you’ve racked up the required number of Medals for that specific Kickback. You can see this in the Multiplayer Trailer when the RPG Kickback is activated at 00:50 into the video. You’re taking a little chance when you select these, as some really choice Kickbacks require you to get a significant number of Medals before you can activate them.

Those are a TON of customization options you can pick through and we know that you don’t want to be bogged down in menus in the limited time before the match begins trying to figure out which sets of customizations you want to slot for that match. We’ve introduced four slots to save specific loadouts — your starting rifle, starting sidearm, weapon customizations and mods, Boosters, and Kickbacks.

All of these customization and modifier options allowed us to extend our in-game reward system. No longer is everything tied to level gain or cash. During matches, you’ll have the opportunity to get items from treasure chests on the maps. You’ll also be able unlock a wide variety of items and modifiers through Missions. There are two types of Missions – some are instant missions and others, accessible from the Multiplayer menu, are more long term. Instant missions can appear in the middle of a match and provide a target that you can complete within a few matches tops. The Missions you select from the Multiplayer menu will take significantly more time, days of playtime possibly, and the rewards will be accordingly more significant.

A couple of things we’ve learned over the past year and a half of reviewing thousands upon thousands of Uncharted 2 matches is that it really sucks to be blown out on the way to losing a match and that winning or losing a tightly contested match by some kill made way off-screen is a bit of a letdown. We’ve thought of some ways to make these inevitable multiplayer moments a bit more exciting and satisfying. Power Plays activate when one team is way behind in the score count. They provide the team on top with an opportunity to maximize their cash for the match, while evening the odds a little for the team on the losing end of the equation and giving them the opportunity to close the gap a little.

If matches are too close to call as they get close to the end, Overtime will activate, giving either time an opportunity to win the match by more than one point within a limited time. If the game is still too close to call, the match enters Sudden Death. Sudden Death is similar to Elimination – there are no respawns and the last player standing wins the match for their team.

We’ve also made it easier to share your passion for Uncharted 3 multiplayer with your real life friends and family through social media hooks we’ve added to the game. We’ve integrated Facebook into the game in a way unseen on a console game so far – way more than just sharing videos and photos, or updates to your Wall. USA Today has an exclusive look at our plans to bring social networks into Uncharted 3. Cinema mode has gotten a revamp allowing you to create clips from full matches and upload them directly to your own YouTube OR Facebook account (or both). We’re streaming a tightly curated list of awesome Uncharted videos created by you – our community – back into your multiplayer menu via Uncharted TV. We’ll have more details on all of the above over the next few days.

Oh yeah, and we have a brand new Sprint button. Don’t hate on it until you’ve had a chance to go hands on! We feel it works extremely well and, of course, we’ve built Uncharted 3 multiplayer to take into account that you can sprint.

We’ve spent a lot of time talking about competitive multiplayer, but what about co-op? Fear not, co-op is most definitely IN Uncharted 3 multiplayer and it too has been vastly expanded upon. We didn’t cover anything co-op related at our multiplayer event last week – everything and anything co-op will be revealed further down the line.

When can you get a crack at Uncharted 3 multiplayer? In just a couple of months – the Multiplayer Beta for Uncharted 3 begins WORLDWIDE on June 28, 2011, with early access for PlayStation Plus members or by purchasing copies of Infamous 2 (excluding Australia).

Stay tuned as that date draws nearer for more details!

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Last week, Naughty Dog and SCEA held a packed-to-the-rafters press event at the PlayStation.Blog lounge at GDC 2011. The anticipation from the invited press was palpable as they all filtered into the PlayStation.Blog lounge – afterwards, word on the street was that we delivered.

Evan Wells, Christophe Balestra, Richard Lemarchand and yours truly were there to give the demo and speak with the press – the embargo just lifted this morning, so be sure to visit any of the numerous publications who attended for their take on the event and the reveals.

We kicked off the press event with the first ever demo outside of Naughty Dog halls of UNCHARTED 3: Drake’s Deception in stereoscopic 3D. We chose to present a portion of the burning chateau sequence we premiered in late December. Since most people would already be familiar with the way the sequence looked and played, we thought it would make all the more evident the stellar work the Naughty Dog team has put into making the 3D presentation part of the core Naughty Dog Engine.

In my opinion, with this small snippet of gameplay we’ve proven that we’re able to perfectly retain all of the spectacular visuals and effects that you’ve come to expect from an UNCHARTED game into the 3D presentation. Playing in 3D gives you some added benefits to gameplay as well, such as improved aiming around corners and an excellent read on depth for all traversal sequences, no matter how tricky. Unfortunately, until you get the see the UNCHARTED 3 running in 3D at an event or in your home this November, you’ll have to rely on impressions from our attending media for how good it looked and played.

The real meat of the press event was the unveiling of the central antagonist that will try to foil Nathan Drake and Victor Sullivan at every opportunity – meet Katherine Marlowe.

Sounds like she’s definitely not one you want to get in the way of or, worse, double cross! To give you some background, Katherine Marlowe is the coldly calculating leader of a secret society whose roots date back over four hundred years to the court of Queen Elizabeth I. She has a long-standing rivalry with Nathan Drake over Sir Francis Drake’s ring – something they both contend is rightfully theirs and is also the key to an ancient mystery. As you can tell from the cut-scene above, Marlowe is a much more cerebral enemy than Drake has confronted in the past, using both psychological and physical tactics to get what she is after. Marlowe also has the assistance of her team of highly-trained agents in this secret society – they are far more elusive and dangerous than the hired guns Nathan Drake and Victor Sullivan have faced before.

We’ve uploaded a set of stills from the cut-scene, a high-res render of Katherine Marlowe and concept art of the agents and thugs Nathan Drake and Victor Sullivan will face in UNCHARTED 3: Drake’s Deception.

We hope you’ve all enjoyed meeting Katherine Marlowe in our GDC 2011 reveal. Stay tuned as we still have a ton of information we want to reveal – with little to no spoilers! – over the next eight months.

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We’re not closing out 2010 quietly! I’m sure it’s been hard to miss that another wave of information, interviews, screenshots and gameplay video for UNCHARTED 3: Drake’s Deception hit the internets today. You’re just seeing the fruits of the nefarious plan we’ve had in the works for a couple of months now. Okay, that’s not quite true, but it sure sounds way better if it’s all dramatic, right?

A good part this wave comes from the event PlayStation.Blog US held for the media just after the Spike VGA 2010.

PlayStation.Blog was there not only to check out UNCHARTED 3 with their very own eyes, but they got managed to snag Creative Director Amy Hennig and Game Director Justin Richmond to answer some questions in the video above.

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