Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Gaming
  3. News

Uncharted designer’s departure from Naughty Dog raises questions about series’ future

By
Image used with permission by copyright holder

After eight years with long time Sony partner Naughty Dog, Richard Lemarchand is leaving the studio to work with the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California. His last game with the company was 2011’s divisive Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, which he worked on as co-lead designer.

Gamasutra reported on Lemarchand’s departure in a Monday report, discussing his new job with USC. The program Lemarchand will be teaching in is the exact same one that graduated Jenova Chen and Kellee Santiago before those two went on to form Thatgamecompany, creating Flower and Journey. “I’ll be surrounded by awesome people, talking craft and philosophy, and building strange new things!” said Lemarchand.

Recommended Videos

Starting with Naughty Dog’s final PlayStation 2 game, Jak X: Combat Racing, Lemarchand helped steward the Uncharted series from its 2007 debut Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune onward. He worked as the lead designer on that game, helping to build the tools Naughty Dog used to make the game as well as laying out levels and designing enemy encounters. He also worked as the co-lead designer on series pinnacle Uncharted 2: Among Thieves alongside Neil Druckmann, the creative director of Naughty Dog’s upcoming post-apocalyptic survival game The Last of Us.

Related

“I’ve always been a very hands-on game designer, and I’m a big believer that no matter what level you’re working at on a project, it’s a very great thing to be able to stay connected to the practical process of building out a game,” said Lemarchand of his personal style. That style was a credit to the Uncharted series and will no doubt inform the styles of those students Lemarchand works with at USC.

It’s wonderful that such a powerful creative is helping to build the next generation of game makers, but it also indicates that Naughty Dog’s relationship with the Uncharted series may indeed be over. The Vita launch title Uncharted: The Golden Abyss was developed by Sony internal studio SCE Bend, and the dip in quality from earlier console entries was glaring at certain points. Naughty Dog is also hard at work on the aforementioned The Last of Us, which means that for the first time more than half a decade, its primary resources are devoted to developing a game that isn’t Uncharted.

Uncharted’s director and Naughty Dog creative director Amy Hennig remains with the company so if Naughty Dog does indeed make another Uncharted, it will at least retain its distinctive voice. The departure of Lemarchand leaves it without one of the primary minds behind its play though. Uncharted without Naughty Dog is hardly Uncharted at all.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Anthony John Agnello
Anthony John Agnello
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Anthony John Agnello is a writer living in New York. He works as the Community Manager of Joystiq.com and his writing has…
How to mine Silver in Hades 2
Art for Nemesis in hades 2.

Silver is one of the most important resources you can find in Hades 2. Unlike most others that drop after clearing a room, this precious metal must be mined from deposits around the map, leading to the question of how you can gather it. You may come across a glowing stone with the "Collect?" prompt, only to be told you cannot gather it without a special tool. That tool is none other than the Crescent Pick, but unlocking it is a bit obscure. It won't take you many runs to get what you need, so just follow our lead so you can start collecting Silver to make new weapons with.
How to mine Silver

Silver deposits will pop up around the environment as you navigate the randomly generated rooms, so you will need to keep an eye out for these glowing silver rocks. To gather that sweet material, you first need to unlock and acquire the Crescent Pick, which takes two steps.

Read more
All Rockstar video games: full list of developed and published games
Michael from Grand Theft Auto V.

It might seem like a boastful name, but Rockstar Games really are rockstars in the gaming world. The developer is responsible for arguably the most important and lucrative gaming franchise of all time with the Grand Theft Auto series. While the open-world crime series is what the studio is best known for, it has dipped its toes into a wide range of genres and styles as a publisher since its first game in 1997. While the studio's output has certainly slowed, with an over eight-year gap between Red Dead Redemption 2 and GTA 6, there's a backlog of over 40 games in its portfolio. That's a lot of history to digest, but it's important to understand the entire scope before we decide which games are the best.
All Rockstar games released

Originally called DMA Design, Rockstar has been developing and publishing games since 1997 and shows no sign of stopping any time soon. Not counting any remasters or rereleases, here is every game Rockstar has developed and published. We split this list based on whether a studio with Rockstar in the name developed or co-developed the game in question.
All Rockstar-developed games

Read more
I want more approachable Soulslikes. These new games show that it’s possible
Stellar Blade STALKER fight.

One of my favorite copypastas on the internet comes from someone complaining about a player using mods to make a FromSoftware game easier. "You cheated not only the game, but yourself," it reads. "You didn't grow. You didn't improve. You took a shortcut and gained nothing. You experienced a hollow victory. Nothing was risked and nothing was gained. It's sad that you don't know the difference."

The infamous post was made in response to a PC Gamer article about mods that made Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice more approachable for the writer. It's funny to see someone get that angry over another's personal experience with a game they own, but it also addresses a question that's loomed over the gaming community ever since Dark Souls took the world by storm: Should FromSoftware's games and the Soulslikes inspired by them have options to make them more accessible?

Read more