Remnants

Remnants is a level that I inherited from another designer, and when the level was given to me the majority of the background art had already been completed. But the map wasn’t fun, and I was told that if I wasn’t able to make the map work it was going to be cut from the game.

It’s difficult to “fix” a map that was born in someone else’s mind, while not trying to change it too much to cause problems for the art team. But while it was a bit of a stepchild, a lot of love and effort went into making it different and work. For me, that meant embracing double rope swings, something I was opposed to in other maps because of how unrealistic they were. We also made a choice to cut the sun and spend that render performance budget on rain particle effects, which proved to be a challenge because darker levels run into issues with player visibility, whether the level truly is too dark or you’re just viewing it on a crappy tv.

Remnants had the honor to be the first level created for Uncharted 4 and the last level completed. It’s the level that didn’t quit.