A Naughty Dog developer has revealed that the studio nearly gave Nathan Drake a stamina bar in Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End.
In my opinion, stamina bars do have their place in some video games. Stamina bars are often seen in the sports genre and from time to time, in horror. Though this feature is never exclusive to the two.
However, whenever I think of stamina bars, I instantly get flashbacks of Sebastian Castellanos’ pitiful stamina bar in the original Evil Within. Like, I know he’s a smoker, but surely, he can run for longer than a few seconds?
Stamina bars can suck!
Thankfully, that stamina mechanic was re-balanced somewhat in the sequel. That being said, the stamina bar in the original game was a prime example of how it should not have been implemented.
So, how would a stamina bar fair in Uncharted 4? Personally, I’m glad it didn’t make its way into the game. However, I’d also have a certain degree of confidence that Naughty Dog would have done it right.
As reported by Eurogamer, Uncharted 4 and The Lost Legacy co-writer Josh Scherr revealed that the stamina bar nearly featured in the fourth mainline entry to add an extra layer of difficulty.
“A lot of the stuff that happens early on are prototypes of design things that eventually make it in [to a game],” said Scherr, speaking as a guest on YouTube channel Couch Soup.
“We were looking to do some interesting things with the climbing mechanics [in Uncharted 4],” he continued. “The long story short version of that is that we did all these interesting things with a stamina bar, trying to make it feel more challenging.”
The stamina bar was scrapped!
Thankfully, Scherr revealed that the stamina bar was scrapped as the Naughty team felt like “it got in the way [of how they] liked to blend [its] platforming and gunplay.” I couldn’t agree more.
“We didn’t want to have people paying attention to stamina while they were also outrunning people shooting [at them] and all that kind of stuff,” added Scherr. “We wanted to keep everything quick and moving along.”
Would you have liked to have seen Naughty Dog implement a stamina bar in the Uncharted series? Let us know across our social media channels.
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Featured Image Credit: Naughty Dog