Uncharted difficulty was tuned to "slow the player down if they were too good," says Naughty Dog designer: "We can't charge 60 bucks for a 5-hour game"

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A former Naughty Dog developer says the original game's difficulty was intentionally designed to lengthen the game, amid fears it would otherwise be too short.

Uncharted is a pretty legendary franchise, all things considered; at the very least, it's second only to Naughty Dog's The Last of Us in terms of Sony franchises made from the PS3 onwards. But with how monumental a release Uncharted 2 was and how beloved its two sequels are, it's easy to forget that the original game is kinda… not great. It was ambitious and cinematic for sure, but it's aged much worse than the subsequent entries thanks to its awkward combat. The series uses difficulty scaling akin to games like Resident Evil 4 and God Hand, but the first game wasn't the best implementation, as the difficulty curve jumped between peaceful and punishing at a moment's notice.