Richard LeMarchand, co-lead games designer at Naughty Dog, was in Dublin to show off some footage and gameplay for Uncharted 3, which is one of the Sony Playstation 3's biggest series. ION interviewed him, which you can see here.

Uncharted 3 is an action adventure game on the Playstation 3, and one that is squarely going for a feel of an 80s action movie. There's elements of the good Indiana Jones movies, Daniel Craig's Bond, and even cheesy classics like Jewel of the Nile. The plot involves a mysterious location from folklore, “The Atlantis of the Sands”, Sir Francis Drake, Laurence of Arabia and a shadowy conspiracy, whose leader does resemble Helen Mirren.

What really struck me was how it looks. Its pretty. Damn pretty. Firstly, Naughty Dog have rebuilt Nathan Drake's character model, and at any given time there's up to a dozen animations on the character, some of which run as long as 12 minutes. Drake now moves and reacts to whatever he walks, climbs or smashes through. Even in combat, animations will be unique to the environments, such as grabbing a bottle for a melee weapon if there's one handy. As it happens, Naughty Dog now have their own in-house motion capture studio, which shows how much time and effort goes into animating characters.

Then there's the environments. Naughty Dog have pushed using physics objects instead of animated objects - an ocean liner level isn't just a big immobile box with animated sea below, instead it rolls and rocks in response to the ocean's physics. And its got Volumetric light. Older games would have to use static particle effects, physically inserting streams of light coming through windows. Uncharted 3's lighting physics are generated depending on the the environment and its contents. I found this out playing the multiplayer game, where my sweet sniping spot was rendered useless by my very visible shadow, which moved as I did.

What Naughty Dog have done is subtle, but important. By having the world that bit more realistic and responsive, the player will be drawn in that bit more. Gameplay supports this immersive movie feel. One sequence where you're trying to get from a Jeep onto a moving plane's undercarriage looks like a cut scene but is completely interactive. The gameplay is easy enough to pick up, and you have multiple ways you can approach obstacles, be it stealth, shooting, climbing or just some good old fashioned brawling. Melee combat deserves an addition mention, with the extensive work done on character animations really on show.

Its a pretty game, but its also a fun one. Its easy to play, the plot is detailed but doesn't need a wikipedia break every 10 minutes, and little things like how the characters look and move really sells it. I may have to buy a Hi-Def TV, to get the most out of it, but even without, the game looks like it'll be a huge amount of fun and really show off what the PS3 can do.

- Baz Nugent