One of the Facebook groups for the Uncharted community recently ran a brief Q&A session with Naughty Dog. One of the questions asked generated an interesting response with regards to the possibility or likelihood of an open world Naughty Dog game.

Would you ever consider making a more open world game?

“It’s a tough thing to say. Our games have always encouraged exploration to find everything they have to offer. So in that sense they are open world. However, we build our games around narrative that tells the tale (or tales) of specific characters in a very direct way and in order to do so there’s some level of control that needs to be exercised.

Personally, I feel that video games as a medium are wide open. There is so much that happens moment-to-moment in a game that it makes it seem like anything could be possible. That’s about as open as you can get with regard to narrative. It’s just a matter of how you think about game narrative and the point at which you read the narrative as what it is.”

This is interesting as it looks as though The Dogs are making a fairly firm commitment to continue making games around a strong narrative. Whilst they don’t outwardly appear to struggle in many areas of game design, narrative and narrative design is arguably one of their strongest elements. This news is therefore most welcome.

The full Q&A can be seen here. (Join the group if you like!)