Uncharted 2's truck chase was apparently added because Neil Druckmann really liked a similar scene from Resident Evil 5.
During Uncharted 2's campaign – in one of the seemingly endless ways Nathan Drake gets put into immense amounts of danger throughout its campaign – you get chased down by a truck down an alleyway that you'll need to shoot enough times to blow it up. Now, according to former Naughty Dog designer Benson Russell (who worked on the Uncharted trilogy and The Last of Us), this sequence only made it into the game months ahead of time because Druckmann saw something similar in another game.
Speaking to Reece 'Kiwi Talkz' Reilly, Russell explains, "that was taken directly from Resident Evil 5." He adds, "Neil was playing Resident Evil at the time and played that sequence and [was] like 'oh this is so fuckin' awesome' and he wanted to put something similar [in the game]".
The scene in question is a relatively minor moment in Resident Evil 5 where Chris and Sheva cross a bridge as a truck heads straight for them, and using carefully placed explosive barrels can flip it over and allow you to move on.
Russell continued, "There's definitely influence, they see things in other products and games that they're like 'this is amazing,' but it's always like 'can we do that?' or 'can we take that and modify it' and make it work within our product," adding that studios can't just lift it wholesale.
Obviously, games being inspired by other games is nothing new, but the story in particular puts into perspective just how much the industry has changed. Resident Evil 5 was released in March of 2009, with Uncharted 2 coming out seven months later in October, and yet that was still enough time for Naughty Dog to be inspired and implement an entire segment based on it into the game. Meanwhile, now we're lucky if we see one Naughty Dog game per console generation.
