Story-Driven Titles Are On The Edge Of Extinction, UNCHARTED: DRAKE'S FORTUNE Director Says

There's no denying that the vibrant gaming industry is constantly evolving, with new projects being released on a daily basis. According to Uncharted: Among Thieves Director and Writer Amy Hennig, short, story-driven games like 2007's Drake's Deception wouldn’t actually do well in today’s market.

"I’ve said that I don’t think a game like the first Uncharted, even though it was the foundational footprint for that series, would be a viable pitch today," Hennig said in an interview with VentureBeat at the DICE Summit 2019. "The idea of a finite eight-ish-hour experience that has no second modes, no online — the only replayability was the fact that you could unlock cheats and stuff like that."

"No multiplayer, nothing. That doesn’t fly anymore," Hennig continued. "Now you have to have a lot of hours of gameplay. Eight would never cut it. Usually some sort of online mode. And of course you see where things are pushing, toward live services and battle royale and games as a service. All of those things — I don’t know the word I’m looking for, but they play less nicely with story."

"They’re less conducive to traditional storytelling. That has a shape and an arc and a destination, an end. A game that is a live service, that continues, does not," she concluded. Considering that EA has canceled (or at least canned) her and Visceral Games' story-driven Star Wars project (codenamed Ragtag), Hennig's opinion on modern single-player-only video games is definitely grounded in reality.

As for Ragtag, the game was said to be too linear by EA bosses and development was instead "pivoted" to EA Vancouver, but whatever it is now (and it's still uncertain if EA is even working on it), it surely is not what Hennig and Todd Stashwick originally imagined when they joined the Visceral team in 2014.

A 400-year-old clue in the coffin of Sir Francis Drake sets a modern-day fortune hunter on an exploration for the fabled treasure of El Dorado, leading to the discovery of a forgotten island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The search turns deadly when Nathan Drake becomes stranded on the island and hunted by mercenaries. Outnumbered and outgunned, Drake and his companions must fight to survive as they begin to unravel the terrible secrets hidden on the Island.