Speaking with G4, Naughty Dog's Evan Wells has said "So for future DLC, could we add more co-op? Probably more in the arena-style type of gameplay, like our Survival and our Gold Rush modes."

"The objective-style co-op that we have where we have those little narrative moments...it's something that we are considering and we'd really like to do, but it's a much, much bigger investment of time because we have to do a lot of motion capture with the actors and record a lot of voices. So we would absolutely want make sure that we talk to our community and make sure there was the proper demand for it."

So come 2010, you'll probably get more co-op. You may even get more story-driven co-op. Merry Christmas, Uncharted 2 fans.

Reaction Time: Naughty Dog's Evan Wells Reflects on Uncharted 2: Among Thieves [G4]

Richard Diamant, ND's lead character artist, was joined by Darcy Korch, Bryan Wynia, Nichol Norman, Behrooz Roozbeh and many others showcasing their work in Zbrush's community forums. You can get a look at the wireframes, textures, environments, matcaps, and, of course, character models forming the source material for this game.

The thread began with Diamant posting some samples, and then his colleagues quickly followed with theirs, to the delight of forum readers. And now, you. Great community outreach by Naughty Dog, even if it wasn't the intent.

Clarification: Calling these assets concepts is inaccurate. Most if not all were actually used for the game or the public promotion of it.

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Art Work [Zbrush Central, thanks to reader Anugrah Adams]

Druckmann's novel is called "A Second Chance at Sarah," and it chronicles a man's journey back in time to stop his wife from selling her soul, and to save her life in the future. Its lead character, Johnny, must sell his own for the chance to save his love. "Instantly, he's a teenager again, a child of the 90s, and now he must relive a day from his youth." That day is his only opportunity to save Sarah, but as he learns her secret past, he begins wondering if he can, or even should.

Acclaimed digital artist Joysuke Wong supplies the art for this graphic novel, published by Ape Entertainment. It's already getting a positive reception, from sites such as Ain't It Cool News and IndyComicReview.com.

The book is 94 pages and will sell for $12.95. You may see a preview of it at the link.

A Second Chance at Sarah [Ape Entertainment]

Naughty Dog will give five different lectures related to Uncharted 2 and its production; In one, director Bruce Straley and co-lead designer Neil Druckmann will discuss story and gameplay integration.

Double Fine, the studio behind Brütal Legend, will send lead programmer Peter Demoreuille and artist Drew Skillman to discuss visual design for that game.

The conference will be March 9 to 13 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.

Naughty Dog, Double Fine to Present at GDC 2010 [CinemaBlend]

Hennig joins Ken Levine, Tim Schafer and Bleszinski in Kotaku Talk Radio's short podcasting life.

On Wednesday at 11am Kotaku Time (that's 1pm ET, 10am PT), you will be able to call in and ask Hennig anything you want about Uncharted 2, Uncharted 1, sequels, how to make cut-scenes people want to watch, games of the year and who knows what else.

Look for a reminder post about the podcast at 10:55 AM mountain time (12:55 ET) on Wednesday. The post will include call-in info so you can ask your questions. The show will be live at 11am MT, 1pm ET. I'll expect to hear you calling our switchboard then.

Bonus points if you call and DON'T ask about anything called Uncharted 3.

For starters, ND says player health "in ALL game types" will be lowered to to 65 percent, the same as the Crushing setting, except boosters still are allowed. The "plunder-only" playlist also will be instituted for the same weekend. It runs from Friday at 10 a.m. U.S. Pacific time to Monday, Dec. 7 at 11 a.m.

More details are on the Naughty Dog blog. They definitely want your feedback, so go visit it to be heard.

Experimental Weekend & Plunder Only [Naughty Dog, thanks Madgame]

The short take is that Nathan Drake has attitude without being a jerk, and he cheerfully but woefully gets in over his head. This helps make him charming rather than annoying.

Former Naughty Dog creative director E. Daniel Arey explains it better than that in a comment below a Gamasutra essay about another character voiced by Drake actor Nolan North, the revised prince of last year's Prince of Persia. Some gamers disliked the new prince, finding him to be too abrasive, too unlikable and — in a comment not as directly addressed by Arey — too sexually frank.

Here's Arey explaining how and why the Uncharted team thought they could make Drake both unusual (for a game) and unusually likable:

I can tell you from our experience that there is a fine line between jerk and lovable rogue. We developed Nathan Drake determined to make him more human and accessible than most videogame heroes.

Heroes can be cocky, (in fact, if they're not, you run the equal risk of making them inactive and only reactive – the kiss of death), but if a hero constantly shows their human side, we relate and forgive any seeming overconfidence because we've all been there.

The whole team, as well as myself, Amy, and Evan thought the reason characters like Han Solo (and his emotional twin, Indiana Jones) are likable is the fact that these characters constantly butt up against their frailty and often get in way over their head, barely finding a way out of predicaments. We can all relate to that! Couple this lovable trait with humor and a quirkiness about life, and you get a character you want to watch and play. (The kind of person you'd like to go have a few beers with.)

Arey's full comment — and the Prince of Persia article above it — is well worth the read. Then again, that revised Prince of Persia is well worth trying out. So go catch up, please.

E Daniel Arey comment [Appears below Gamasutra's
Opinion: The Sexual Politics Of Prince Of Persia]

According to movie site Latino Review, Ward has been pulled off the flick. Sony and producer Avi Arad did not want to wait for Ward to contractually deliver drafts for other projects (like Hitman 2).

Instead, writing team Thomas Dean Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer, who penned the CONAN movie reboot, are being eyed as writers for the Uncharted flick. "At press time, negotiations are underway and it looks like a deal is imminent," writes Latino Review. "Expect to hear it officially in the trades."

News: Exclusive: Conan Writing Duo Chart Course For Drake's Fortune! [Latino Review]

The Senior Vice President of Business Development at Sony Computer Entertainment says that as of last week, Uncharted 2 is now among the list of PlayStation 3 games to chart a course to a million. Rosenberg also lauded the game's critical successes at today's BMO Capital Markets Digital Entertainment Conference, but we're betting the majority of those in attendance were far more interested in the game selling so darn well.

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves was released in North America on October 13, giving it plenty of time for NPD to track its sales.

We've tallied the votes and the winner is Rated-G. The runners-up are: Colewheeler, Greyisokay, Trocar-Slush- and Psudonym.

Over the weekend Rated-G emailed me to say that even if he did win, he'd rather the top prize go to Colewheeler, which is awfully nice. So Colewheeler will be receiving the grand prize and the four runners-up will each be getting the runner-up prizes.

If you're one of the lucky five please email me from the account you registered on Kotaku with so I can get the ball rolling on getting you your prizes.

Thanks to everyone who entered the contest. I'm sorry we couldn't hand out more prizes. I do want to point out that while we've been having technical issues with comments for the past week making it hard or impossible for readers to view older comments, that did not effect our finalist selection.

We checked entries multiple times a day all last week up until Friday morning, everyone was considered. Blame me and my taste on any choices you don't agree with, it had nothing to do with timing or technology.

Hopefully everyone will be happier with our next contest. Take care.

"There was a tester we had who came in and was constantly describing Drake as going into ‘beast mode,'" said Minkoff, a designer on Uncharted 2. "Like, ‘Man, I went into beast mode and merced those fools!' And I said, ‘We need a beast mode medal.' It had to happen."

But what you do to get the "Beast Mode" medal is the larger part of why Minkoff talked with me earlier this week about designing for trophy support on the PS3. Beast Mode isn't a difficult challenge, you just pet every yak you encounter in the Tibetan Village level, and the instructions for getting it are there in the game. But at this stage of the game, Naughty Dog wanted to encourage players to interact more with those they encounter, outside of doing so to advance the story.

It's part of how developers are using things like trophies - which have been mandatory on all PlayStation 3 games for nearly a year now - and internally built medal systems to condition player behavior, and steer them to aspects of gameplay that they might not seek out, whether from habit or not knowing it's possible.

And, of course, it supports replay value. Which is why I was interested in Uncharted 2 as an example of developing for trophy support. Its strong, linear narrative forms the bulk of its experience, but that doesn't exempt Naughty Dog from the obligation to invite gamers back for more after they finish the last chapter.

"I think the virtue of making a really good game with a story that really satisfies people, is that it's not something people are going to put down and never pick back up," Minkoff said. "We find that people who complete a normal playthrough, they go back and instantly start on hard. They look at the trophies. They look for more things to do in the game, and trophies help to add that value."

Development for trophy support necessarily comes toward the end of a project, Minkoff said. The team doesn't reinvent the wheel figuring out what to award - Uncharted 2's trophy list mirrors in large part that of Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. But they do consider what their players will be looking forward to doing, and want to reward them when they pull it off.

"Being that Uncharted 2 is an action-adventure game, we wanted people to have an incentive to explore these worlds and see them from a different perspective, and use all the skills we've taught them," Minkoff said. "Our combat related trophies are in there to help people learn advanced tactics. People might not know about Steel Fist [finishing off a foe with one punch] or shield takedowns until they go in and read the trophy list."

The treasures and the kills, carried over in large part from Uncharted 1, condition a completionist mindset of seeing every inch of the world Naughty Dog created, and using all of the weapons placed in the game rather than relying solely on a trusted favorite.

Just as important is how difficult the trophies are to earn. "There were big arguments over here about how to handle that," Minkoff said. "We don't want somebody to come out of a game and feel like they accomplished nothing, and they only got two trophies because the others were so esoteric, weird or difficult to find. It's like a slap in the face, to say, ‘You thought you played Uncharted, but you really haven't.' "

The way Naughty Dog built their trophy structure "people should get about a third to a half of them on their first playthrough," Minkoff said. "It'll be on the lower end if they're just rushing through and killing everyone, on the higher end if they're finding, maybe, half the treasure and doing exploration."

However, the studio has no way of knowing if its expectations are borne out by the statistics. Plenty of minute details and gamer behaviors are measured, but nothing comes back to Naughty Dog regarding trophy collection, Minkoff said.

"We track tons of stuff - where people die, how many weapons are used, what's the most used weapon in a particular area, what's the longest playthrough for a checkpoint," Minkoff said. "But we don't track trophies. [That analysis] is done by gut. We do tons and tons of playtesting, so we get a feeling for what players do, what they don't do, what they like to do and what we should encourage them to do. But we develop that from playtesting."

Sony Computer Entertainment caps the number of trophies and points a game can award. Increasingly, you're seeing developers turn to internal reward systems to extend the payoffs to gamers; Naughty Dog is no different, engineering a medal system that's familiar to what multiplayer fps gamers have seen elsewhere. Its intent is still the same as the trophies - get players to wring every last drop of value out of the game. Motivating the in-game medal system is the virtual money one earns, which can be redeemed for in-game unlockables.

It also allowed Naughty Dog to offer two types of rewards and make the game more accessible to gamers of varying levels of skill - or time to commit to it. "We didn't want people playing through the game and feeling there was no way to ever get the platinum trophy, that there was no way to get all the trophies because it was so super-complex," Minkoff said. "We decided, if it's core to gameplay, it gets a trophy. If it's a skill-based honor, like a ‘Hey man, look what I can do,' thing, then it's a medal."

Ultimately, it all presents a fuller picture of the gamer - not just for others, but also something he or she can reflect on, and remember the time spent in a rewarding game.

"One of the wonderful things it does is give you a constant reaffirmation that you're doing the right thing and playing the game the right way," Minkoff said. "There's nothing like sneaking up, and taking down a guy, and getting that notice that you have the Master Ninja trophy. It means you have improved, you are continuing to master the game, and we are recognizing that. It's not just ‘Oh, here's another guy to kill.' It's ‘Here's a guy who matters in a larger context. And when I defeat him, that will be recognized.' It's a solid way of rewarding and reinforcing a game's action."

Because the Danish Trophy description has finally been fixed. Wait. I mean... Because this weekend, the Naughty Dog folks will be offering up twice the in-game cash in multiplayer games, also giving you a chance to shoot the team behind Uncharted 2 right in the virtual face, showing them how much you appreciate their hard work.

"Double Cash Weekend" runs from Friday, October 30, 2009 11:00 AM PST to Monday, November 2, 2009 11:00 AM PST.

It may also give you the opportunity to kill scores of T-800s whatever those glowing eyed, glowing hearted skeletal monstrosities that Naughty Dog is showing off in the teaser image offered alongside the update info at the PlayStation.blog.

UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves Celebrates Halloween with a Title Update and a Double Cash Weekend [PlayStation.blog]

Desmond - er, Drake - er, North - told the Official Playstation Magazine UK's podcast that not only is Jackman who he'd like to see take on the treasure hunters role, but the film's producers agree too.

Jackman is who I'd like to see. I think the producers would like to see Jackman too, because he has that tough guy exterior, but [...] there's also a lot going on behind his eyes. A lot of emotion and sensitivity on that brusque exterior, and he has great comic timing. He's a phenomenal actor. I just hope I get a part on the movie so I can work with Hugh."

For his part, North said he'd of course "love to do the movie; obviously I'd love to do it as Nathan Drake," however, "I've done film and television and I understand the reality of the business."

Those who follow me on Twitter know I've spent a ton of time in Borderlands lately, but I am also playing Uncharted 2 and for my money, North's work is the best of any big-budget game I've played. And this isn't his first rodeo (Prince of Persia, Assassin's Creed). North does have screen credits, but he's right that he's not a marquee name. And it's a shame. He's a heavyweight in video game voice acting and if this business ever delivers a big Hollywood breakthrough for a game actor or actress, he'd be very deserving.

Nolan North Hints Heavily At Hugh Jackman Assuming The Role Of Nathan Drake In The Upcoming Uncharted Movie [PushSquare via Joystiq]

The Uncharted 2 home space, which we've discussed previously, is set inside a Nepalese village, where players can hunt for an ancient Ganesh mask, participate in a torch race, or play the Fortunate Thieves card battle game, which can be seen in the video on the official PlayStation Blog. It's probably one of the most enticing reasons I've seen to download a PlayStation Home space.

In addition to the Uncharted 2 space, Tekken 6 and Street Fighter IV will also be getting themed spaces in tomorrow's update, with 25 alternate Street Fighter IV costumes released in the PlayStation Home mall to commemorate the occasion.

All of that, plus a new Penthouse personal space and tons of new fake things to buy, coming to PlayStation Home tomorrow. Now who's excited?

UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves Hits PlayStation Home + Tekken 6 & Street Fighter IV Spaces [PlayStation Blog]

But give the Major his due, the Xbox Live community guru Larry "Major Nelson" Hyrb has tweeted that he's going to pick up Uncharted 2. If the context of this story escapes you and you also live under a rock, the game is a PlayStation 3 exclusive. And it speaks to the overall excellence of a game when your No. 1 competitor's public face says he's paying retail for it. Tweeteth the Major:

I'll have to pick up UnCharted 2 this week. It's being very well received. Congrats to @Naughty_Dog on a job well done!

Very nice gesture, but let's not make a compliment of Microsoft into something greater than the credit Naughty Dog and Sony are due. Uncharted 2 is legitimately such a great game that it can be said everyone's buying it.

Xbox's Major Nelson To Buy PS3's Uncharted 2 [Hot Blooded Gaming]

The two names that stuck out in the thanks list were Bungie and Infinity Ward.

Bungie stuck out because corporate structure has made it such that the company has traditionally only developed for the Xbox 360. Modern Warfare developer Infinity Ward makes multi-platform games, so it wasn't such a big deal to see them — more like, oh hey, Infinity Ward!

Naughty Dog's Neil Druckmann explains the end credit list in a live chat with fans: "We try to be quite open with our technology and our process. We exchanged technology and ideas with other developers. We wanted to make sure we thanked everyone that helped us out in some way."

Naughty Dog? More like Really Generous And Good Dog.

Naughty Dog explains why they thanked Bungie and Infinity Ward. [Giant Bomb] [Pic]

We don't have much info other than the transcript itself. Answering a reader's question: "So what is next? DLC?" Druckmann said.

Well besides DLC - which you should hear more about pretty soon - we have an exclusive announcement! We're releasing a prequel story to Uncharted 1 as a motion comic voiced by your favorite actors from the two games. Stay tuned for more into.

DLC, of course, is not a surprise. But this is the first we've heard of a prequel for the Uncharted continuity.

UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves Out Now! Live Chat with Naughty Dog Today at 2PM PT [PlayStation.blog thanks Andrew F.]

PlayStation.Blog announced the contest yesterday. Here's the deal - you need to play the Uncharted 2 Online Multiplayer Demo between now and Monday at 11:59 p.m. U.S. Pacific time. The drawing will be done at random - it's not based on time spent gaming or any other stats. You're entered by joining any open match from the demo's online lobby. Sony's giving away 10 per day, so that's 30 in all. Winning PSN IDs will be notified by email between Oct. 15 and Oct. 30 posted on PlayStation.Blog on Oct. 19.

And what do they win, Don Pardo? Well the Uncharted 2 Fortune Hunter edition includes a replica of the Phurba Dagger, featured in the game, with a display stand; an art book and collector case autographed by developer Naughty Dog, "plus a host of downloads." Oh, and the game itself, too. We've heard it's pretty good.

Want to Win UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves Fortune Hunter Edition? Start Playing Tonight! [PlayStation.Blog]

In the video you're seeing a brief moment of multiplayer Uncharted 2 action as filmed at Sony's Bellevue, Washington event for next week's big PlaySation 3 game. The video was shot by swag-shirt hoarding Kotaku-reader Jon Q, who drove to the Bellevue's Lincoln Square Cinema to witness the spectacle.

So that's gaming on the big screen, projected via PS3s hooked up to special Sony digital movie theater screens. What better way would there be to use a movie theater than to play a game in it?