Hello, everyone,
thank you for joining me
today on the livestream stage.
I've got Vinit Agarwal here,
and we're gonna talk about
 Uncharted 4: Survival mode.
Very excited, got co-op action
as well. Walk us through.
There's 50 different waves
of action
you have to fight through.
How does that play out?
Yeah, so it's 50 waves,
we wanted longevity.
But we broke it up
into chunks of ten stages.
You're playing five waves
at a time.
A 15 to 20 minute experience.
One of the key pillars
is accessibility,
so we want people to be able
to play in chunks
that are digestible. Not have
to commit three hours of time.
[LAUGHS]
Some of these
horde modes you play,
you have to commit to
two to three hours.
So we play in chunks
and you play across maps.
They'll leverage the maps
we had in multiplayer
across these ten maps,
and as you play, you kind of
transition through these maps
in a nice, logical fashion.
And yeah,
it's pretty exciting.
Now does each different wave
have its own unique objective,
or is there a general
thread throughout?
VINIT:
Right, so we have
five different objective types.
The core one's Survival,
killing enemies,
the standard horde.
Then we have also Siege,
killing enemies
from a certain location,
which feels very different.
You're defending a location.
Enemies are throwing grenades
in, and you have to defend
while killing them.
We also have Treasure Race.
One of our cool modes
where you go through
and collect treasures
as you go.
Remember Sonic, collecting
the rings. It feels like that.
We've got, like,
ten treasures--
You're going down a path
collecting treasures.
You collect them
while killing enemies.
Avoiding enemies,
collecting treasures.
We also have Marked Man,
which is kind of a variant
on Survival. You're killing
a particular target.
So the target's flanked
by a bunch of enemies,
so it's really difficult.
MEREDITH:
So you have to find
the one marked guy.
VINIT:
There's multiple marked guys.
You have to defeat them,
you can't just defeat anyone.
And they're, like,
the big armored guys, so.
Pretty tough.
MEREDITH: Yeah.
VINIT:
And we have the Boss Waves,
which are our favorite objective
because it showcases
our pirates.
MEREDITH:
Oh, from four?
VINIT:
Yeah, Henry Avery
and Adam Baldridge.
MEREDITH:
Are they ghost pirates?
Zombie pirates?
VINIT:
They're ghost pirates.
We give them
the mystical abilities,
like the Wrath of El Dorado,
and one that's focused
on the teleport mystical.
And so we tried to make them
a little more
fantastical,
a little more exciting.
We think they turned out
pretty well.
Nice. Now you get to co-op
with up to two friends,
so three can play together.
Or if you have no friends,
it's cool,
we've taken care of you.
You can play
with an AI character.
Exactly. We wanted it
to be accessible solo,
something we haven't done
previously.
We understand there are
many players who don't have
PlayStation Plus
who'd still love to play
this co-op mode, Survival.
So we gave them the opportunity
to play solo with a buddy.
The buddy revives you.
He feels like a real player.
He's competent,
can take down enemies.
He can do synched melee moves.
It's pretty cool.
It's also dynamic
in the sense that people
can drop in and out
as they want.
Say you're starting up a match.
You start off with a buddy,
but people can join in any time,
replace him with a real player.
That's really different.
That's not what you see usually.
Yeah, it's a pretty
unique feature, I think.
It'll make the mode more
seamless and easier to play
with your friends.
Say your friend can hop in
for a couple waves.
They can drop in
in the middle, then drop back
out. It's really flexible.
MEREDITH: That's really cool--
VINIT: Yeah.
MEREDITH:
--Now talk to me about
leveling up your character
as you go through
the waves.
VINIT:
This is another thing
we wanted to bring.
One of our pillars
of longevity.
We want this to be
ultimately replayable.
So we added
a leveling system,
what we call
an RPG light system.
The character gains health
and damage as they level up
and get better and better
at the waves.
If you're having trouble,
you level up,
get better and better.
It'll be easier.
MEREDITH:
Cool. Now, I'm looking
over here
at some of
the game footage here.
You can see, you have your team,
you're gaining money.
What can you spend that on?
VINIT:
Yes. So this is
a function we added
to the multiplayer,
the in-game store.
We have a semblance of that
here with the arsenal.
You gain cash
as you kill enemies
and can use it at the arsenal.
See the three green icons,
those are the arsenals,
accessible at any time.
We also give you 30 seconds
of intermission
between waves to use it.
MEREDITH [LAUGHING]:
To catch your breath.
VINIT:
Yeah, because it gets
pretty intense.
So you go to the arsenal,
you can buy different things.
You can buy gear.
You can buy mysticals.
You can buy weapons.
You can also refill your ammo.
Okay.
And so depending
on the wave,
there's different strategies--
Here's the arsenal.
See this person's
buying the grenade.
Gear in particular
is really useful.
Buying grenades is one of the
best kinds of gear you can buy.
It's really useful. In addition
to that, you can buy weapons.
For different waves, different
weapons are more powerful.
So the Siege mode,
where you're fighting
from a particular location
the enemies are pretty far off,
so you want sniper rifles,
the Mettler,
which is a single-shot
scoped weapon.
A lot more effective
than a close-range weapon.
Then for other waves,
Survival,
where you mow down
enemies running through
the automatic weapon
makes a lot of sense.
MEREDITH:
What weapons take down
the ghost pirates?
VINIT:
Oh, yes. So every boss has
some sort of strategy to them.
So we wanted the bosses
to be a little more
than just a sack of potatoes.
You're just shooting them a
bunch. We wanted some strategy.
So one of the first bosses
we showcased here at PSX
is the Djinn Warlord,
and the best way to defeat him
is fight fire with fire.
He's a fire boss,
but if you shoot explosives
at him, he'll go down.
When he's down,
he takes four times damage,
and he's just sitting there
so you can wail into him,
and he'll come back out of it.
So the strategy is to get
the grenade launcher
off of his minions,
use the grenade launcher
to hit him and then shoot him.
MEREDITH:
See, we're giving you tips
on how to play here on
livestream, that's awesome.
That's the other function
of the arsenal.
You can buy the grenade launcher
instead if you need to.
We think it's an interesting,
flexible system.
It allows for a lot
of strategy.
People learn these waves.
The waves are kind of,
like, set.
The reason is we wanted people
to learn the strategy
and master it.
Yeah.
So...
That's true, you
mentioned replayability.
As you play through
the game multiple times,
you start to realize
these strategies
and what works for you
in this one.
And you're like,
"When I play the next wave,
that's not gonna work."
Exactly, yeah.
This also comes back
to the team element.
People start to learn--
In the office
as we've been playing,
we learn certain strategies
for certain waves.
You watch this direction,
I'll watch this direction.
We love the team element
in multiplayer.
Competitive multiplayer
is team-based.
We wanted to have that
same kind of DNA in the co-op.
We wanted co-op to feel
team-based.
Very cool.
We have the down system,
you can revive your teammates.
So there's those
last stands you get
before you all die,
right? It's exciting.
This is the Djinn Warlord
I was talking about.
This is our Boss Wave.
We have a nice intro cinematic,
and it's a really intense
battle.
Speaking more of the longevity
actually,
so mastering the waves--
We have the star-rating system
you see in the top left.
Over the radar
there's those three stars.
We've set up a system
where basically
to earn stars
you need to beat the stage
in a certain amount of time.
To get three stars
is really tough
and we designed the time limit--
You have to learn the waves
and do really good at it. So...
MEREDITH:
And again that adds
to the replayability of it.
Every time I'm like,
"I only got two stars.
I gotta go play that again.
I want all three."
VINIT: Yeah--
[MEREDITH LAUGHS]
--and actually we tied some
pretty cool rewards
to the star system.
So we have these skeleton skins,
which is a throwback
to Uncharted 3.
 Uncharted 3 co-op,
we had skeleton skins.
People played the co-op
just to earn those skins.
They're basically like
Drake, Elena.
A couple of our characters
in skeleton form.
Cool.
Pretty cool.
What is the blue stuff
flying around the screen?
Oh, yeah, yeah.
We're past that. Right there.
These blue things,
these are heavy weapons.
So some enemies you kill
will drop heavy weapons
and they kind of float,
they look a little more special.
Like I was saying,
sort of in this Boss Wave,
you have to find
the grenade launcher,
one of those blue weapons
to take down the boss.
Here you're seeing
a weapon drop.
So we have loot in the game,
kind of a semblance of loot.
Bosses drop
unique weapon levels.
So as you level up, you'll also
gain access to more weapons.
The weapons start off
on level one,
and there's five levels
to each weapon.
As you defeat bosses,
they'll drop
a new level of weapon
you've never unlocked.
So in addition to your player
level increasing
your weapon levels increase.
MEREDITH: Very cool.
So does each different wave
take place
in a different location
from the game itself?
Or is it inspired by?
They're all inspired by--
So this is a prison map,
for example.
The prison map is based on an
early level from Uncharted 4
when you're in the prison
as Drake.
So all the maps are inspired by,
but are not direct copies.
We've reengineered them
for multiplayer.
MEREDITH:
If we could not do
the tower one
where I have to defeat
everybody
and be all stealth,
I would appreciate that.
VINIT:
Pretty sure that's not there.
You're okay.
[MEREDITH LAUGHS]
The cool thing about the maps
and people respond particularly
with the prison map,
is each feels different.
The prison map
is close quarters,
has a lot of 90 degree angles.
A lot of, like,
"Come across the corner and the
guy has a shotgun. Oh, crap."
So I think that was one
of the big wins
we got here
with the five waves in each--
Transitioning between maps.
Is that every map
has its own feel.
It feels really fresh.
Which was, I think,
a big win.
People like that,
it keeps it feeling varied.
MEREDITH:
Yeah. Well, that's very cool.
VINIT:
Yeah.
MEREDITH:
Very excited to play it.
A lot of Uncharted fans
are always excited for more.
However we can get
more Uncharted.
We'll take everything
we can get.
Thank you for
joining us today.
This'll be available
this month for free.
This month for free?
That's awesome.
Okay, so later this month?
Yes.
Later this month.
Check out the PlayStation blog.
They'll be the first to know
exactly when later this month.
Vinit, thank you for joining us.
Thank you, Meredith.
Stick with us.
We've got a lot more here
on the PlayStation
Experience.
COMPUTER:
 PlayStation.
