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PlayStation Experience 2015 Predictions – Will Uncharted 4 Be Delayed?

Every year since 2014, the December PlayStation Fairy has come around to give all of us boys and girls a big helping of Sony-endorsed goodness. The PlayStation Experience in San Francisco this weekend shall be her domain; her delivery, however, remains a mystery. Will there be a new Locoroco announced for the PS Vita? Unlikely. Will a cumbersome moment of awkwardness halt the proceedings to an indomitable crawl? More than definitely. Without further ado, and all of that formal nonsense, here are my PSX 2015 predictions:

A Clip From The Ratchet And Clank Movie Will Be Shown, Much To The Dismay of Everyone

As much as we all love Ratchet and Clank, and as much as we are excited for the Pixar-like reboot coming next year, movies, or any other form of media for that matter, have no place at a PlayStation conference.  I know that the movie in question will feature similar visuals, the same voice actors, and even has members of Insomniac working on its production, animation and writing, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it will be good.

It looks visually awesome, and may be on point tonally, but the lack of gameplay may constrain characters into scenarios where humour and quirkiness will veer into uncomfortable hyperbole. This is why it should not be at the conference, but I feel that it must make an appearance in an attempt to get the PlayStation faithful onboard. I doubt very much that kids these days, clamouring for properties like Star Wars and Minions, would be interested in a somewhat-obscure platforming title, and so it falls upon us fans to fill up seats come opening night. Viewers of the conference will want game after game after game, and any pauses in order to shovel movie marketing down their throats will be met with groans and boredom.

The Word ‘Vita’ Will Be Said Less Than Five Times

After an abysmal showing at both the Paris Games Week and E3 press conferences, the Vita’s presentational relevance is drastically waning. Games may still be coming to the PS Vita, including both Drinbox’s Severed and Danganronpa 3, but there have been mixed messages as to whether there would be any continued first-party support. Sony Worldwide Studios President Shuhei Yoshida stated earlier this year that no first-party games were in development, while in October, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe President, Jim Ryan, doubled back on this statement, indicating that while none of the content coming forth would be AAA standard, there would still be first-party support.

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At this point, the life of the Vita is as confusing as my last sentence, and because of this, I feel that Sony will limit its time in talking about the handheld at their conference. They will say its name less than five times, like it’s some sort of Beetlejuice-like curse.

Sony Santa Monica Will Reveal A New Game That Is God of War-Related

Out of all of Sony’s first-party studios, Sony Santa Monica has its hens in quite a few baskets. For a while now, it has been collaborating with numerous studios on smaller titles; Journey with Thatgamecompany, Escape Plan with Fun Bits Interactive, and the just-recently announced Bound with Plastic Studios. The company’s internally developed series however, God of War, has been flaunted from night until noon in multiple iterations since 2005.

And that is not going to change this year. After it was revealed that the studio had cancelled an open-world sci-fi game, that had been in development for around four years in 2014, Santa Monica may have wanted to test the waters on the PS4 before working on an entirely different, and perhaps more ambitious, title. Furthermore, God of War will draw in the paying customers like no Sony franchise save Gran Turismo.

Sony may not be hurting in the wallet department at the moment, with 30.2 million PS4s sold through to consumers just two years after its release, but it couldn’t hurt to play this one safe, especially since new and riskier properties are coming out in the near future: No Man’s Sky, Detroit: Become Human and Dreams to name but a few.

Whether Kratos will be involved in this new title is up for debate, but I’ll take a random stab in the dark, and say that Norse mythology will be involved, instead of Greek.

An Awkward Square Enix Moment Will Occur

It’s always there.

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Square Enix always does something to make snarky idiots on the internet – like myself – scramble towards their Twitter accounts to tweet about some nonsensical moment. Remember when they had a moon man come on stage at E3 2015 to speak in Japanese about Nier?; remember when they had a regular man come out at the PS4 debut event in 2013 to talk about Final Fantasy, and instead he said, “Please be excited for E3 this year”?; remember when every Square Enix employee  came onto the stage at their own press conference to clap for themselves at what a good show they had just performed?

You remember them all, and you’ll remember their PSX 2015 moment too.

Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End Shall Be Delayed

Uncharted 4 is slated to come out on March 18th 2016. This may seem like a fair date; the game has obviously been in development since at least 2012, but, let’s not forget what an arduous process  that has been. Multiple members of Naughty Dog staff have left the company, including the game’s head writer and creative director, Amy Hennig; even voice actor Todd Stashwick vacated the project, allowing Troy Baker to come in to play Nathan Drake’s older brother Sam.

This may not be totally related, but the game’s demos have also crashed at two public demonstrations, adding insult to injury, and perhaps indicating some sort of Uncharted 4 curse. Furthermore, Nolan North, the performance artist and voice actor behind the protagonist, had only just wrapped up his motion capture work in October this year; something which is usually finished quite early on in a game’s life cycle, in order to allow programmers and artists to deal with character animation.

March 18th sounds far too soon considering all of these issues, and besides that, Naughty Dog is a company that prides itself with quality. They delayed The Last of Us for a few weeks back in 2013, and have since stated that the delay made the difference between in 8/10 and a 10/10 game.

Uncharted 4 is going to be delayed at PSX, at least for a couple of months, and as much as that is disappointing, it will certainly be for the betterment of Nathan Drake’s final adventure.

These are all of my predictions. How many do you think I’ll get right? Let me know in some sort of fashion.

I think I’ll get two correct. Maybe just one.

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