River

River! The last map I designed for Uncharted 4 (pre-DLC). Before it was a real level, River was a test level to prototype swimming and slides called “Rodney Super Fun Waterpark.”

River wasn’t supposed to ship with the game, but due to an unforeseen production issue and team member loss, we came up a map short of our eight map goal for the game’s release. So this testbed level got moved to the major leagues with only six weeks to go from designer blockmesh to gold-master art.

Since it was the last map, I wanted to take advantage of all the lessons learned from the others, and push this level with its verticality and traversal and try to make it the ultimate Uncharted level. A map that could only exist in Uncharted and nowhere else that embraced traversal and exotic locations. Half of the map was done more traditionally like the others before it, focusing on “team-fronts” gameplay and traditional cover player movement. The other half was pinnacle style platforms, with massive rope swings, and a mud slide waterfall from a small lake that the player could swim in.

Not only did River have the shortest amount of development time, but it also went through a massive redesign because it was too big. There were also a lot of wild idea on how the water was going to work, like spawning outside the level and going over a waterfall to enter the map. A stream that cut through that map that had a current so that the player would be slower swimming one way but faster the other way. These were all excellent and awesome ideas that had to be left at the water park. Ship it!