Uncharted 3 hits US, team admits to "brutal" crunch

With Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception launching in the US today and all reviews live, the Naughty Dog team has admitted it went through a painful crunch to ship this week.

"It was the hardest thing in the industry [I've] ever done," creative director Amy Hennig told GameTrailers of getting the game gold on time.

"It was pretty brutal this time around," cinematics animation lead Josh Scherr agreed. "I mean, there's always crunch. There're always people putting in extra hours.

"But this time around, just because of the scope and the ambition of the game - even after we had gone back and shortened some things, trimmed some other things - there was just still a lot to do, in the amount of time we had to do it.

"There was added pressure because there was more languages than we have ever done before, both spoken and text translation," game director Justin Richmond added.

The interview was recorded the day after Naughty Dog sent the gold version out, and the team commented that they'd only had the chance to see it in its finished state just days before; Scherr said he was yet to play it through.

Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception release in the US on November 1, and reaches Europe on November 2 and Australia on November 3.

The full, hour-plus show through the link above contains plenty of discussion of the game's development.

Thanks, that Videogame Blog.